Vorbis Hardware: Difference between revisions

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*[http://www.phatnoise.com/products/index.php PhatNoise's] PhatBox,
*[http://www.phatnoise.com/products/index.php PhatNoise's] PhatBox, Home Player
 
:The PhatBox is a audio entertainment system for the car. It uses a cartridge to store the music, it can be filled with music through a docking station for the PC. At the moment Vorbis is only supported through a testing version. The Home Digital Media Player uses the same cartridges as the PhatBox, but supports Ogg Vorbis out of the box.


*[http://www.kenwoodusa.com/excelon/excelonKeg.jsp Kenwood's] Music Keg (“Powered by PhatNoise”)
*[http://www.kenwoodusa.com/excelon/excelonKeg.jsp Kenwood's] Music Keg (“Powered by PhatNoise”)

Revision as of 22:37, 30 September 2004

This is a list of hardware of all categories, from PDAs to DVD players,
that can play Ogg Vorbis files. Hopefully you can find what you want,
if not, come back next week: several companies who can see the value and
popularity of Vorbis are working to support it on their hardware.
If you know of any other hardware or projects, please add them to the list.
More hardware info can be found at vorbis hardware page.

Consumer products that support Vorbis natively

Portable Players

Flash Memory Storage

  • iRiver's iFP-3xx (and higher model numbers)
iRiver flash based players comes in many memory size (128MB to 1GB) and have various features like FM receiver and clock alarm.
All the iRiver players from iFP-380T up to iFP-1090 should support Ogg/Vorbis playback.
Some players may need an updated firmware in order to play Ogg/Vorbis files.
Note - only certain bitrates are supported, various problems reported including reboots, silence and random noise when a VBR OGG passes outside the limit (96-225 Kbps.)


The YP-60V is a portable 256MB player, that comes with additional functions for athletes. The YP-T6 is an incredibly small flash player with 128/256/512/1024 MB storage, has a mic and FM radio.


  • Iops MFP-312, MFP-325, MFP-350
Iops offers the MFP-300 series player with 128/256/512MB/1GB internal flash memory. They offer voice and FM radio recording whilst maintaining a lightweight portable size.


MP-130 is a portable player with flash memory in 128/256/512MB sizes. This appears to be a rebranded Iops player.


a flash player which comes in 256MB/512MB/1GB sizes, FM-receiver, colour display and yet to be translated features. An english comment is available


A small flash-based player (256MB/512MB/1GB) and supposed to get a firmware upgrade in the future to support Vorbis.

Harddisk Storage

The Xiph.org Foundation has brought Vorbis playback to the Neuros Digital Audio Computer. See Digital Innovations' press release about the agreement. See the press release about the beta vorbis firmware. The final version will be more optimized.
UPDATE: DI now fully supports Vorbis in firmware versions 1.45 and 2.x (available at their Support Updates page).
The Neuros Synchronization Manager for Windows (available at the above link) now also fully supports the addition of Vorbis files to the Neuros. *nix users can use either Xiph.org's Positron or Sean Starkey's Java Neuros Database Manipulator, both of which provide full Neuros database support and other features.
The new generation Neuros II is now available, in capacities of up to 80GB.
please rewrite this item with current information


The Rio Karma is a portable player with a harddisk of 20 GB. It can decode MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. USB 2.0 is used to connect to PCs, but a docking station is also included which offers ethernet and RCA line-out support.
IGN have written preview and review articles about the Karma 20. Riovolution has a good Rio Karma forum and a nice gallery of Rio Karma pictures. The official product annoucement was reported in The Register and Slashdot; the Slashdot discussion included several informative comments from a Rio employee.
Note that firmware versions prior to 1.25 cause stability problems for some people. Version 1.25 of the firmware fixes these problems, and also contains some new features.
The Rio Nitrus (1.5 GB HD player) and Rio Carbon (5 GB HD player) do not support Vorbis, but there is a slim chance that they will in the future.


mpio HD300 is an harddisk player that plays Ogg Vorbis. It's not listed on the manufacturer's website, but in an online shop. The HD200 is said to support Vorbis, but it is not mentioned on the website.


TEAC MP-1000 is an ultra-compact harddrive player with 1.5GB capacity and only 70g mass.


The iBeat 500 is a portable harddisk player with 20 GB of storage. It supports MP3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis and uses USB 2.0 to connect to PCs. It has a FM radio and an in-built mic. It seems to be available only in Germany (looks like a rebadged Xclef HD-800).


This is a harddisk player with 20/40/60 GB storage size, and can decode MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and WAV. It has a FM radio and a mic for recording voice.


This player uses a small 1,5 GB harddisk and supports MP3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis. It connects trough USB 2.0 and can broadcast music through a FM sender.


A portable player with 1.5GB memory, FM-receiver, recording function, upgradeable firmware, etc.


The iAudio M3 is a portable harddisk player with either 20 or 40 GB of storage. It has a built-in FM radio and mic. It supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and WAV and even FLAC with the newest firmware upgrade. See this IGN article for more info.


  • iRiver's H1xx, H2xx (and higher model numbers)
In September 2003, iRiver released a new announcementdetailing their plans for Vorbis playback. Now basically all current models support Ogg Vorbis playback.
Currently, firmware upgrades are available for the iHP-100 and iHP-115 (only available in Korea?), 10Gb and 15Gb portable players. The iHP-120, a 20GB portable player, and the iHP-140, a 40GB version, supports Vorbis playback out of the box.
IGN have reviews of the iHP-100 and iHP-120.
The iGP-100, a 1.5Gb portable player, supports Vorbis, according to the FAQ, though no firmware upgrade appears to be required.
Portable harddrive players with 10GB, 20GB, 40GB; H120, H140
Portable harddrive players with USB host function and colour display:H320, H340
Portable media players with Linux OS and harddrive: PMP-120 and PMP-140

CD players

  • iRiver iMP-250, iMP-350 (SlimX), iMP-400 and iMP-550
Ogg Vorbis supported with latest firmwares, still some bitrate restriction which may vary depending on the model as said belong:
All iMP series but the 550 have the following bitrate limitations: min=96kbps and max=160kbps
Using a newer DSP the latest model i.e. iMP-550 supports maximum bitrate up to 256kps (still 96kbps as minimum)
Also note the latest iMP-450 does not support OGG for the moment, a future upgrade may correct this...
The newests iMP as iMP900 (audio only) and iMP-1000/1100 (video playback too) are just released in Korea, they seem to not support OGG Vorbis natively, maybe a future upgrade will correct but I've no information for now (i don't read Korean ;)
Some older or low cost iMP players won't support OGG...(iMP100/iMP150 and i guess iMP7xx serie too)
Check the firmware section of iRiver website for more specific informations...


This hardware manufacturer’s new CD-R portable supports Ogg Vorbis playback out of the box. It will have 48 hours of WMA playback if an external battery pack (2 AA batteries) is used. In Korea, its retail price is 189,000 KRW, or approximately 160 USD.
More information is available (in Korean) on the product page for the FreeMax FW-960.
The FreeMax FW-960 is also known as the mpman MP-CD550.


The MCD-CM600 is now available in Korea. It is a CD portable that can play Vorbis, MP3, and WMA. Page with photo of MCD-CM600. Closeup of MCD-CM600.


The Havin HVC-400E, also known as the Princeton airCD is probably on sale in Japan since late November, 2003.

Static Players / Car Audio

a wireless streaming receiver, that plays Ogg Vorbis and FLAC amongst other formats with the help of it's open source server software: "SlimServer will automatically convert Ogg files to raw PCM on the fly for playback. On Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, the Ogg Vorbis decoder is included in SlimServer." Source


The PhatBox is a audio entertainment system for the car. It uses a cartridge to store the music, it can be filled with music through a docking station for the PC. At the moment Vorbis is only supported through a testing version. The Home Digital Media Player uses the same cartridges as the PhatBox, but supports Ogg Vorbis out of the box.
  • Kenwood's Music Keg (“Powered by PhatNoise”)
These are in-car players that are installed into the trunk of your car and hooked up to your car stereo. Both players run ARM-Linux and support playback of FLAC files. Beta firmware to support Ogg Vorbis is available at http://phatbox.sixpak.org/phatbox/ogg.phtml.


Except for one older model (the DP-330) all DVD/DivX players from Kiss can play Ogg Vorbis files from CD-Rs and CD-RWs (but reportedly have trouble with UTF-8 comments that aren’t also ASCII), as well as DivX (but not DivX Vorbis).
There are reportedly problems with some versions of the firmware (2.6.6 ≤ x < 2.7.1), where playback is awful for a bitrates greater than 128Kb/s.


The new line of networked hi-fi components are supposed to decode Ogg Vorbis over the Ethernet port: the A/V receiver VRS-N8100 and the DVD player DVF-N7080. They are available in Germany in September.


This piece of hardware is a DVD player and a HDTV streaming client. It supports MPEG-2, DivX, XviD and WMV9 (WMV HD), as audio tracks PCM, AC3, MP3, AAC, WMA and Ogg Vorbis. It can use ethernet, WLAN and USB 2.0 to connect to media. It is available in Japan from September.


The MPST Digital Jukebox is a Linux PC designed for audio playback and sold as a stereo component, which of course can play Vorbis.


The Hifidelio is a music server in hi-fi format and designed to produce high-quality sound. It uses a CD/DVD combo drive and can thus rip Audio-CDs and read from DVD-Rs, and is also able to burn CDs. It has an in-built 4-port ethernet switch, a WLAN interface, can connect to the iPod and other portable players through USB 2.0. It can connect to other Hifidelios through the UPnP/AV standard and to iTunes shares (iTunes shopping is a future feature). The songs are stored on the 80 GB harddisk. Supported formats for decoding are: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, WMA, FLAC, WAV. The Hifidelio will be available from October, but for now it seems only in Germany.


For the DVD/DivX player DVX-6600 a future firmware is supposed to be able to decode Ogg Vorbis.


This is a standalone DVD player that supports Vorbis.


Consumer products that support Vorbis via third-party software

  • Many PalmOS 5 powered PDAs:
Using NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes software ($14.95, free 15-day trial), or AeroPlayer (free), many Palm-based PDAs should play Vorbis.
According to the homepages of Pocket Tunes and AeroPlayer following devices are supported (can anyone confirm this?):
  • PalmOne Treo 600
  • PalmOne Tungsten T
  • PalmOne Tungsten T2
  • PalmOne Tungsten T3
  • PalmOne Tungsten C
  • PalmOne Tungsten E
  • PalmOne Zire 31
  • PalmOne Zire 71
  • PalmOne Zire 72
  • Sony CLIÉ UX50
  • Sony CLIÉ TH55
  • Sony CLIÉ TJ35
  • Sony CLIÉ TJ37
  • Tapwave Zodiac 1
  • Tapwave Zodiac 2
  • Garmin iQue

Many Windows Mobile/CE/NameOfTheMonth-powered PDAs can play Vorbis (e.g. with Conduits Pocket Player, $19.95, free evaluation available or the all free GSPlayer). Devices supported by Pocket Player:

  • Asus MyPal
  • Casio E-200
  • Dell Axim
  • HP IPAQ 1900
  • HP IPAQ 2200
  • HP IPAQ 3600
  • HP IPAQ 3700
  • HP IPAQ 3800
  • HP IPAQ 3900
  • HP IPAQ 5100
  • HP IPAQ 5400
  • HP IPAQ 5500
  • HP Jornada 560
  • JVC MP-PV331
  • NEC MobilePro P300
  • O2 XDA
  • Pocket PC Phone (T-Mobile)
  • Toshiba e300
  • Toshiba e740/e750
  • Toshiba e755
  • Toshiba Genio


With Ogg Play from http://www.geocities.com/p800tools, you can play Ogg Vorbis.


The Zaurus, a very flexible PDA which runs Linux, can play Vorbis files with a variety of software, including a plugin for the default media player, xmms, ogg123, mplayer, or theKompany.com’s tkcPlayer.


The GP32, an arm9tdmi portable console with much hackability (gcc3 toolchain, expandable memory), has a Vorbis player available.


Projects to support Vorbis

Looks like Diasonic is planning to introduce a portable 2GB harddrive player with USB host function and colour display. Source


Their new players due out in July or August will support Ogg Vorbis playback out of the box, according to The Digital Times (Korean).


Announced at IFA 2003 in Berlin, Nextway will be selling portables with USB host capabilities. It will have no memory of its own, but will use external memory/external readers to access smartmedia cards, memory sticks, compact flash, external HDDs, and more. Retail price is planned to be around 50,000 KRW, or approx. 42 USD. Vorbis firmware is planned to be released in November, according to Yohnap News Agency (Korean) and a Nextway news article (Korean).


Mpman will be releasing a 1.5Gb 1″ HDD portable that can play Vorbis. There’s no mention of it on the website, but an external preview is available. Looks like this Mpman is the same what Nextway distributes as DCube NHD-150D. It's questionable if they proceed in that matter, since Reigncom, the owner of Iriver, obtained Mpman. of the FreeMax FW-960.


Independently of Apple, some people have µClinux (Linux for CPUs without MMUs) running on this. Right now, they are decoding Vorbis at 80% realtime, with hope for improvement.


Frontier Labs are independently investigating the possibility of Ogg Vorbis support on the Nex IIe. Details are not known at the moment. The Nex iA is advertised as supporting “emerging formats such as Ogg Vorbis through firmware upgrades”. At present, the available firmware upgrades do not provide Vorbis support.


Pontis announced in the middle of 2002 that they would ‘soon’ release a firmware upgrade to allow their SP600 portable player to play Vorbis files. Unfortunately, after 18 months of silence, Pontis finally decided (in November 2003) that a firmware upgrade for the SP600 was not possible, due to CPU and memory constraints.


Vorbis in Silicon (non-consumer products)

A hardware/software implementation with a good report showing how to make FPGAs and the like to decode Vorbis streams.


FineArch, Inc. developed a hardware core and control software for decoding Vorbis. This technology can be integrated into portable players or cell phones, and since it runs at only 12MHz, it uses very little battery power. It supports files up to 64Kb/s, but could be scaled to 16MHz and 128Kb/s, at the expense of battery life. For more information, see FineArch’s press release.


MCS Logic creates single chip decoders that can play Ogg Vorbis. They supply the Vorbis decoding chips for Havin and Freemax.


Telechips has developed the TCC72x, a single chip decoder that can play Vorbis. The TCC72x series is based on on an ARM940T core, and it is used widely in Korea for players such as Iops or MobiBlu.


Tamul Multimedia manufactures decoding chips for Samsung. They claim they have Ogg Vorbis decoding firmware, according to The Digital Times (Korean).


SigmaTel hasn't announced anything that we've heard, but we do like this quote:

"I talked to Deborah Clark, product marketing engineer for audio chipmaker Sigmatel out of Austin, Tex. She is the company's expert in audio decoders. She says there is a growing base of support for Ogg Vorbis. "We can't keep paying these high licensing fees for this. Manufacturers would flock to something that's free."

from a 2000 column in Forbes
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