Vorbis Hardware

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

These players support Ogg Vorbis either out of the box or after a firmware upgrade.

• PortablePlayers: mobile players
• StaticPlayers: installed players

For hardware that is able to run third-party software (such as PDAs), please visit VorbisSoftwarePlayers.

Rumored products

These manufacturers/products are rumored to support "Ogg Vorbis".

• Diasonic DHD-1000

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

• Dioneer

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

• Nextway

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

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.

• Apple's iPod

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

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.

Deep in the german knowledgebase you can find:

Moderator schrieb am 11-08-2004:"Eine Firmware, die Ogg-Vorbis unterstützt, konnte leider nicht umgesetzt werden, da sich in Tests heraus gestellt hat, dass der im Nex IA+ verbaute Prozessor zu schwach ist, um diesen Codec zu bewältigen."

Which means that FL discovered that the NEX's CPU is too weak for Ogg Vorbis.

• Pontis SP600

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.

Non-consumer products

This is Vorbis in Silicon, meaning chips from which actual consumer products can be build.

• Ogg On A Chip

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

• FineArch

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

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

• Telechips

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

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

• SigmaTel

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