Vorbis Hardware

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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

DVD/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, and it can be filled with music through a docking station for the PC. As of version 3.1 of the desktop software (Phatnoise Music Manager), ogg vorbis is supported out of the box. The Home Digital Media Player uses the same cartridges as the PhatBox, and supports Ogg Vorbis out of the box.


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. The Music Keg uses the same system as the PhatBox above, which means Ogg Vorbis support is available.


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.


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, but there is no release date yet.


The Yamakawa DVD-375 supports Ogg Vorbis.


This is a standalone DVD player that supports Vorbis.


A wired and wireless UPnP streaming media player. Supports decoding Ogg Vorbis as of the 1.03 firmware.


This player is a streaming client for video, audio and images. It supports MP3, AC3, AAC, WAV, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and internet radio. Supported picture formats are JPEG, GIF, TIF, BMP and PNG. It can play back MPEG-1/-2/-4, Xvid, RMP4. It has RCA connectors, a digital output, supports HDTV and can surf the internet.

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),[1] a free but alpha-stage player, 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 (confirmed)
  • PalmOne Tungsten T3 (confirmed)
  • PalmOne Tungsten C
  • PalmOne Tungsten E (confirmed)
  • PalmOne Zire 31
  • PalmOne Zire 71 (confirmed)
  • PalmOne Zire 72 (confirmed for pocket-tunes)
  • Sony CLIÉ UX50
  • Sony CLIÉ TH55
  • Sony CLIÉ TJ35
  • Sony CLIÉ TJ37
  • Sony CLIÉ NX73 - with Clie Pet's MCA2 - confirmed
  • Sony CLIÉ NX80 - with Clie Pet's MCA2 - confirmed
  • Sony CLIÉ TG50 - with Clie Pet's MCA2 - confirmed
  • All other Sony OS5 Models (NX, TG, NZ sires) - with Clie Pet's MCA2 - unconfirmed
  • 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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