Rockbox

Last September Rockbox 3.0 was released, which reminded me to post a review on this great open source project. Rockbox is an alternative firmware available for many popular portable media players, like many iPod models, Archos, iriver, and Sandisk Sansa. It seems like it would be hard to get it to work, but I found it to be surprisingly easy, and I really like the Rockbox interface. The Rockbox team released version 3.1 just before Christmas with some nice new features, so now is a great time to take your old media player and make it more useful than ever.

Using the Rockbox firmware opens up a whole new set of options for your media player, including a more robust file management system, expansive audio format support, MPEG video, and advanced sound features like an equalizer, crossfeed, advanced fade, etc. Rockbox has tons of skins, so you can make it look like anything you want. The open source community has produced hundreds of great skins, or you could create your own. With Rockbox you don’t have to use any proprietary program to load music, video, or pictures onto your player, which makes it cross-platform friendly. The project also boasts wide language support, a hallmark of open source projects.

A sample screenshot of Rockbox on an iPod Video.

Getting started with Rockbox was surprisingly easy. After downloading the most recent version I skimmed through the installation portion of the Rockbox. The manual is huge, but you only need to read a couple pages to learn how to install Rockbox on your player. The installation essentially involves moving a few files and folders to the root directory of your player, and that’s that. This process is easiliy reversible (you just delete the specific file and folder), so you can always switch back. Even better, you can boot in Rockbox or the original firmware of your player by holding down a button when you start up. This “dual-boot” feature is brilliant, and it made me feel confident in switching to Rockbox.

Once you start using Rockbox you realize that your media player is really just a small computer. When you view the files in a traditional folder view, it isn’t much different than how you would view or access files on your home computer. As if to prove the point, Rockbox can even play a mobile version of the classic first-person-shooter video game Doom. No joke!

The Rockbox project doesnt’ support every player, and it has a few weaknesses. You will get shorter battery life when using Rockbox, and in my experience the FM tuner on my Sandisk Sansa got better reception using the original firmware. Still, I liked using Rockbox immensely, and I recommend it to anyone looking to get more use out of their player. Particularly if you got a new mp3 player for Christmas, this is a good time to give Rockbox a try on your old device.