What does the Meizu Rockbox project need?

Pytak

Llorean

Rockbox does not "often mean a decline in battery life". In many players it means an increase in battery life. Only the iPods with their very strange system on a chip have posed a significant problem to us improving battery life.

Rockbox supports more file formats for music.

The "20fps" restriction may not be as much of a hardware limitation as you think right now. I don't know about the Meizu hardware to be able to say for certain, but in the past on players we've supported, there has been thought to be a hardware restriction (either claimed by the manufacturer, or just due to the apparent slow speed of the processor, or other reasons) that we've shown to be inaccurate. If you don't want Rockbox, nobody's forcing you, but for some people having an open source firmware is enough on its own, even if it didn't offer more options. In this case, it does. The big key is that it's open source. If you don't like something about it, you can improve it even further yourself.

markun

I agree that rockbox on the Meizu M6/M3 is not as necessary as it is for other players. For me it's mostly about freedom to change whatever I want and having fun doing the port. Also, new players bring new developers to the rockbox community. I miss some features like replaygain, but I could live without it.

Well, that's subjective, but you can always try to make a better theme of course. Here are some which will work on the M6 models: Rockbox Themes

I wouldn't say often, but in the case of the Meizus you might be right, at least in the beginning. It depends on how much power the original firmware can save by running some stuff on the CalmADM coprocessor (which we will not be using at first).

Do you mean the LCD update is only done 20 times per seconds? I didn't look at the values in the firmware disassembly yet. Do you have some link for me with more info?

The Gigabeat has a 300MHz ARM9 and gets 48fps full screen with the rockbox video player, so I hope we can get 32fps.

Whatakevin

also, we can fix nearly all of the meizu's bugs including:

-stuttering
-bad random feature
-adding gapless playback
-adding reply gain (so the music's volume is reletively the same)
-adding apps
-fixing the clock
-fixing album art
-fixing the playlist

and much more that i cant name

wpyh

Looks like I'm late to the party here And it seems like Mr. Mod-and-Manners from the Rockbox forum has arrived on the scene

I agree with what was said above (about why we should have Rockbox on Meizu), and I don't have anything to add right now.

markun: I didn't know Rockbox don't have replaygain support. Meizu M6 / M3 certainly don't have one. I can probably code it, but is there a reason replaygain isn't implemented? It seems trivial to me (the fact that I can probably code it means it's most likely trivial stuff...).

Whatakevin

well it seems as if meizu isnt too public about their firmware. i would guess they are too busy on the m7 or m8

lunaticprophet

ROCK ON ROCKBOX!!

I, for one am looking forward with great anticipation to an op-src firmware. I've only owned my M6 for a few weeks and while it's a great little gadget -- the firmware is all over the place!

They seem to take good features out for no apparent reason (the tap to cycle from the end to the beginning & vice-versa) and add 'features' that don't make any sense (the auto-update of the music even when you haven't added anymore music).

My SP came w/ v. 1.010.3 (or something near that) and while it was slightly buggy... the 2.003.2 version --that seems to be universally acclaimed as the version with best trade-off between new and old features-- has just as many niggling issues. These two just off the top of my head:

** Why aren't playlists treated just like the album or artists categories?? I should be able to cue up playlists (by holding down the enter key) just as I cue up albums or artists -- that would be a consistent response. (sometimes I want to hear a combination of playlists.. not just one at a time.)

** When browsing a playlist, why doesn't double-tap work to begin playing song (must use play/pause button) as it does when looking thru artists, albums or song list?? (again... consistency)

There are several other issues with 2.003.2 that are just as annoying and the thing is... a lot of these issues only came up in later firmware versions. The firmware programmers were 'fixing' things that weren't broken. From reading the firmware reviews it seems that things are not getting better --- it appears that for every step forward, the firmware takes a 1/2 step (or full step) backwards. I'm thinking of updating to 2.004.6 just to see what it is like.... but those who've updated to that have complained about a number of major issues also.

Sry to be long winded, but it seems to me that Meizu isn't all that responsive to user input or have a separate set of goals with regards to this firmware. From a purely functional-consistency standpoint there are things here that defy logic.

This is a great gadget, but it's being held back by shoddy programming and that's a real shame.... I'm glad there are people looking to correct this issue!

markun

Rockbox does have replaygain. I was talking about the features I miss in the meizu firmware.

roelandb

how is the port of rockbox to meizu coming along? any progress being made on it recently?

wpyh

Ah, I must've misunderstood you