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Topic: hacking roms to support MPC? (Read 7366 times) previous topic - next topic
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hacking roms to support MPC?

Seeing how Iriver products can have their firmware upgraded, what prevents someone from hacking it to support MPC? I looked around on the web and there are hacked iriver firmwares made to support Chinese language.

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #1 –
it took iriver lots of time to implement ogg vorbis support, because it's so cpu hungry. maybe mpc has a similar problem which makes it also very uneasy to implement

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #2 –
actually, I believe that MPC has a very low cpu cost; it's comparable to mp3 and may be even lower. Anyways, it's not been implemented probably more out of consideration to lawyers... of course a non-supported, non-official version (ergo hacked) could still be made...

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #4 –
Be aware that musepack's low CPU usage is mainly based on Frank's code optimization, and not necessarily on the compression format alone. But there is also definitely an advantage from the subband coding compared to transform codecs, which is why MP2 ( MPEG1 layer2 ) was chosen as default audio profile for the first VCD players, as it was less CPU intensive for decoding then MP3 ( MPEG1 layer3 ) ....

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #5 –
I thought it had something to do with the fact that portable players cans support floating point processing ???

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #6 –
Quote
Be aware that musepack's low CPU usage is mainly based on Frank's code optimization, and not necessarily on the compression format alone. But there is also definitely an advantage from the subband coding compared to transform codecs, which is why MP2 ( MPEG1 layer2 ) was chosen as default audio profile for the first VCD players, as it was less CPU intensive for decoding then MP3 ( MPEG1 layer3 ) ....

MP2 decoding using mpglib is even faster (but not by much).
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #7 –
One thing is to do a minor hack to a firmware, and another very different thing is to implement a custom decoder into the firmware. In my opinion it's close to impossible, if you don't have the adequate target hardware knowledge and special development tools for that hardware.

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #8 –
KikeG has the point,
imagine the ESS based DVD/mp3/mp2 players.
They can decode mp3 and mp2, and have enough power to decode the video, too (btw. at 108 MHz usually, but here at these special chips and software7firmware, MHz is not that important.)

and around the ESS based DVD players you have an active hackers scene, unfortuantely, they have no interest into mpc, they are satisfied with mp3...
one told me, before he would implement an "obscure audio" format, there would be other things to do.

But:
I had a small insight into the ways, how they work with the dvd-player FWs, iirc/imo, they are quite far away from the point, that they can freely program an additional decoder into the FW.

if you want to help them to decipher the code and to implement mpc...

go to:

http://groups dot yahoo dot com/group/mipsx_src/

(you need to become member at yahoo groups, and for this group, easy to perform.)

That's the place, where you get & develop tools for "viewing" DVD FW..

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #9 –
Didn't someone on here post the source code to their own MPC decoder, which just happened to run on the same CPU as inside the iRiver iMP-350? I seem to recall something like that about a year ago. Its certainly possible to decode Musepack on the iRivers, especially if they can decode Ogg, but I doubt we'll ever see MPC playback a reality, hacked or not.

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #10 –
Keep in mind that such a modification of firmware could potentially ruin your likely several hundred dollar portable, unless you had some sort of emulator to test it out on first.  I don't think you will find a lot of people who would be willing to wreck their portables in a possibly futile attemple to maybe support musepack.

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #11 –
I started a thread about this a fair while back, but I am still surprised that it hasn't happened.  In this day and age, there are hacks, cracks, for anything you'd ever want, often before the software or hardware has even hit the streets.

Granted, you need access to proper development tools, or emulators.... But I'm surprised no-one has access to these at iRiver, for example, through a friend...

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #12 –
Quote
Granted, you need access to proper development tools, or emulators.... But I'm surprised no-one has access to these at iRiver, for example, through a friend...

You don't need only the tools, you need the motivation and the programming knowledge. It would be a big coincidence if someone had these three requirements.

Besides, the guy working at iRiver with access to these tools could get in deep shit for leaking them.

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #13 –
Quote
Besides, the guy working at iRiver with access to these tools could get in deep shit for leaking them.

I'll bet he would!

But then... if iRiver's COULD play MPC's, more units would be sold (very marginally, agreed)...

But he would be shoulder deep in shit, by that time

[I'm paraphrasing my problem in the office today.  I have HAD to bypass some systems in order that lines in the factory can keep running - they would have stopped otherwise.... And yet, I get told off.] 

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #14 –
Quote
I started a thread about this a fair while back, but I am still surprised that it hasn't happened.  In this day and age, there are hacks, cracks, for anything you'd ever want, often before the software or hardware has even hit the streets.

Granted, you need access to proper development tools, or emulators.... But I'm surprised no-one has access to these at iRiver, for example, through a friend...

My workplace designs hardware using similar embedded technology as these players and I have access to a lot of the tools as well as a couple of hardware engineers who have no interest in mpc but are happy to tinker. If I had source code, I could compile things here, but would need to know the target environment.

But yeah, i'm surprised it hasn't happened too. Even better would be if someone found source code for the Nomad Jukebox (old 6gb model) firmware. Mine has been gathering dust for 2 years, i'd love to fill it with mpc music. Does anyone have any idea of what chipset it runs on?
 

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #15 –
Quote
You don't need only the tools, you need the motivation and the programming knowledge. It would be a big coincidence if someone had these three requirements.

I think those requirements woud be correlated (ie people who have the tools know how to use them, people who are into DSP are more likely than the average Joe to be into tinkering with digital audio) so it would not be a coincidence.

Edit: I agree that letting proprietary material out to someone outside the company that licensed them is not a likely scenario, but historically a lot of personal projects get done in the wee hours...  Like Boeing engineers designing racing boats.

hacking roms to support MPC?

Reply #16 –
i wonder where i could get that firmware adlai mentioned that could make the type1 players support chinese