From: TP Diffenbach <rockbox_at_diffenbach.org>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 13:36:53 -0400

Quoting Daniel Stenberg <daniel_at_haxx.se>:

Here's the thing. I /might/ be in the market for something like this Archos video recorder. I'm something of a gadget freak: I carry an Archos FM Recorder and a PDA with me wherever I go.

But given what I know of Archos's software quality (it's not great; compared to Rockbox it's pretty bad), there's no way I'll purchase it as long as its internal workings are shrouded in secrecy.

There's a slashdot article today
( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/19/0137232&mode=nested )
on the failure of the Gemstar e-book; essentially, Gemstar allowed users to buy e-books only from Gemstar, and as a result of the restriction, interest in the product went away, despite the technical strengths of the e-book hardware. Archos seems to be making a similar mistake by limiting what users can do with their products.

> To make a similar thing on the multimedia, you'd have to develop everything
> from scratch there too. It's a different CPU with a secret manual you can't
> get your hands on


Quoting Daniel Stenberg <daniel_at_haxx.se>:

> On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Frans Langeveld wrote:
>
> [received off-list, but cc'ed to the rockbox list for future reference etc]
>
> > I know you are not developing for the AV 120 video recorder but is it
> > possible to build in a timer in this device so i can record mine favorit
> > program whenever i want.
>
> Everything's possible. It just takes more or less time and effort.
>
> You won't see us do that though, as you already know we don't develop for the
> multimedia models.
>
> > I already contacted Archos about this they told me to buy the AV 300 serie
> > which is much more expensive.
>
> > Because you already made a sleep timer version in the other Archos products
> > it is maby not so difficult to build one in the AV 120 video recorder.
>
> Rockbox is developed from scratch, it is not a modification of the Archos
> software. At this point, we've been working on it for ~18 months with more
> than 60 named (non-trivial) contributors. A little over 60,000 lines of C
> code.
>
> To make a similar thing on the multimedia, you'd have to develop everything
> from scratch there too. It's a different CPU with a secret manual you can't
> get your hands on, different architecture, different software upgrade
> procedure, different display, and you'd have to produce numerous video
> codecs.
>
> When that is done, adding a crappy timer is easiest thing on earth compared
> to
> the MAJOR work you'd have to achieve first.
>

-- 
Archos FM has a Rockbox!

Received on 2003-06-19