I have one of the Dell players. In general, I love it, but there are some specific issues or problems I have.

First, and foremost, the "simplified" hierarchy really limits what you can do with this thing. I have my entire CD collection stored on a hard drive. That's more than 400 discs. The single level of hierarchy keeps me from selecting an artist, then getting a list of albums by that artist, then selecting an album. As it stands now, I can only get all the tracks from that artist.

Second, the list of tracks is displayed alphabetically. This is entirely unacceptable for playing classical music. It ends up reordering the movements of a symphony. If I stuck with the shipped version of the PC side software, I would have to make playlists for ALL of my albums in order to play them in album order.

Third, there is a bug in the client software. Requests are sent to the server in a simplified HTTP protocol. This means things like spaces and commas are encoded as % 20 or % 2c (no spaces after the %, I just had to put them here to keep the BBS from whacking my text into commas and spaces). However, the client doesn't encode the % symbol itself, so the server sees the % and expects the next two bytes to be hex numbers. The upshot is that if a song, artist, or album has a % in it's name, it can't be played.

The PC side software doesn't find genres very well. All 4000 tracks of mine were reported as "other".

In order to deal with some of these issues, I've used a packet sniffer to watch the receiver talk to the PC software. I found that if I use the supplied software to boot the receiver, then shut off the PC software, I can run my own music server (which I've written). I've done this, so now I can see all my genres and also play songs with "%" in them. Also, I can server up songs from an album in track order. Along the way, I've found that sometimes the player will display lists exactly in the order the PC sends them (like a top level album or artist list), but not at other times (like the list of tracks by an artist or on an album, which the player alphabetizes).

However, the single level of hierarchy in the menus seems to be hardcoded. Hey, empeg guys, is there any way to feed this box responses in order to get it to do multiple levels of hierarchy? I REALLY REALLY don't want to have to write my own music player. The PC side was just some simple HTTP stuff, only took a few days, but replacing the player looks to be a significatly bigger task. Is there an SDK for this? Has anyone written a replacement player for either this box or the empeg car?

Another thing I want to do is add another top level choice. Right now, you can choose by Artist, Album, Genre, Title, or Playlist. I have a lot of classical music, tagged with Composer info. My working plan is to hijack the Genre category to serve up songs grouped by composer, but I'm dissapointed to lose the Genre list. Is there anyway to get the player to take this top level list from the PC server? I see from poking around the OS image on the PC server that it looks like that list is hardcoded (and, I've never seen the list go across with the packet sniffer), so I suspect that I would need to replace the player software in the receiver.

I want to love this machine. It's so close to what I want. I want to be able to put away my stack of CDs and just use this. But, the current player software just isn't as usefull as having access to all my physical CDs.

Does empeg intend to support this machine? Can I look for software updates for it here, sometime in the future? Any guess when? If you need a beta tester, I'm ready, willing, and (I think) qualified to give real feedback, both as a end user and a programmer.

In order to deal with some of these issues, I've used a packet sniffer to watch the receiver talk to the PC software. I found that if I use the supplied software to boot the receiver, then shut off the PC software, I can run my own music server (which I've written).

I love it. In another thread, Frank was just talking about how somebody was going to reverse-engineer the protocol to write their own server. I knew he was right, I just didn't know his prediction would come true within the next fifteen minutes.

Any chance you'd want to reverse-engineer the booting part of the software, too, then open-source it for the folks who want to run a Linux version?

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Tony Fabris

some interesting info here

Frank van Gestel

I'll think about it. It should be pretty straightforward. Especially if I just worry about things like feeding it responses to get it going, not necessarily creating full featured servers. There is a pretty good description included with the machine of how the machine works (from a protocol standpoint) written by hugo. It's next to the GPL and the OS sources. Basically, the PC serves as a simplified DHCP server, a simplfied NFS server, and a simplified service annoucer. After all that is used for booting, it then serves as a simplified HTTP server. I just did the HTTP server.

I'm not sure to what extent I can open source it, though. I don't remember what my license for the machine said (I didn't read it very carefully), I might have agreed not to reverse-engineer. I'll have to check. I mostly didn't worry about it when I was just writing to improve my own user experience.

Can we keep this BBS for the car player? If we start to discuss every product the empeg team works on then within a few months this will become the Rio BBS.

I'm all for someone starting a Rio BBS with similar philosophies to this one, though.

Rob

PS Don't get too worried about Receiver capabilities, bugs, missing features etc just yet. I haven't a clue what we're allowed to talk about at this stage (this isn't a former empeg product - it isn't even a SONICblue product yet) so I won't get involved in the discussion. I'm sure you've noted, however, that the player is completely software upgradable. Right now you have the earliest version of the software.

Can we keep this BBS for the car player?

Who does Rob think he is, telling us what we can/can't post on this BBS? A moderator or something?

Actually, you have a point, Rob. Paul would have to rename it to the "Unofficial Empeg-Car BBS", though...

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Tony Fabris

I quote, from the license agreement displayed during installation:

COPYRIGHT/PROPRIETARY INFORMATION

The Software portion of the Product is owned by S3 ... You also agree to refrain from modifying, translating, disassembling, decompiling, or reverse engineering the Software in whole or in part to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. ...


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

If I read this correctly, you could write your own software as long as you don't use any code or algorith from the original executable. You could write your own software for the player. This would allmost be impossible as you do not have any references to how the front-buttons are controlled, the DAC is used, etc...

Frank van Gestel

I don't know. Reverse-engineering the network protocol could be disallowed under a particular interpretation of the license terms.

You could probably replace both ends and use your own protocol without infringing. Though, as you say, this is more complicated.

I'm not a lawyer, though, so none of the above is to be taken as gospel.

Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Writing your own software wouldn't be *that* hard - you have the kernel source and so *do* know how the IR, buttons, screen, audio etc works. Fitting it into the space & making it work well is more of an issue.

Hugo

I thought that precedents set in the law (in the USA at least) allowed for reverse-engineering.

As I recall, Atari tried to sue Activision for reverse-engineering the 2600 cartridge format and selling their own cartridges for what was supposed to be a proprietary, closed system. The court upheld Activision's rights and allowed them to continue making the cartridges. And didn't something similar happen with the Nintendo? In fact, isn't reverse-engineering considered a standard industry practice that's not only permitted, but encouraged as a way of maintaining a monopoly-free economy?

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Tony Fabris

As long as the software or protocol isn't patented, you are probably right. If it is patented, I think it will be judged as breaking patent-laws

Frank van Gestel

If it is patented, I think it will be judged as breaking patent-laws

Although you're probably essentially right, I think the way you worded your statement misrepresents the purpose of a patent.

Patent's arent about breaking laws. A patent is simply a legal disabling device. All that a patent can do is prevent someone else from making/selling a product that you invented first. It's less about laws and more about being able to prove you were the first to invent the product.

At least, that's how I understand patents to work.

___________
Tony Fabris

Do I sense extreem efforts to keep a thread alive that Rob was keen to kill

- --
Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/No.341

In reply to:

---

Can we keep this BBS for the car player?

---

Where should the DELL and SonicBlue network MP3 players be discussed?
In any (relevant) existing section on this BBS
In a new, especially created, section on this BBS
A new BBS should be started
I don't care, but not here

I think those are about the options.

Nick.


--
18Gb blue - s/n 080000299 (original queue position 8724)

OK, I give up; I just voted for this thread to be continued in a new BBS...

Frank van Gestel

You might want to consider the volume in which these other products are sold - tens of thousands a month. Paul may wish to consider his network and server bandwidth, and everyone else may wish to consider the effect on the nature of the BBS if the userbase increases by an order of magnitude.

I think it will be an interesting experiment to find out whether the empeg BBS principles can transfer to a high volume product (I would certainly love to see a more intelligent alternative to the MP3.com message boards!) but I'd hate to see the car player community get trampled in the process.

Many new car player owners are going to show up over the next few months, but the product remains a high end gadget that will attract people of a certain mindset and I'm sure the BBS will be none the worse as a result. Maybe I'm over reacting, but I think the situation could be different for higher volume products.

Rob

I like this BBS and I like the way Paul has it set up. If there were a separate (but similarly configured) one for the other products, that would be cool. But I'm not sure that Paul would want the hassle of maintaining two BBS's. If not... Anyone else wanna run a BBS?

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Tony Fabris

A Patent is a legal device intended to protect an inventor. It was originally thought of as a way to allow an individual inventor a set time period to market sell and profit from the invention because typically an inventor is poor and in less of a position to do so than a large company. However corporations are individuals also and qualify under the same laws so many patents can be held by corporations.

Calvin

I definitely agree with you on that Rob. I'm fairly sure this BBS would go to hell in a handbasket if it was subject to a large influx of mainstream users. Boards like the MP3.com board suffer largely from underage power freaks who just want to feel superior when 80% of the time their "facts" are unfounded and based on limited knowledge. Reading the MP3.com board is painful at best. I'm amazed you've kept such a cool head with most of the replies you've recieved.

Sooo... yeah, another BBS. Let's not ruin the best run and highest quality BBS i've ever seen.


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

Sooo... yeah, another BBS. Let's not ruin the best run and highest quality BBS i've ever seen.

Uhhhh, yeah. What loren said.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I started this thread here for lack of a better place, and I agree that a different BBS would be a good idea. I originally voted for another section on this BBS, but on reading this, I agree that the users of the network player could conceivably drown out the empeg car users (since it is indeed likely to be a much higher volume product), and so another BBS entirely would be a better solution. Especially since the network player is a much simpler beast and probably won't get much of a developer community (the space for code inside the machine is TINY). Anyway, although I don't own an empeg car, I really don't want to ruin this board for those who do. Even if you put in another section, it's seems likely that if a small percentage of network box users are clueless, you'd get swamped with off topic stuff in no time.

By the way, as I said, I don't have an empeg car player, but I do admire the community of owners this board represents. Very high signal to noise.