Xiph.Org: Ogg: Vorbis: Hardware

We want hardware, too.

The Problem:

The Xiph.org Foundation has a simple mission. Create, produce and maintain open multimedia standards. We're just not chartered for the evangelism and promotion of our formats. If we focused on promoting our stuff, we'd never get anything done. So, we have to rely on the kindness of strangers, in this case, people like you who use and prefer our formats and want to have portable on-the-hip Vorbis players.

The Solution:

For companies to produce portable Vorbis players, they need to be made aware that there is a market for them. Every day, I hear the same thing from Vorbis listeners; 'I'm not buying a hardware portable music player unless it supports Ogg Vorbis.' It's nice to hear, but we can't do anything about it (we're not a hardware company). So, this page is here to let you send that message to people who can. Remember, be polite!

Our offer to hardware companies:

We've got a fixed-point implementation of the Ogg Vorbis 1.0 decoder, called Tremor. As of this evening, Tremor is licensed under a BSD-style license, is free for all use, and you can download it right here. If you need help implementing Vorbis support into your hardware player, we will give you any resources at our disposal to make it happen (including free engineer time). If you want Vorbis in your player (like your potential customers do), we want to help you.

It's not good enough just to hand you some code and expect miracles. Just giving you Tremor isn't a 'magic bullet' to guarantee solid hardware support. We want to help you implement Vorbis playback in your player, so we've also established a public mailing list to help things along. Finally, we have a full specification for Ogg Vorbis.

By providing support for Vorbis, you'll be giving your customers access to one of the best lossy compression codecs on the planet, and you get to do it without paying a dime in licensing fees. A lot of people love Vorbis, and they need hardware players. Please make an effort to help these people support your company and the devices you produce.

Xiph.Org contracted to bring Vorbis to the Neuros

The Xiph.org Foundation has entered into a preliminary agreement to bring Vorbis playback to the coming-soon Neuros Digital Audio Computer. We have prototype units now, and hacking has already begun. The units will be on the market soon, with Vorbis slated to be playable this spring.

Please do not run out and purchase this device immediately, assuming that Vorbis playback will be supported by Neuros. The firmware we write for them (codenamed 'Neurosetta') will be documented in its creation, and we'll have a site up to document the progress. When that site says it's 'safe' to buy the unit, then it's safe.

That being said, we're contracted for the work, and we'll be hacking like crazy to get it ready for you ASAP. Constantly bugging us about this work will certainly not help it get done faster, and pressing on Digital Innovations for details will probably drive them insane. Details will be posted as soon as details can be posted. Thanks!

Just because we're working on the Neuros doesn't mean we have stopped our evaluation of the iRiver units. Thanks to those concerned!

Shipping Products

Some companies have already managed to get Ogg Vorbis support on their limited-hardware devices. Here's a list of the ones we know about:

Other Companies

What now?

Give a shout to the companies listed above, and let us know what they say. Also, if you'd like another company added here, please drop me a line with their contact information, and I'll post them up. Thanks! If you're from a company and you're working on Vorbis support, please E-mail us and let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

Also, stay updated by joining #vorbis on irc.freenode.net, and remember to read Ogg Traffic every week on vorbis.com!