Kenwin 1004iR and Ogg Feature Removed

[linuxdoctor]

Up here in Canada we have this electronics chain store called The Source. It used to be Radio Shack but the company that owned all the Radio Shacks in this part of Canada (Circuit City) had a big fight with Radio Shack and they pulled their brand completely out of the country.

Anyway, I was in one of these stores over the weekend looking for a new stereo system for my lab. I noticed the a system that they were discontinuing which they branded as Centrios 1131457 but is really this thing here. Because they were discontinuing it I got it for under $100.\

I quite like the system and it has a number of features I like: it plays not only regular music CDs but also ISO9660 formatted CDs that have WMA, RealPlayer or MP3 and playlist files on the too. It has Internet Radio capability (in the previously mentioned formats) an links to Shoutcast and World Radio from a Taiwaneze company that makes the firmware for this thing.

One neat thing it can also do is talk to a Media Server over the Internet or local area network. I spent part of the weekend setting up a MediaTomb media server on my backup computer that I normally use as a name and print server. It works pretty well and I happy with my purchase.

Except for one thing. It does not play Ogg Vorbis files.

While researching the product I discovered that the firmware uses the uClinux embedded OS to drive the thing which, by the terms of the GPL, they are required to supply the source code for their firmware. So, I excitedly downloaded their firmware and discovered that it does have Ogg Vorbis capability built into it but has been disabled!!!

Right now I'm in the process of tracking down these guys and asking them why they did such a stupid thing. The other thing I'm going to ask them is how do I get the thing to download any customer firmware I may build from their distribution into the thing so I can play with it (after I get Ogg Vorbis working).

It totally mystifies me why anyone would take away a feature that is already built into the unit? the only valid explanation would be that the Ogg driver is broken, however, the driver is part of uClinux and I know that it does work. So they have some explaining to do.

My technology rant for this week.
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Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.
If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.
Big business is a disease we will need to cure before we will ever achieve real prosperity.

[LP-SolidRaven]

Welcome to the concept of corporate pressure and monopoly...
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.

[linuxdoctor]

What disturbs me the most is the fact that this company is using Free Software (that is to say Linux, GNU software and a number of embedded tools) to promote closed standards. The stuff that they produce that aren't directly linked into Linux are all proprietary making even more irksome.

The fact that it uses Linux is a good thing. The fact that they are breaking the spirit of Free Software is a bad thing.

Maybe there's something I can do about it. I just might try hacking into it. Better still find somebody who has a broken one that I can take apart. We'll see. If only I had the time. On the other hand, maybe I can get some kids who want an interesting project soemthing to do.
_________________
Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.
If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.
Big business is a disease we will need to cure before we will ever achieve real prosperity.

[ClickFanatic]

That's kinda stupid. Besides, Ogg Vorbis is a great audio format.

I also had a disabled feature on my portable media player, the FM radio. It was disabled in the firmware of the European release due to the fact that FM devices are apparently taxed over here.
Fortunately it was easily solved by upgrading the firmware (which was a good idea anyway).
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