Hard Drive,Flash or microdrive players supporting MPC format

[shemeckfrac]

Is anyone aware of any Hard Drive,Flash or microdrive players that can play MPC files? I can't imagine how there couldn't be one.

[xmixahlx]

1 palm devices play musepack

2 the rockbox is aiming to play musepack

3 there was a chinese player that *supposedly* supported musepack, but no one has confirmed that from the musepack/HA community (other than the poster, of course)


later

[Shy]

As xmixahlx said, you can use Musepack on Palm devices, as well as Windows Mobile/Pocket PC devices, with TCPMP.
Roku PhotoBridge HD currently has unofficial Musepack support via this plugin. They may add it officially in a future update.

[Lost Angel]

wanna buy an mp3 player and, heh, looks like really it can't be helped - those bastards don't want to include mpc support, I mean, many don't even support ogg... I don't get it, why is it so tough to implement such support?

[xmixahlx]

Originally Posted by Lost Angel

I don't get it, why is it so tough to implement such support?

hardware decoding, firmware, requesting features, user base, etc

[Shy]

You said it yourself, "wanna buy an mp3 player."
The main issue nowdays is not the ability to add support, it's the willingness, not necessarily of the hardware developers, but of the guys who make the decisions, usually based on what sells best. Portable players now contain better hardware than in the past and are able to run multiple formats.
MP3 is "the good old" format everyone knows and everything supports. Most people don't even know of any lossy audio compression format other than MP3. It's like a synonym for "digital music" to people.
By far, most of the companies aren't concerned with quality of their products, not when it comes to what formats their products support AND not when it comes to the quality of the components and especially the audio output of their ridiculously low quality players. Even my lousy, big, cheap, ancient CD player has a headphone output better and stronger than any portable player's and most sound cards'.
More recently the issue of who's more big and powerful starts to show. AAC definitely doesn't get support just due to it being better than MP3, but mainly due to the fact that some of the world's most powerful multimedia companies are pushing the format. So manufacturers of hardware often don't care how popular a completely open audio format like Musepack or Ogg Vorbis is, or how high quality, the biggest consideration for them is 100% safe money.
iRiver recently dropped Ogg Vorbis support in their latest hard drive player, even though there's big demand for it. That's not encouraging at all. Let's not forget Apple, which is a main MPEG-4 company and only wants to promote mutilated DRM "protected" AAC music through its iTunes store, they don't want to support anything new other than AAC and ALAC, no matter if you like it or not. And on the other hand there are smaller companies like Neuros Audio, who listen to the public's demand and intend to support open formats like Musepack, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC in their upcoming products.
The fact stays, people must push the formats they wish to have support for, write to companies, make the word known, even protest. That's the only way free open formats can succeed in the monopoly ridden multimedia market. It has proven to be effective before, it will prove to be even more effective as the open public demand grows.

[Lost Angel]

But for all the eloquence on the matter - audiophiles do not form the main consumer group for mp3 players, just like technicians hardly do decide on the audio format support comparing to the "say" of their bosses.
So now I am thinking that support won't come until we get PDAs to be "small enough" or mp3 players to get some kind of operating system, allowing us to just install a software player on it.
I can clearly understand why Apple is not going to implement any new formats - it is focusing the marketing politics on selling digital music, so it needs its own format to enforce it etc - this is straightforward and is their choice.
I also understand small time mp3 players producers - they will be selling their stuff to common folk, who considers bitrate of 128 with some blade or xing encoder (wow, it is fast) to be sounding just fine...
Iriver really seemed to have a lead with extended formats support, but it is news to me that they're removing ogg support. Not sure, why, most likely due to pressure from guys like RIAA (though just my guessing here). So as a result I will postpone my mp3 player buying and see if I won't be able to get some, which will be capable of having some joke of an OS to be able to install things on it.
It really does all look grey though, however no matter how much certain freedoms are repressed they find their way to exist and with expansion of hdd space of mp3 players and inclusion of more and more options (like useless, imho, photoalbums) there is bound to appear some way of alternative firmware patching - perhaps, another good project with gpl already now.