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Tech Inquiry: iPod and MPEG-1, Layer 2


I have an iPod. I love it. I also have a large amount of music in mp2 (MPEG-1, Layer 2 Audio) format. I can play this in iTunes just fine, but I’d sure like my iPod to play it. The hope is it wouldn’t be a difficult firmware update for the iPod. Do you, or any of your contacts, have any idea if mp2 support on an iPod is in the development pipe, on the drawing board, or won’t ever be supported?

Ed: To my knowledge, not only does the iPod not support this out-of-the-box, but no custom firmware is available – yet. Sounds like a future job for LINUX on the iPod, but my guess would be processing speed could be an issue. The iPod hardware lacks an FPU; the first question is whether mp2 decoding is more intensive without one than mp3 or not. Anyone out there got any ideas, or in general, tried hacking their iPod at all? -PK

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.