For my Birthday, I received a new generation iPod, or the so-called 5.5 generation.

I have to say, as much as I am ardently opposed to DRM (and Apple's and Microsoft's support of it), this little gadget is (as Steve Jobs would say) simply amazing!

This is the first portable player I've owned that could play video, and that fact; combined with the superb build quality, incredibly intuitive interface, limited (but still very nice) PDA capabilities, cute little games (not on a par with the PSP, but still ...), and gorgeous sound quality; really makes this a device worth cherishing.

The only real shortcomings are the Draconian and nannying EU volume restriction, and the DRM factor, but both of these problems can be fixed, as follows:

The latter can be very easily overcome by using the deeply essential QTFairUse6, but with the introduction of the 5.5G iPod, removing the EU volume limit is once again made difficult (new Firmware; new method).

None of the iPod hacking tools currently available are able to perform this task yet, although I hear that the developer of goPod is working (quietly) on a new version that works with the 5.5G iPods and 2G Nanos. In fact I hear the 5.5G iPod part is already done, but he's waiting for the 2G Nano part to be completed before making a release.

In the meantime, however, I discovered that there is a more immediate solution that is incredibly simple ... and yes it does work, because I just tried it.

The necessary information is in the following forum article, posted by Andrea Amaddeo, on the 7th of December, 2006:

http://forums.ipodhacks.com/showthread.php?p=31711#post31711

I won't repeat the contents of that post , but I'll just add the following notes:

Oh what the hell, for completeness, and just in case the ipodhacks site mysteriously disappears for some reason, I'll repost the text of that post here:

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This is a simple ten steps procedure to manually patch 5.5G Video iPods under Windows using HxD as hexadecimal editor:

1. First, plug the iPod to the USB port of your computer, after that wait for iTunes to come up (if configured to autostart) and quit it WITHOUT ejecting the iPod.
2. Start HxD (latest version is 1.6.1.0), click on the "Open Disk" button (you can find it just below the "View" menu).
3. You should see a "Removable Disk 1", select it, uncheck "Open as Readonly" and click "OK".
4. Click "OK" to skip the warning message.
5. Now click Search->Find (Ctrl+F) to open the search panel.
6. Type this in the "Search for" text line: 08009fe5940090e5
7. Select datatype "Hex-values" and click "OK".
8. The first string found IS NOT the one we're looking for, push F3 to find next...
9. FOUND! At the end of the selected string you will find the two magic bytes in "capped" position (01 00). Swap them (00 01).
10. Save (Ctrl+S), close (Ctrl+F4) and eject the iPod from the tray bar icon.

The iPod should now reboot. Go to Settings->Volume Limit and raise the volume bar to the max.

Now your iPod volume has been boosted.
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And my notes:

In order to perform this hack you will need a Hex Editor capable of editing hard disks directly, such as HxD. Under Linux this is easy, since direct access to block devices is facilitated through the /dev directory. Typically you would issue a command like "hexedit /dev/sda". If you don't have hexedit, then look for it in your distro's repos. Make sure you are editing the correct block device, which should be obvious since you'll see the string "iPod" near the beginning of the hex dump.

As if I need to tell you - be extremely careful; one wrong step and you'll b0rk your iPod, but if you reverse the edit you should be fine.

Once done, and your iPod reboots, when you get to the section of the guide explaining how to increase the volume limit preferences on the iPod, one thing I found quite confusing was that if the current volume (not the limit, just the actual currently set volume), is less than MAX, then after you set the "volume limit" to max, then click the centre button on the iPod, the volume immediately drops back down to the previous "normal volume" setting; making you think that the max limit hack isn't working. Actually it is working, it's just that the iPod's way of setting the volume limit is not particularly intuitive. When setting the max limit, Ignore the "volume bar" and the actual audible volume; what is important is the the little blue arrow at the bottom - its current position indicates the max volume limit, the slider bar does not. The slider bar merely indicates the current volume, not the max limit.

Phew, that turned out to be a longer post than I expected.

Anyway, enjoy your new unrestricted volume, but don't go deaf you maniacs :)

--
[H]omer /out

N.B.: Apparently this Draconian restriction is now being applied to all iPods, European and American alike!