Gameboy Movie Player, and the Codec, quite interesting.....

[qshartle]

I was just randomly paruzing www.lik-sang.com, and I stumbled upon a quite interesting gadget straight from Japan...its a Gameboy Advance Movie Player. Its made by am3 and the video codec is made by actimagine. It uses smartmedia cards to store data on it, which is quite cool, but the most interesting part was that the videoplayer doesnt need special software for the gameboy. The codec itself is processed in the gameboys main processor, making it play perfectly. The codec is called FastVideo. It suposidly makes extremely high quality movies, for slow processors.

This looks very interesting, altho I would want to convert my own DVD's to this format and play them on my GBASP. Oh, and the compression rates are as follows:

32 meg=30 min
64 meg=60 min
120 meg=90 min
152 meg=120 min
256 meg=192 min
512 meg=384 min

Heres more info on it....


http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3174

www.am3.jp

www.actimagine.com/fastvideo


Im wondering if they will come out with a codec for mac, or program for mac, to make these filetypes.



Q

[WiseWeasel]

That's kinda nifty, I guess, but not very practical. First issue: Don't Smart Media cards top out at 128 MB? Second issue: Display; who's going to want to watch movies on a GBA? Some insane person? Third issue: price; a 128 MB SMC will run you about $40, so it would be cost-prohibitive to have any appreciable selection that would last a 6 hour cross-country plane trip. This is nifty and all, but I think they chose the wrong media (shoulda used CF slots), and it's pretty much useless, since you'd have to be mad to want to watch entire movies on that small screen at FastVideo quality (sacrifices quality for low processing requirements). An MP3 player for the GBA might be useful, but this is just ridiculous. Interesting find, though.

[qshartle]

i went down to my local Chinatown/Lil Tokyo, and found a shop that had one for display. With the gbasp, it seems to me natural to watch a movie on it. And in japan, the largest SMC is 1 gig. Plus the quality is much better than VCD, and close DivX. Since the screen is small, its hard to notice. They had a clip of some games, and a 15 min movie. The movie looked fantastic. I wouldnt mind having that during class. Its discrete, foldable, and it would help me stay awake in my English class. They clerk also showed me what he had gotten on his trip to japan. A live action show, somthing with teacher in the title. There were a few pixely places here or there, but on a 64 meg SMC, its good. O well, ill have to research this more. I think nintendo is trying to outdo PSP.



Q

[WiseWeasel]

And in japan, the largest SMC is 1 gig.
Q

I think you're confusing SMC with CF or SD or something, but I'm pretty sure the biggest one currently available anywhere is 128 MB. 1 GB would be quite the jump. Anyways, if you have situations where it would be acceptable or desirable to watch movies on that screen, then this would be a nifty add-on. The choice of SMC is quite odd, though. Please provide linkage if you find any SMC's > 128 MB, but google is turning up zilch.

[ZeroSix]

I considered buying this to find out about encoding for it on the Mac, however, with it being SMC based, i lost all interest. While I realize that SMC is thin, they could have easily gone with a more practical format, such as SD or CF. What else even uses SMC besides Fuji based digital cameras!?

[WiseWeasel]

What else even uses SMC besides Fuji based digital cameras!?

MP3 players . . . I have several (players and cards), and for that they're OK. CF or SD are still better, though (in that order).