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GBA To Pioneer Movies On The Run?

Posted by simoniker on from the itsy-bitsy-screen-squint dept.

Thanks to the New York Times for their article discussing the rise of movie-playing add-ons for Nintendo's GameBoy Advance (registration required). The piece says that "portable video players are beginning to change where and how people watch movies, cartoons and music videos," and points to multiple GBA movie devices in development, such as Majesco's Game Boy Video Pak and TuneIn's Pocket Cinema, which will have an interface to a 3-inch CD player. With other products like 4Kids' GBA-TV in development, and the Sony PSP and Tapwave Helix portables promising movie availability, has this idea come of age, and is it reasonable to expect the public to watch "video on a screen the size of a dollhouse window, with a resolution that is no match for even a standard TV set"?

8 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. And then ... by torpor · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... there are these things.

    Portable video is here to stay. Once you've had a wank on a mountaintop with your favourite porno, you'll never look back.

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    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  2. MoviePark by ronfar · · Score: 2, Informative
    Ahem, I'm not sure that GameBoy is the pioneering platform as far as movie playing is concerned. Below is a page about the GamePark 32 movie player:

    MoviePark Guide

    I would be pretty shocked if a closed platform like the GameBoy, which goes out of its way to restrict development, would have a better movie playing system than a relatively open platform like the GP 32.

    I suppose one of these days I'll have to go to the trouble of comparing the two, just for kicks, but I've yet to have a need to play movies on my portable game machines (I have a Powerbook for that).

    --
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  3. Old Idea by i8urtaco · · Score: 3, Informative

    Does anyone else remember the Game Gear and Turbo Grafx 16 (portable) t.v. tuners?

    1. Re:Old Idea by lafiel · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah, but neither of those markets were anywhere as popular as the current gameboy (which basically owns the handheld gaming market)

      Anyhow, it looks almost like these are cassettes, not tv tuners... 20 dollars for only 90 minutes (5 episodes if lucky) of a cartoon is pretty steep though. If they could drop the price or fit more content, they might really be on to something...

      Imagine all the kiddies watching pokemon on their gba, then playing the actual game. Definitely a good idea for business.

  4. Ok for some.. by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Insightful

    .. Type of video, like simplistic humour cartoons, and you can use low bitrates, watching adultswin stuff is quite ok even on 3650, and mmc card provides the memory. I wouldnt watch any live actor stuff though with the same bitrates. Athf and sealab rule:)

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    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  5. Overrated. by Flack405 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a GP32 owner, I'd say watching movies on a handheld is a bit overrated. First of all, you have to buy and install MoviePark (which, btw, has pulled their product from online sales -- if you don't own it now, you can't get it). Then, you've got to compress your video to Divx 4.12. Once that's finished, you've got to copy that file to your GP32 SMC.

    Other than the "neat-o" factor, it seems pretty worthless to me. If I've got an hour to kill, I'd much rather play some C64/Atari ST/Atari 800/Atari 2600 roms than watch a movie on a 320x240 4 inch screen.

  6. Interesting by David_Bloom · · Score: 3, Informative

    (random brag-about-how-my-system's-better fact)the SEGA Game Gear has had a TV tuner for ages. It works well, and consider this: compared to a portable TV, the GBA's screen resolution is awesome. Unfortunately, the GBA only displays 512 colors/line, so that could be a problem. The GameGear had built-in circuitry for the TV tuner, so the tuner could get around the GameGear's 32colors/line limitation.

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  7. even GBA has a tv tuner by cyrax777 · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=210&prod ucts_id=3397& google is your friend :-D