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Game Boy Advance Video Player Coming To U.S.

Posted by simoniker on from the video-sooner-than-now dept.

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting a press release revealing Majesco is bringing a GameBoy Advance video player to the U.S for Spring 2004. Although there are similar products available in Japan, there's been no attempt to launch a GBA video player Stateside until now, and the press release mentions: "Majesco's new video compression technology presently allows viewing of approximately 45 minutes of quality color video." It's noted that "approximately 12 video titles are scheduled to launch at retail", unfortunately proprietary, with no ability to import movies of your choice, and the Majesco CTO comments that this is "a significant advantage over most competitive technologies that limit viewing to black & white video", a dig at the currently available stand-alone VideoNOW player from Hasbro.

3 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Two questions by AtariAmarok · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. Will there be a sort of region encoding system so that existing Japanese titles won't play in the U.S.?
    2. The article mentions that it is a propietary format. Since it has apparently been out in Japan for a little while, has progress been made on tools that convert to and from "standard" formats into this format?

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  2. Is it just me? by heinousjay · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Do we really need this in the GBA? I like mine because I can play good games in weird places, not because it's a do-all device.

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    1. Re:Is it just me? by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Do we really need this in the GBA? I like mine because I can play good games in weird places, not because it's a do-all device. "

      This doesn't strike me as an "OOO EVERYBODY'LL LOVE THIS" product. But more like "There's a few people that'll find this useful."

      A few things to consider:

      1.) GBA is small and very battery efficient.
      2.) GBA is a common travel companion.
      3.) DVD players, even portables, are very large. Damn ~5" discs.

      If you're asking that question, simply put, it's not for you. Don't assume you represent the entire target audience, though. 2 little carts = 1 movie. If they can make that affordable, then I'd probably get it just to have something to watch instead of spending $200+ for a bulky DVD player.

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