GBA Movie Player v.2 A GOOD AND COOL DEVICE FOR YOUR GBA
Recently got the GBA Movie Player version 2 from Lik-Sang and figured I'd give a word out for anyone considering an alternative to the officially licensed player that utilizes SD Flash.
This little baby makes use of Compact Flash cards which is probably the fastest flash media on the market right now and is reasonably affordable. The Movie Player's low cost of 25 USD or thereabouts is offset by the fact you need a card and a media reader/writer to even use it, but hey I already had both items and I needed a PSX-USB converter too so there ya go.
The driver disc was apparently corrupt when I went to install the relevant software but I managed to find a download online. It also came with a disc of pre-made movie files, mostly snippets of trailers and the like, which was a nice inclusion since I got to test the gadget right away without having to wait though a compressing session.
Converting my own content takes about two hours for every 30 minutes of footage, which relegates it to less of an object of convenience and more of a matter of planning. Convert a movie overnight so you have something to watch during lunch break or while sitting in jury duty the next day. Still wicked to watch Transformers on that tiny screen, and animated shows absolutely shine for this purpose. Artifacting isn't too noticable but video clipping sometimes occurs. Audio is always synced with the video.
To give you an idea of the compression options and capacity-
High Quality: 256 megs = 25 minutes
Standard Quality: 256 megs = 120 minutes
Low Quality: 256 megs = 240 minutes
That said, it also has music playing, bitmap, text viewing and NES emulation capabilities!
Audio files also must be converted into a specific .gbs format but it beats dedicated mp3 players already out there for the GBA. Text reading is pretty barebones, legible to me, but I honestly don't see myself using this function much.
The NES emulation requires a copy of pocketnes.gba in the same directory as the loose, uncompressed NES ROM images you intend to play, however there are limitations that seriously hurt this option! NES roms over 200k in size cannot be used and saving is disabled. The unscaled mode that follows your character sprite doesn't work right so you're basically stuck playing 128k games in a squashed visual format. No Megaman 2 for you! This crippled form of pocketnes is in no way a viable replacement for flash cartridges.
In the end I guess the alternative uses are little more than bonuses, the primary strength of this toy is movie viewing, and it performs adequately for the price point and flexibility involved. (It can convert from a surprisingly wide range of video formats.)
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