jw2299

I see that it takes CF memory cards, which is nice because you can have as much or as little space as you'd like for your media.

But, how small does the included software make a typical video file for the player. For example how big was the file size for your approximately 23 minute Seinfeld episode?

sracer

On the highest quality video and audio settings, it weighed in at 35MB. 28 MB for video, 7 MB for audio. By using the lowest quality settings, I could drop that even further.

Gallant Pig

I don't think so, Divx is pretty small. An episode of Lost is around 200MB. So you could put 10 episodes on a 2GB card, that's pretty good. I'll take the space issue over the recoverting issue.

sracer

It's all relative. For me, that's huge file. A 90 minute film wmv-encoded for playback on my smartphone weighs in at about 100MB. Considering that amount of processing power required for Divx playback, I would be greatly surprised to see any add-on for any gameboy system that could play Divx files.

Divx is great for middle-level bitrates, but at ultra-low bitrates, WMV does a better job. The crossover point where Divx beats out WMV is at around 400KBps (@ QVGA res). But unfortunately, GMP plays neither format.

I wholeheartedly agree.

jeffdsmith

I may be wrong, but I believe BoH was sugesting you will need to compensate for the differece in resolutions.

Does this player automatically downscale the resolution?

Gallant Pig

Many of the divx files I use are WMV. Divx is the codec and wmv is the transport mechanism, they aren't one or the other, but rather can be both Divx and WMV. Divx can also be MPG, Quicktime, etc. So I'm not sure what you mean by WMV.

Divx is really good, as I'm sure you know since that's the most common codec found on torrent. Downloading some shows and reencoding is just adding another step to the process that doesn't need to be there, but I see we both agree with this issue.

Baron Of Hell

That is exactly what I was talking about.

Usually when you get a file form the old internet it is setup to be played on a monitor or TV so you have to change it so it can be played on smaller device. The device probably wont be able to play it at the resolution it was downloaded at and even if it could the picture wouldn't fit the screen so some of it would be cut off. Kind of like going from widescreen to fullscreen.

sracer

I've never seen a wmv file that used Divx. All of the wmv files that I've seen use some version of the "Windows Media Video" codec.

Gallant Pig

Not sure how difficult it would be to simply downconvert the file. I can't imagine that being difficult at all. And the aspect ratio shouldn't matter, black boxes should will fill the space to correctly fill the screen. I don't want it cropped like P&S even on a small screen.

jeffdsmith

For a "system" (whatever it may be) to down convert a video on the fly requires a serious amount of processing power. I don't believe anything portable on the market can do it today.

tanman

Have you had any issues with the GMP conversion software? I got this thing awhile ago and stopped using it for videos because conversion was slow as anything. Hours for a video under 30 mins. Is there a solution to it? How long does it take you to convert a file?

sracer

When I first bought the GMP (nearly a year ago) to try out on my kids' GBA and GBA/SP, the conversion software was indeed pretty unstable. However, they have dramatically updated the software since then. And while it is a bit flakey, it is far more stable and faster than the older versions of the code. I'm averaging 1:1 ratio. 25 minutes to encode a 25 minute video.

PixyJunket

Hmm.. sounds interesting. Cheap, a huge plus. Trying to decide if movie playback would be something I'd care about.. but since I just hit a mega-torrent for all Married.. with Children not yet on DVD I have plenty to play with. I wonder if I can get away with having it run while I am at work.

I don't want to drag the thread too deep into this territory but I have one burning question about the NES support.. does it have save game support, either native (using the original game's SRAM) or some kind of state saving? That may just be the deal breaker for me.

Baron Of Hell

You can not save which makes it almost useless unless you are playing a game that doesn't need saving r-type or something you can play in one go.

PixyJunket

Thanks and I agree. I guess I'll look elsewhere for that functionality.

tanman

Before you write it off though there is one big feature. Two player connectivity. So for Contra and Jackal (the two that I tried) you can hook up to anyone with a GBA and play two player with just the one GMP.

sracer

wow, I didn't know that! Add THAT to the list of things I gotta try.

PixyJunket

That works with any method of running the NES emulator though.

tanman

What do you mean? On a computer? or any other GBA emulator product?

PixyJunket

The emulator that in on the movie player is available online for other GBA media, so all functionality is the same, except for on a flash cartridge you have save support (both via SRAM and state saving).

Gallant Pig

This MP3 player seems to do it:

http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/...133251%3A96469

jeffdsmith

I don't have time to research it right now, but will do so later. From your link I see nothing that indicates that it can.

Gallant Pig

Am I missing something? Did you see the video section?

Look again I swear it's there. I'm actually thinking about getting this with a gift cert I have.

jeffdsmith

I saw that. However, that does not mean that it can down convert on the fly, it just means it plays those formats. The files on the player would still have to be equal to or a multiple of the screen resolution. This is what we have been talking about the entire time. The abilty to down convert a 800x600 resolution image to a 240x110 (or whatever image) on the fly is not easy. You will still have to "recode" your files for the player to be able to display them properly.

When you encode the file, the encoder determines what data to leave out to make the picture look the "best" for the given resolution. doing this so in real time is what takes the processing juice.

So going back to BofH's original point, you will have to recode the files anyway, its not as simple as dragging exisiting formats onto the device. (Unless those formats are smaller then your actual resolution.

Gallant Pig

So you are saying the DIVX files on that MP3 player will need to be recoded for the MP3 players resolution?