Play movies and listen to music on your GBA

[OB1]

From Games Are Fun:

Posted by
Christian Kontul at 11:05:16 PM EST on 10.24.2003.

Nintendo announced today in Japan that it will offer a new peripheral, the Advance Movie, for the Game Boy Advance on November 20.

The device will be able to play movies and music from Smart Media cards. Nintendo has plans to cooperate with several companies to bring content out for the device - when it launches, a set of three movies will be made available for 2,380 (about $22) yen apiece. The Advance Movie player itself will retail for 3,200 ($30) yen, and a combo pack, with the first movie, will sell for 3,800 ($35) yen. This set will be limited to 30,000 units.

More movies will follow through December, and, beginning in April, consumers will be able to download things onto their cards at special internet kiosks. Downloads will run anywhere from 100 yen (91 cents) to 500 ($5) yen, and Smart Media cards can be purchased for only 1,800 ($16) yen.

With a 32 MB Smart Media card, Nintendo claims that almost 25 minutes of video or five hours of music can be stored. This technology can even be used on Game Boy Advance software, as Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories demonstrated during September's Tokyo Game Show.

Nintendo has not announced plans to bring the Advance Movie to North America, but expressed interest while unveiling the product today. We'll follow the situation closely, so check back soon and often.

Source: QUITER

Wow, this is great news as it shows that Nintendo is preparing to match the PSP in every aspect, or so it seems. The PSP is supposed to be able to play movies and music and I bet Nintendo is doing this to test the waters for possible capabilities of their next handheld. I hope that this is a sign that the next Gameboy system will be able to play movies and music in order to better compete with the PSP, and using the SD cards is the perfect thing to do.

*claps for Nintendo*

[A Black Falcon]

Cool! Good news... though, 25 mins in 32mb? Low res...

Anyway, it is a good move for Nintendo, and definitely shows that they don't intend to be left behind by the PSP... though its a bit interesting given how often Nintendo insists that its consoles are for gaming only. I guess the key is that its an add-on, not included with the system...

[OB1]

Hopefully the next Gameboy will have built-in SD card support.

And that's just 25 min for a 32 MB card (which costs about as much as a PS2 memory card). SD cards go up to over 1 GB.

[A Black Falcon]

I'm also wondering how they manage to fit 5 hrs. in 32mb... they must really have some great compression or something!

Oh, sure, you can fit a 25mb video file in 30mb... but at a pretty low resolution, and not too good looking (choppy/artifacts). Oh well... it IS just a GBA sized screen so it'd probably look fine. I actually have some video files that are 6 to 8mb for 15 minuite videos... needless to say they look awful, but on that small screen even that could look okay. At a somewhat higher quality level, anyway. :)

[Great Rumbler]

That's pretty cool! Now, I can watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force on the go!