Shadow1psc2k
Member!
For NDS owners looking for PSP media finctionality...
There has been an answere for those looking for it for quite awhile now, and I have finally decided to pick it up.
For a grand total of $75 (which added to the initial cost of a DS is still $25 cheaper than a PSP, and even more savings if you just go with a GBASP) I picked up the player itself, a 1 GB CF (Compact Flash) card, a CF card reader, and a nice pair of Altec Lansing Headphones. That package alone is half the price of just a 1 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo.
So on to the review!
Functionality - 8/10
Movie Advance almost does it all, and has the potential to do it all with the added ability to run homebrew apps. On it's own it plays movies, mp3s, NES roms, and can view pictures and eBooks. It takes in pretty much all formats, and converts them to the player's proprietary format, but more on that later.
The only thing missing here is more emulation capabilities, but that can be solved later down the road by development of homebrew apps, and it will happen. The Movie Advance is also supported on it's website with firmware updates, guides, and test files.
Conversion - 8/10
Movie Advance comes packaged with Windows compatable software that converts all your music, mp3s, and videos, whether they be locally stored on your hard drive, or ripped straight from DVD. I will split up this catagory into a few sub-catagories for a minute:
Video - 10/10
Even for the computer illiterate, there are 3 preset options for High quality, normal compression, and High compression. Each of these gets the job done to about what you would expect by each of the names. High quality produces a solid framerate, no artifacts, and decent audio/video sync that can be fixed by the L/R buttons while watching the video. Normal produces a solid framerate, a few visible artifacts, and perfect audio/video sync with decent compresion for the hit in video quality. High compression gets the file ridiculously small, but artifacts are highly visible in darker videos.
23 minutes straight from DVD on High quality = 220 mb.
23 minutes straight from DVD on Normal = 200 mb.
23 minutes straight from DVD on High Compression = 170 mb.
Conversion times are pretty dependant on the rig you are running. On my beast high and normal converted in real time, while high compression took about 3 minutes per 1 minute of video.
Now, that isn't the only option here, as you can manually set pretty much everything. You can take a near-DVD quality rip, and it pretty much just fits the video to the screen, although this takes up a lot more room. You can tweak contrast, brightness, saturation, frame rate, sound volume, stereo or mono channels, and independant video/resolution.
All in all, you can find the perfect settings for the size of file/space you have to quality pretty easily. Very good software.
Music - 6/10
The music conversion software is really awesome, but there is a lack of customization with it. You can change the audio from stereo/mono, and adjust the volume, but that's about it. Ripping straight from a cd will result in perfect music, with compression rivaling that of MP3, but converting a lossy format to the Movie Advance format can result in a hit, unless you are using cd quality rips already. I don't have a problem with this, as all my mp3s are cd quality rips anyway, but testing on some lower rate mp3s produced audiable buzz and hiss, and backround noise upon listening. As far as conversion time goes, it takes about 2 seconds per song, unless you listen to 10 minute + songs like me, then it might take upwards of 7-10 seconds, which still is insanely fast.
Pictures - 10/10
The picture converter is as customizable as the video converter, and easier to use. You can just drag and drop .bmps to the CF card, and it will read those, or you can convert your other formats to .bmp at pretty much no loss in quality. you can change color modes, and it takes less than a second to convert most images.
All in all, the conversion software is great. It's english, windows compatable, and is downloadable from the main website, and is updated to fix things like the music conversion problems. There is also an update comming for the DS, so DS users will have a few more options that it can take advantage of.
Roms/Ebooks - 9/10
Nothing much more to say here. Plays roms perfectly (only NES for now, but cool if you don't want to shell out $20 for all the NES classics), and ebooks can be read from the Movie Advance in .txt format. Each update of the firmware has added more and more to the Ebook functionality, such as multi-lingual ebooks, and soon being able to read some better formats.
Now, the final catagory, how well does it all play?
Playback - 8/10
The controls during mp3/NES/picture/ebooks are all fine and dandy. The only problem with any of those is no bookmark feature while reading long novels, so you would have to remember what page you were on, then scroll to it each time you want to pick up again. You can listen to mp3s while looking at pictures/reading ebooks as well.
The video controls are all nice and responsive, pause, play, fast forward, rewind, stop, and even audio sync controls. the only problem here is sometimes while watching high quality files the controls won't respond, which will make the audio sync issues annoying sometimes.
Overall - 9/10
This is a great device for DS/GBA:SP owners, with only some minor issues that are being corrected anyway. The cost is very user friendly ($25 for the player, $5-10 for a CF reader, and $20-100 for a CF card), and capacity is nice. I fit 30 minutes of video, about 100 pictures, 20 or so roms, a 700 page book, and 90 mp3s on a 1 gig card, all on highest quality. Not too shabby.
Highly recommended for GBA:SP and DS owners. If you own a GBA, avoid using it for anything other than mp3s, as the absence of a backlight makes it painstakingly hard to watch/read things on it. If you buy it for SP, invest in a headphone adapter.
There has been an answere for those looking for it for quite awhile now, and I have finally decided to pick it up.
For a grand total of $75 (which added to the initial cost of a DS is still $25 cheaper than a PSP, and even more savings if you just go with a GBASP) I picked up the player itself, a 1 GB CF (Compact Flash) card, a CF card reader, and a nice pair of Altec Lansing Headphones. That package alone is half the price of just a 1 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo.
So on to the review!
Functionality - 8/10
Movie Advance almost does it all, and has the potential to do it all with the added ability to run homebrew apps. On it's own it plays movies, mp3s, NES roms, and can view pictures and eBooks. It takes in pretty much all formats, and converts them to the player's proprietary format, but more on that later.
The only thing missing here is more emulation capabilities, but that can be solved later down the road by development of homebrew apps, and it will happen. The Movie Advance is also supported on it's website with firmware updates, guides, and test files.
Conversion - 8/10
Movie Advance comes packaged with Windows compatable software that converts all your music, mp3s, and videos, whether they be locally stored on your hard drive, or ripped straight from DVD. I will split up this catagory into a few sub-catagories for a minute:
Video - 10/10
Even for the computer illiterate, there are 3 preset options for High quality, normal compression, and High compression. Each of these gets the job done to about what you would expect by each of the names. High quality produces a solid framerate, no artifacts, and decent audio/video sync that can be fixed by the L/R buttons while watching the video. Normal produces a solid framerate, a few visible artifacts, and perfect audio/video sync with decent compresion for the hit in video quality. High compression gets the file ridiculously small, but artifacts are highly visible in darker videos.
23 minutes straight from DVD on High quality = 220 mb.
23 minutes straight from DVD on Normal = 200 mb.
23 minutes straight from DVD on High Compression = 170 mb.
Conversion times are pretty dependant on the rig you are running. On my beast high and normal converted in real time, while high compression took about 3 minutes per 1 minute of video.
Now, that isn't the only option here, as you can manually set pretty much everything. You can take a near-DVD quality rip, and it pretty much just fits the video to the screen, although this takes up a lot more room. You can tweak contrast, brightness, saturation, frame rate, sound volume, stereo or mono channels, and independant video/resolution.
All in all, you can find the perfect settings for the size of file/space you have to quality pretty easily. Very good software.
Music - 6/10
The music conversion software is really awesome, but there is a lack of customization with it. You can change the audio from stereo/mono, and adjust the volume, but that's about it. Ripping straight from a cd will result in perfect music, with compression rivaling that of MP3, but converting a lossy format to the Movie Advance format can result in a hit, unless you are using cd quality rips already. I don't have a problem with this, as all my mp3s are cd quality rips anyway, but testing on some lower rate mp3s produced audiable buzz and hiss, and backround noise upon listening. As far as conversion time goes, it takes about 2 seconds per song, unless you listen to 10 minute + songs like me, then it might take upwards of 7-10 seconds, which still is insanely fast.
Pictures - 10/10
The picture converter is as customizable as the video converter, and easier to use. You can just drag and drop .bmps to the CF card, and it will read those, or you can convert your other formats to .bmp at pretty much no loss in quality. you can change color modes, and it takes less than a second to convert most images.
All in all, the conversion software is great. It's english, windows compatable, and is downloadable from the main website, and is updated to fix things like the music conversion problems. There is also an update comming for the DS, so DS users will have a few more options that it can take advantage of.
Roms/Ebooks - 9/10
Nothing much more to say here. Plays roms perfectly (only NES for now, but cool if you don't want to shell out $20 for all the NES classics), and ebooks can be read from the Movie Advance in .txt format. Each update of the firmware has added more and more to the Ebook functionality, such as multi-lingual ebooks, and soon being able to read some better formats.
Now, the final catagory, how well does it all play?
Playback - 8/10
The controls during mp3/NES/picture/ebooks are all fine and dandy. The only problem with any of those is no bookmark feature while reading long novels, so you would have to remember what page you were on, then scroll to it each time you want to pick up again. You can listen to mp3s while looking at pictures/reading ebooks as well.
The video controls are all nice and responsive, pause, play, fast forward, rewind, stop, and even audio sync controls. the only problem here is sometimes while watching high quality files the controls won't respond, which will make the audio sync issues annoying sometimes.
Overall - 9/10
This is a great device for DS/GBA:SP owners, with only some minor issues that are being corrected anyway. The cost is very user friendly ($25 for the player, $5-10 for a CF reader, and $20-100 for a CF card), and capacity is nice. I fit 30 minutes of video, about 100 pictures, 20 or so roms, a 700 page book, and 90 mp3s on a 1 gig card, all on highest quality. Not too shabby.
Highly recommended for GBA:SP and DS owners. If you own a GBA, avoid using it for anything other than mp3s, as the absence of a backlight makes it painstakingly hard to watch/read things on it. If you buy it for SP, invest in a headphone adapter.
The Shadow
