CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Yojimbo reffering to Final Fantasy Advent Children wrote:I think that's really cool they're making a PSP version of the movie.

What I didn't realize was that Gameboy advance could watch movies too... I don't know how the quality is or how it will compare to the PSP, but I saw episodes of Pokemon, Rugrats, and sonic X on "Gameboy Advance Video"

I really want to see how that works... Right now, there are only kid's shows on GBAV but the PSP videos may be more, uh, mature. I mean, there may be a bigger variety... Seeing as how I have neither PSP nor GBA, this is all a moot point as of now, I guess... BTW, the GBAV are not playable on the Gameboy player on the Cube... I wonder why that is... Is there another accessory to play the videos?

Has anyone seen the GBA videos? What do they look like? I'm guessing it's some super compressed proprietary format?

Bobtheduck wrote:hat I didn't realize was that Gameboy advance could watch movies too... I don't know how the quality is or how it will compare to the PSP, but I saw episodes of Pokemon, Rugrats, and sonic X on "Gameboy Advance Video"

I don't know much about the GBA movies, except that they can store about 45 minutes of content at the most. That means that they couldn't actually play feature-length films unless they came on multiple carts (assuming they play from cartridges).

Thankfully, I do know a bit more about the PSP. The PSP uses UMDs (Universal Media Discs) instead of the standard carts or cds. These UMDs can hold up to 1.8 GB of data (14 times as much as a DS cartridge, incidentally), which is enough for high quality (near dvd), feature-length movies. It should also be noted that battery life is significantly reduced when playing movies (as opposed to games), so you would need a lot of batteries to watch a lot of movies (assuming that you are not in a position to use an AC adaptor).

In my opinion, a stand-alone portable dvd player (or a laptop) would be a much better option for watching portable movies than either the GBA or the PSP. Honestly, do you want to buy all of your movies again in another format just for the novelty of playing them on a gaming machine?

Edit-I did a bit of research on the GBA movies, and here is what I found:

The movies do in fact come on cartridges, for about $20 each. At this point in time, the only available titles are episodes of children's cartoons, so you're not going to find any real movies or mature anime on the GBA. The PSP will presumably feature live-action and animated features, with more content per disc than can fit on a GBA cart. In addition, the UMD's format is much cheaper to produce than a cartridge, so the cost for a PSP movie could be closer to that of an actual dvd, rather than $20 for two episodes of the Rugrats.

The GBA video carts are available on Amazon.com. You can also find previews of the movies there, although they are commercials rather than true demos of the technology.