Gp2x Up To Snuff As A Media Player?

[leaperk]

I am looking for a pmp and was wondering what your experiences where with the GP2X (also looking at the PSP) and was wondering what peoples experiences where. I am interested in doing the following:

-Viewing e-books (including PDF)
-Using it as a portable comic viewer
-Watching Videos on it including Video Podcasts

The reason I am leaning toward this device and not a harddrive PMP is I want to limit myself to around $200.

 

[dagrooved1]

Don't forget to add the cost of the SD card.

 

[shinneri]

ebooks-- don't know. The embedded reader only does TXT, but I'm not sure if there's any software that will do that for you (yet).

comic viewer--no idea..

videos-- GP2X is fairly impressive in this regard. The screen is large (though the viewable range is pretty small) and playing videos is quick and easy (and it supports resuming where you stopped, which is cool). Plus you have the added bonus of TV-Out that you don't have on the PSP. Gamepark Holdings will keep improving their firmware for better compatibility (maybe the text and music will improve, too.. don't know for sure).

@DaGrooved1: True, but a large SD will be cheaper than a Memory Stick of the same size.

 

[zektor]

Well, vide playback is fantastic, but you are limited to DivX/XviD at the moment. Audio playback is equally good, but you are limited to MP3 playback for now. Never really looked into PDF's, not even sure honestly if there is a reader available. And comics...I would imagine using the built in viewer would be fine as long as the comics are in JPG or the like.

 

[Alex.]

One thing that pisses me off is the continued advertisement for MPEG4 support. There is no MPEG4 support as of yet. The box says it plays MPEG4 and WMV - all lies, they have a great product no doubt, but that doesn't mean they're not sneaky merchants.

- Alex

 

[Aimless_E]

Zektor forgot to mention the ability to play oggs and ogm formated movies (so I've heard)

 

[jmetal88]

The GP2X built-in image viewer does have a built-in comic mode.

 

[gaterooze]

The comic mode is okay. To really read it well enough you need to zoom/scroll, although that is handled fairly well in the software. I guess it's about as good as could be expected on a handheld.

It does have TV-out though, so you could hook it up to a huge plasma and read comics on the couch

 

[bbodin]

and don't forget the best part about the gp2x as a media player...the recharable AA batteries.

That was the selling point for me. All the PMPs I was looking at were way expensive and had proprietary(sp?) batteries and poor batter life to boot.

For < $20, I have an 8 pack of rechargable 2600mahs AAs....that can last me 12 - 15 hours of video play (an entire trip to Europe whereas the competition would have me dead before I got out of Texas

I also have found I love the pocketDivx decoder....it even accepts my tivo ty files and with just a couple of clicks of the mouse I can queue up a set of movies and compress them down to 320x240 so I can fit more on my SD card.

 

[zektor]

Zektor forgot to mention the ability to play oggs and ogm formated movies (so I've heard)

Yes, I did forget that...wonder how since I play OGG's all of the time! Yes, Vorbis playback is great too. Hopefully they'll add other audio/video formats in updated firmware's in the future. I would imagine WMV may be a problem because of M$ licensing? I'm not sure about that subject tho...maybe someone could shed some light.

I honestly PREFER DivX/XviD to WMV...

 

[darkman]

I have an avi trailer of Batman Begins and put it on an SD just to see and it was tops in play back.
I read my "read me" files for emus with the built in text reader. It has book marks. I have a CD loaded with ebooks, I just loaded one up and it looks great. Black background with white text. I had to convert the text to a text file with open office.

 

[tshroom]

Not to mention putting videos on a PSP is such a hassle and the top quality is locked out by sony. Only UMD movies can access the full resolution of the screen. I personally have a PSP and its honestly a nightmare trying to encode a video to work on that thing. You have to use a program like PSPvideo9 and then you get grainy little crap videos. You also have to name your videos in a format that is stupid and makes no sense. Videos are named like this "M4V0001" "M4V0001" etc.

About the comics.. I think someone should port CDisplay to the GP2x. It is a great program that is used for viewing comics on the PC. A great deal of comics are made in this format. Or does the 2x already support CDisplay files?

 

[gaterooze]

About the comics.. I think someone should port CDisplay to the GP2x. It is a great program that is used for viewing comics on the PC. A great deal of comics are made in this format. Or does the 2x already support CDisplay files?

No, but CDisplay files are just renamed zip files full of jpgs.

Just rename your .cbz back to .zip, then unpack it to a folder on your SD and it will be much the same (in the viewer's comic mode).

 

[ste_167]

I've tried PDFView. It worked ok, but was a little slow. It did however load some big PHP/MySQL bible type book.

 

[Loubear]

About the comics.. I think someone should port CDisplay to the GP2x. It is a great program that is used for viewing comics on the PC. A great deal of comics are made in this format. Or does the 2x already support CDisplay files?

No, but CDisplay files are just renamed zip files full of jpgs.

Just rename your .cbz back to .zip, then unpack it to a folder on your SD and it will be much the same (in the viewer's comic mode).

I'd wish gph would add zip support, it's such a hassle to unzip all the zips..EVERY time..

 

[nickspoon]

One thing that pisses me off is the continued advertisement for MPEG4 support. There is no MPEG4 support as of yet. The box says it plays MPEG4 and WMV - all lies, they have a great product no doubt, but that doesn't mean they're not sneaky merchants.

- Alex

WMV, it doesn't play, but DivX/XviD is MPEG-4.

 

[dadioflex]

I've read maybe 6 or 7 full novels on my GP2X with only slight problems - mainly losing apostrophes for some reason. Currently using vtex because it seems to do the best job displaying text. Xreader is swish but the text size is a bit bonkers.

Wondering how comix will look on a 320x240 screen though...

 

[Parkydr]

For e-books, plain text files are best because they can be formatted to the width of the screen then reading is just a matter of scrolling through. The built-in text reader is adequate for this.

I've tried the PDF reader and it's fast enough when there aren't too many images but most files are designed for A4 paper and it's impossible to zoom to the width of the screen and get readable text, so you end up having to zoom in and scroll around the page.

 

[kevcal]

One thing that pisses me off is the continued advertisement for MPEG4 support. There is no MPEG4 support as of yet. The box says it plays MPEG4 and WMV - all lies, they have a great product no doubt, but that doesn't mean they're not sneaky merchants.

- Alex

WMV, it doesn't play, but DivX/XviD is MPEG-4.

I'm glad you said that - I was getting puzzled by that previous comment :blink:
Divx/Xvid play great and they're defintiely MPEG4.

Kev

 

[Shikaku]

MPEG4 is just algorhythms people =)