chuma.org

A while ago I bought a GBA Movie Player from overseas. Read about it and it seemed like a good thing, plus it was only about $30.

How it works is: there are some programs that you run on your PC to convert media files (images, music, and video) to a special format for the player. Then you copy the special files to a CF card, put the CF card into the player, put the player into the GBA, and then it will play them. And you can convert any video format that you can play back in Windows.

When it works, it works well. The crappiest part of it though is the PC software. It has major issues with two formats:

• MPEG2 files, such as DVD source. They provide a shareware version of the Elecard MPEG2 decoder but once it expires you’re boned. Commercial decoders won’t work with their software.
• XviD files. They just make the converter crash.

However, I just fixed both of these issues and I’m now happy as a clam. Here’s how I did it:

• For MPEG2 I installed this free MPEG2 codec. Works great where ATI and PowerDVD’s codecs are locked down to their respective software.
• For XviD, the trick is to NOT use XviD for all supported FourCCs, and also turn on compatibility mode via the decoder properties. Not sure if it ends up using DivX in this case (which I also have installed) but I don’t care because it’s working!