GP2X

[jj]

I am really like the look of one of these things.  

But was looking for some objective reviews.

Does it play divx, avi mpeg2 well, no slowdown etc.  has it got bulit in stero speakers, or it headphones only.

Is the OS resposive.  I am mailny looking at this as a cheap media player with the extras of games etc.

Come give your views

[coldfish]

Ive got one, and it is good.

Stereo Speakers and headphone jack.

I havent used it for movie playing at all yet, still messing around with emulators and free software.  

Emulation;  It's surprisingly good, Mame stands out as the most advanced and stable and emulates over 1000 games, as well as being quick at ~233Mhz.  There's emulation for most 8-16bit hardware.  UAE is progressing nicely, most games still suffer from inaccurate/choppy sound even at 280Mhz, but gfx is well done.  Vice (C64) is very good and stable.  In short, all good.

Unlike say the PSP or DS this is an opensource device, software is in a state of constant development and is occasionally buggy, so dont be to upset with having to reset every now and then.

The OS is stable, and quick.  My Mk2 with 2.0.0 boots in about 10 seconds, navigation is straightforward.  There's not much to say, I do find the joystick to be a little innaccurate at times, overstepping a selection, but that could be me?

If you like messing around with emulators and like handhelds get one, simple as that.    

[jj]

Thanks for the info, think I will get one in the new year.  Is it worth getting the faster one for the extra £10

[Jupp3]

Unlike say the PSP or DS this is an opensource device,

As long as device runs what the user wants (be it homebrew, commercial software or whatever) most users probably don't care much. But indeed being open device was the biggest reason I even considered GP2X myself. With GP2X I wouldn't have to worry about not installing firmware updates. On PSP I just, well, don't install them, it's that simple :-)

In the end I chose PSP instead of GP2X for the following reasons:
1)Both can run homebrew nicely (that was the most important feature), GP2X maybe a bit better
2)While GP2X is open, PSP was also "opened by third party developers" rather nicely. Another plus for GP2X
3)PSP has bigger resolution screen (but rather nasty "motion blur"). Tie? GP2X has smaller resolution, but probably less "motion blur"?
4)PSP has 3D acceleration (I'm really into OpenGL programming). A BIG plus for PSP.
5)The most important issue: Price (OK, GP2X was cheaper back then, but I could get PSP with part-time payment... Otherwise I would have had to wait for quite long before buying). I guess this is a plus for GP2X, even if I ended up buying PSP instead becouse of this ;-)

When getting PSP I was prepared to buy maybe few initial commercial game releases (Mercury rules) as Sony was already making newer games "require" newer firmwares. But that's something they totally messed up. It's currently possible to run >95% of commercial games without upgrading for real, thus keeping all homebrew functionality. That was a REALLY nice extra I wasn't counting on at all :-)

About built-in speakers in GP2X:

I think I read on some forums that while GP2X has 2 built-in speakers, they work in mono-only. Note that this is just "something I read somewhere", might be a problem that was only in the first production run devices. Better confirm this from people who actually own the device. I don't consider this to be a Big Bad Thing as the speakers are quite close to each other anyway, and you can get stereo from audio out connector (headphones...)

Thinking about GP2X, a forthcoming product (GXP by some of the people that created the original GP32) looks very nice. Had it been available at the time I was making my decision, I might have ended up buying it instead :-)

Note that afaik it still isn't released, so if you want GP2X, might be better buying it now.

Oh, and while GP2X is open device, the company behind it doesn't have too good history of complying with the GPL licence (some sources still haven't been released afaik)

[coldfish]

JJ wrote:
Thanks for the info, think I will get one in the new year.  Is it worth getting the faster one for the extra £10

I would've if it had been around when I bought.  
I'm not sure how far it will overclock though?  And most current emulators only allow up to 300Mhz.  Id say UAE would opperate ~100% at about 320-350Mhz.  Mine only clocks to 280, sadly.

If the extra dosh is no sweat, go for it.

Jupp3, yeah, I considered the PSP for a while too, but Sony seem determined to squish homebrew instead of supporting it and the commercial games dont interest me.

The XGP, by Gamepark isn't out yet but will exist in 3 forms, I think its focus will be more commercial than opensource?

The speaker issue is sorted.

[Jupp3]

I considered the PSP for a while too, but Sony seem determined to squish homebrew instead of supporting it and the commercial games dont interest me.

That's what I thought too. Homebrew being more important. I also figured out that they have no way of forcing me to do firmware update, which I still haven't done and probably never do. By forcing games to require new firmware (I mean REALLY require. They still haven't managed to do that) they can only lose me (and others) as customers buying original games :-)

determined to squish they might be, but they have totally failed.

As I said, commercial games weren't too high on the importance list, but I still considered some of the initial releases (especially Mercury) a nice extra. And now I can play almost any commercial game I want.

[Tomas]

There is also the gizmondo... It has a faster cpu and can be found very cheap due to the fact that the company got bankrupt. There is now a whole lot of emulators ranging from nes to ps1. The latest version of uae gives me pretty much 100% speed with sound with just 2 in frameskip with many of the games. The sound will still jerk on heavy scenes on some games though. The specs are:

Gizmondo is powered by a 400 MHz ARM9 processor and has a 2.8 inch 320x240 pixels TFT screen and an NVIDIA 128 bit GoForce 3D 4500 GPU featuring a programmable pixel shader, hardware transform engine and 1280KB of embedded memory. The GPU was added relatively late in the system's design, causing some delays for launch titles and the system, as they were redesigned.

It also plays vcds, xvid and so on just nicely and even plays the standard releases with ac3 sound if you dont mind a bit of frameskip here and there.

It also has some interesting features like GPS, which works with many of the popular pocketpc gps software. I myself use route66 and it works fine.

The downside is that it has no tvoutput and that the screen is 2.8 inch vs the 3.5inch of gp2x. Also home brew was made available through a unofficial service pack, while the gp2x is open as default.
I bought this device new for only $70
Video of my gizmondo running superfrog: http://handyhub.cjb.net/albums/album03/gizmondosuperfrog.avi
You sadly do not see how smooth it runs due to the fact that i used a canon powershot s50 for video recording, which is afaik only 15fps.

[nasty]

If you like messing around with emulators and like handhelds get one, simple as that.

I just ordered myself one, so I can't say what its like. But I like messing around with emulators and I use my amiga for old school gaming, so thats the main reason I bought one,  for amiga gaming on the move!

But what other things can you do with the GP2X?

[jj]

thanks for the views guys, was considering a psp as well to be honest.  After having a see what a psp can do was tempted, but after reading all the messing about required to run homebrew was not so sure.

Might see how things play out, including prices.

Didint release until just now that the GP2X is made be a breakaway company to the original GP32

[the_leander]

There is a breakout board available for it so you could run it off of a TV or use it like a desktop computer...

Movie playing curtesy of Mplayer, music player... pda functionality...

[coldfish]

nasty wrote:

If you like messing around with emulators and like handhelds get one, simple as that.

I just ordered myself one, so I can't say what its like. But I like messing around with emulators and I use my amiga for old school gaming, so thats the main reason I bought one,  for amiga gaming on the move!

But what other things can you do with the GP2X?

I havent explored that too much, but there are loads of free apps.

http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,1
 
You can run a PDA OS called Qtopia, with the breakout board/docking station you could use the GP2X as a computer, with keyboard mouse ect.
Of course, there the Music and Video players and ebook and photo viewers.  Qtopia features PDF viewers Firefox, all the usual bits or you can run Utilities natively.

Basically, anything you can do with a 200-400Mhz PC.  The GP2X has  a "dual-core" @200Mhz CPU, but the cores arent identical, one is for genreral processing the other is optimised for 2D video, they can be overclocked to 280Mhz on most/many units and there is a faster, 275Mhz clocked version available.

Note: best get a SD card reader too, the GP2X has some trouble talking to Windows via USB, (its flakey; some people no problem some no luck at all), Linux (kernal2.4) is fine though.
Also, get some high capacity (2600+) NiMH batteries and a charger, the GP2X eats AA's for breakfast, lunch and tea.

Have Fun!

[nasty]

Thank you for the link coldfish, I went for the power pack version (266Mhz GP2X)It sounds like a fun little machine, and with everything being open source it sounds like theres gona be plenty to do. has anyone tryed out the amiga emulator on it?