The Gamepark GPX2 media player
By Ryan Block 
posted July 28th 2005 9:00AM
posted July 28th 2005 9:00AM
The name Gamepark might be a little bit of a misnomer for a company producing media players—especially ones that
actually look like, say, a Zodiac Tapwave (or a
PSP prototype). All the same, it's hard to resist
their GPX2, a Linux-powered device with a 3.5-inch QVGA LCD, SD slot, USB 2.0, 64MB flash, 32MB RAM, and playback
capabilities for MPEG, MPEG-4, Dvix, XviD, WMV, MP3, OGG, and WMA. But then it dips into disingenuous again with their
claim of 8-hour video playback on the two AA batteries that power the thing; we don't know what kind of batteries
they're using over there, but we'd like to get some.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Does anyone find it ironic that Tapwave calls it quits the day the GPX2 is revealed?
Well it is not a hard drive based player so that will help, though they probably also turned the volume down all the way and also turned off the backlight....even then it seems impressive/implausible.
This is the replacement for the GP32? Wow... too bad it doesn't have a beefy video chipset. It looks like it's GP32 compatible as well which means all of the existing games/apps/emulators should work.
I might actually buy a handheld after all... I've always had my eye on the GP32 but the performance wasn't amazing enough to justify the price and it only took SmartMedia cards.
Is that a screen grab from "War of the Worlds" ?
I didn't know that dvd was out yet.
dreampc - I think there's a law somewhere that says all PMP's must advertised with a picture of tom cruise.
I wonder if you get those 8-hour results using the new Oxyride batteries.
You seem to imply that it doesn't play games,... but it does.
#2: Note that it plays Divx. :)
#2 dreampc & #3 flipper
The DVD for War of The Worlds may not be out yet, but you can legally play/watch the trailer ;)
The battery life statement does seem hard to believe but they have a track record of producing surprisingly good portable machines (consider the gp32 - a very popular homebrew development handheld).
I have the GP32, which will do divx 3.11 playback fairly well when encoded properly. If the same emulators worked on this I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Doubtful though since this is a Linux device. Not too sure of the OS on the GP32, but I can tell you that the battery life was quite good even with the backlight on and the volume at a decent level.
Ever since I picked up www.kalemsoft.com's emulators for my treo - my gp32 has been sitting in the trunk of my car next to my DS and PSP.
oh, and the internal DVD-R torrent is on Pirate Bay for WOTW
Oh, I am well aware of the AVAILABILITY of WOTW... just didn't think an official "pimp" photo would show it...
;)
Gamepark does indeed play games. In fact, more titles are "available" (wink wink) than any other system.
Any word on what the pricing on this will be? Or if the gp32 blu pricing will go down? ive been intrested in the gp32 blu but the pricing pushed me away. I might pick one up with a price drop or maybe even one of these if it preforms well. sigh.
does anyone know what the MSRP wil be for this puppy? Looks pretty #@?@ing sweet. does anyone know if the Gamepark offers a hosting profile within its USB 2.0? It would be so damn freaking sweet to be able to stream content directly from a portable HD, and bypass the whole intermediary computer thing. Or are you limited to just transferring files from a source onto the internal or removable memory?
The place I bought my Gamepark32 from (GBAX.com) says that the GPx2 will cost less than the current Gamepark, which is about $190 on their site. The Gamepark32 itself is worth its price in my opinion.
I should have added that while I don't totally believe their 8 hours in 2 AA's claim, my Gamepark 32 gets about 5 hours on 2AA's. That much time running a 3 inch backlit color screen on just 2 batteries is still pretty good. My Gamepark is also overclocked to 166mhz, so perhaps at regular speeds it might be nearer to 8 hours.
I agree with Jeff. I have been watching the DS/PSP 'battle' with mild interest, but with little interest in buying either (ok I'll admit I had a few more Micky D's lunches while they were giving away PSPs than I would have otherwise...). But the GP32 has always intruiged my.
'Jeff' pretty much nailed the two reasons I didn't purchase it before. Smart Media cards and a not quite enough punch.
I dropped a fair amount of scrilla on my SL-C1000, but I just might have to pick one of these things up.
That little side trip from Japan to Korea I've been kicking around is begining to sound more apealing. Else I guess it will be lik-sang for me...
OddMan; glad you agree. I actually commented yesterday in the Slashdot article about the PSP 2.0 firmware..
"I'm sitting back and waiting still. I was going to jump on the DS and then the PSP came out and I was unsure... now it seems both platforms have faded away."
It seems as though the DS is floundering and if the PSP didn't run emulators it wouldn't get nearly as much press.
If this thing is going to cost under $200, have a 3.5" qvga screen, run for at least 4 hours on two AA cells, play all of the GP32 homebrew and emulators, I will buy one.
The DS and PSP are amazing machines but where in the hell are the games?!
didnt the gp32 have wifi capabilities, or something?
The Gamepark had multiplayer abilities with an external radio frequency dongle, I think it allowed up to 8 people to play. By the way you can also buy modded chatboards for your Gamepark so that you can enter text into programs, or play text adventures. This is something I keep hearing PSP owners say that they want.
Not that it's a huge deal, but the screen is totally photoshopped. I have a feeling the viewing angle might not be so great.
the whole picture is rendered :P
a PMP & a really good emulator for 100-ish?
Sold!
I own a gp32, and the viewing angle is ok. Besides, it is a handheld. You're not going to be looking at it from across the room. This little thing rocks. I have had it about a year now and it has not given me one bit of trouble. No burnt out pixels, like psp, and plays NES and Genesis roms perfectly. This new Gpx2 is going to rock even harder, because emulation will be faster.
go to www.gp32x.com for more information!
the coolest thing about gamepark devices is that the company *urges* people to develop for their handhelds (providing an sdk and everything), as opposed to the *evil* sony/nintendo nda & firmware-locking empires.
right now i log the most hours on my gamepark in the text reader & the under-development LittleGpTracker (music making software). It's nice that the GPx2 is comming out while LGPT is under development--i've talked to the auther and he said it shouldn't be a problem to have a branch ported!
the coolest thing about gamepark devices is that the company *urges* people to develop for their handhelds (providing an sdk and everything), as opposed to the *evil* sony/nintendo nda & firmware-locking empires.
right now i log the most hours on my gamepark in the text reader & the under-development LittleGpTracker (music making software). It's nice that the GPx2 is comming out while LGPT is under development--i've talked to the auther and he said it shouldn't be a problem to have a branch ported!
Panasonic has already begn selling their new batteries, with these ones you can supposedly reach twice the capacity of earlier alkaline ones, that's the reason for their claims.
My question though, is why the people of engadget don't know of this.
I'm also interested in it, that I don't bother to sell my PSP and take this home instead, which promised more possibilities, greater compatibilities with my other gadgets (e.g. digicams - SD are more common than MS) and lower maintenance cost (typical batteries are OK!).
At the end, what I want is a emulator runner, and optionally a portable media device. So why bother with the proprietary world of PSP?
Anyway, taking the time elapsed between GP32 and GPX2, it is possible the price can really go down (Moore's theory revisited); but I don't expect those cutting-edge techs such as wifi or bluetooth be integrated in this first version of GPX2 (Yes, they say they'll make wifi into it in GPX2's successor) - though I do hope they'll make USB host into the first GPX2 too.
However, as this discussion on lik-sang said....
http://forum.lik-sang.com/showthread.php?t=6579
It seems the sky for GPX2 is still a bit cloudy.
Hi guys,
Just some clarification and more info on the gpx2.
GamePark was the company that released the GP32 open source handhels a few years back. At the time, it was the most powerful piece of kit out. Internal gamepark staff had a fallout about the successor to the GP32, so the company split two ways. The orogonal gamepark is developing a widescreen, closed (not open-source) system currently called xgp, which is completely incompitable with Gp32, the offshoot company, confusingly called Gamepark Holdings, is developing the gpx2.
Due to similarities between both their company name and the names of the new devices and that of the original gameparks new device (xgp and gpx2), GPH are currently renaming their machine, and are going to rename the company too.
The gpx2 has the same screen as the current GP32 blu model, and it has great clarity and viewing angle.
The gpx2 is NOT backwards compatible with the GP32. Games will have to be ported.
gpx2 will run a dual-core ARM chip - one core for graphics and video coprocessing, and the other the main processor.
gpx2 will now have 64MB of Ram (overwhelming community request).
gpx2 will sell for under US $200, and thus will be the cheapest portable multi-media player on the market according to GPH.
It takes SD cards, and has an SDIO slot, allowing for future peripheral integration such as blue tooth.
More info at http://www.gpx2.com/