Underball

The Slim model has twice the memory though. I'm not sure if many emulators take advantage of this, but the GP2X has a hard time playing NeoGeo games with it's 64MB of RAM, so I can't imagine these games working too well on the original PSP's 32MB... One thing I forgot to mention in my comparison is that the GP2X takes a good 30 seconds to boot up (this delay is different depending on which firmware is being used). I know my (fat) PSP takes a pretty long time to cold-boot too, so I don't think either machine gets a gold star here, but just thought I'd mention it. Note that I have no idea how long an F200 running FW 4.0 takes to boot up, nor do I know how long a Slim PSP takes... I imagine they're not much faster. --Zero Fat PSP running the most recent Custom Firmware takes less than 7 seconds to boot, wiht the coldboot video running. If you disable it, it's under 3 seconds.

I keep hoping for Crystal Castles with CX-22/80 Trak-Ball support, like Kenfused's Centipede TB. We already have a working 5200/8-Bit version that could be ported, so it can't be that hard. Unfortunately, I'm no good with game code. just helping port Emu's/bugtesting.

There are a whole bunch of different releases of MAME for the PSP, most of them are spotty. but this one in particular does a really good job of playing most of the classics completely fine. Emulation on the PSP in general is pretty much great. I really don't see what the fuss is all about.

Wow. You guys realize that it's ok when casual conversations veer off topic for a moment, right? Are you guys this touchy about this stuff in real life? It's just entertainment. Lighten up.

I can't say I've ever officially calibrated it. I know there was some sort of disk that came with Halo 3 that was supposed to optimize your TV for playing that game on an HDTV. Basically it would show a certain screen and you were supposed to adjust settings until it looked like what was being described. Is that what you mean by calibrated? Is there some kit or something? Although I guess from what you've been saying, it doesn't matter on a 40" anyways. I'm definately happy with it as is. I was talking about the ones on the showroom floor, trying to decide which on to get based on what the chuckleheads at BB do to them when they set them up.

Trying to gauge a TV's performance based on how it looks after being dumped onto the floor of a Big Box store, uncalibrated, with all the levels turned up to "Torch Mode" is a bad idea. But you're right, it is all in the eye of the beholder. If it looks great to you, then that is what matters most. I'm admittedly biased towards bigger, high-end sets, because of dealing with them so often.

The very first line in your initial reply to my assessment of 720p vs. 1080p was to remark that "Your line of though is CRAP." I guess being smug is only allowed for yourself, right? I made a comment which included my personal opinion of the visual differences in HD Resolutions between 720p and 1080p, simply because THAT's what atari5200 ASKED me to reply to. I'm sorry you felt insulted by it and took my assessment as smug, or as if I were insulting you personally. I wasn't. You should calm down.

This is definitely true. You notice a more dramatic difference on over 42" sets.

Your line of thought is crap. The quality of the display plays a lot into how the picture is going to look. So does the distance you sit from the display. 720p looks fantastic at the right distance (which happens to be a lot less then required for 480i/p and... whodathunkit... more then 1080i/p.) You can have a 1080p set with crappy contrast, crappy black levels, and SBA. Would that look better then a good CRT at 480p? Nope. It will look like crap. 720p is absolutely a high def specification and it looks great on a good display device at a large size given the proper seating distance and good contrast/black levels. I have watched HD on an Infocus IN76 which is 720p at 110" and the picture was absolutely incredible because I sat far enough back and the contrast ratio and black levels make a stunning picture on that DLP projector. When talking about resolution you are talking about a number of pixels. With the proper seating distance you will see no pixelation at a particular resolution which is what picture size applies to. If you go smaller then around 40" there is really no reason to get anything more then a 720p display. You would be throwing your money away. But, even at 110" I only had to sit about 8' back to see a solid picture completely free of pixelation. Again, this is not so cut and try. The quality of the transfer plays a big part in this. I have seen some really really bad transfers that made HD look simply horrible. There are also some transfers that are simply incredible. I would take a 720p display over a 1080i display any day of the week. It's progressive scan or bust buddy. As for your resolution numbers... all in distance and picture quality as I said before. They really don't mean much more then that. And some people will convince themselves they know a lot about something when they really don't know what the hell they are talking about. Resolution is so far from being everything and it is almost the last thing that makes for a good picture. I absolutely agree that HD usually provides a better picture. But, you have to have a display with the right specs and know how to use it. So many displays tout HD capability and simply look like ass because they are cheap rubbish or the owner just turn it on setup from the floor (which generally means brightness is cranked way up to make you look at it.) You put a standard CRT playing SD material next to a digital display with the average digital PQ playing HD material and the CRT will almost always look better. I completely disagree that 720p isn't HD. That is an absolutely ignorant statement. First of all, I'm a certified ISF tech. So your "winning the argument by character assassination" bit isn't going to do you much good. I know plenty. Sure, there are lots of sets with terrible contrast ratios and black level production. Particularly Budget HD sets like some from Olevia, Toshiba, LG, etc. ALL sets should be calibrated after installation, for the best image quality. But all things being equal, a 1080i/p set with the same contrast/black level capabilites as a 720p counterpart, when properly calibrated, will ALWAYS look better. Hands Down. And No HD set's resolution, contrast ratio, black level output, or any other TV feature is going to make a bad film transfer look good. So that's a moot point. If your source material is 1080i/p, and your 720p set has to downsample the picture, you will almost ALWAYS have an inaccurate picture, with jaggies, pixelation, and suspect aliasing, unless you have a Pro-Class display with dedicated line scaling. The same thing applies to a 720p source when viewed in 1080i/p. Try watching the NBA on ESPN (who broadcasts only in 720p) on a 1080i/p set and let the Cable/Sat receiver do the scaling. OOF. Horrible. But if your 1080i/p set is a good one, it will scale 720p properly, and look great. I understand your points, and they are at least partly true. But I'm afraid that you're nitpicking particularly cheap branded HD sets, for the sake of winning the argument. I'm talking about technology and display capabilites when measured with equal footing, you're talking about limitations of the source material, or the ineptitude of the HDTV owner in setting up their set out of the box, or not picking a decent quality HD Display to begin with. Apples and oranges. And to the human eye - there is NO perceptible difference between 1080i and 1080p. at the same FPS. None. These are things that can only be measured through spectal analysis and proper calibration equipment. The pixel resolution is the same. "Progressive Scan" is a Best Buy/Tweeter sales pitch that has no bearing HD resolutions. Now if your set does 1080p with 24p frame progression for film - it will look better than a 1080i/p set at the NTSC standard of 60 FPS for Movies/filmed material. But this is to make up for the visual limitations of Filmed material at 24frames per second when it's converted to NTSC/60.

a tiny bit. Not anywhere near the mammoth scale of the X-Box 360 problems.

Sort of. DVD took off because studios started releasing movies to DVD at consumer prices, $25-$30 right off the bat, but VHS releases always came out for "Rental only" first for like the first 6 months, and if you wanted to buy the movie within that time the VHS was somewhere around $90-$120. VHS movies that were already for Sale were $15-$20 each. DVD's were still $25-$30 - just like HD/Blu are now. It wasn't that DVD's were necessarily cheaper than Blu-Rays or HD DVD's. They weren't. But they were WAY cheaper the the VHS delayed release schedule movies. Um... I was an early adopter of DVD and availability of titles kinda sucked until players and movies dropped in price. Rental only VHS prices may have helped but I don't think many people justify spending hundreds of dollars on a player just to get a movie sooner. HD movies not only have an expensive player and disks, they also require an expensive TV to take full advantage of them. When you combine that with less of a difference between DVD/HD than DVD/VHS and adoption is bound to be slower. And if your argument is correct... HD is released the same time as DVD. No matter how you look at it, adoption is bound to be slower. The whole "I don't notice a difference" stuff really is silly. There is a HUGE difference. HUGE. I swear the only people who say this are those making excuses why they haven't jumped in yet. What set do you have and what are your specifications of HUGE? with 720p I can honestly say from experience that the difference is absolutely NOT HUGE. That's because 720p is baseline, lowest common denominator HD. 720p really doesn't look much nicer than DVD because it only has fractionally more resolution than DVD. To be honest, I don't really consider 720p to be "HD". It's the current Broadcast HD minimum. It's the lowest quality "HD". Every 720p set I've seen looks like crap, and if it's over 42 inches, it looks like crap, magnified. I have a Panasonic Blu-Ray player and an older Panny 1080i RP-HDTV, and the difference between Blu at 1080i and DVD at 480p is night and day. Remember - 1080i/p resolution is 1920x1080. DVD is 720x480, and 720p is only 1280x720. 720p isn't even 2x the resolution of DVD. 1080i/p is almost 3x the resolution of DVD. that's the HUGE difference. 1080i is soooooo much better than 720p, and 1080p is on par with 1080i, but a bit smoother for films if it has 24p frame progression. I won't jump on a 1080p just yet, because my 1080i still looks fabulous, and it's one of the first 1080 HD sets ever produced, so it's a workhorse designed to last a lot longer than the stuff that's being produced today. But in the end, it all really comes down to personal opinion. Some people will convince themselves it's not worth it, and maybe for them it isn't.

Let's see how quickly the drop now that HDVD is no longer completing... I think it's wishful thinking that losing competition will lower prices and I'll believe it when I see the price of memory sticks drop. I'm definitely not a SONY fan... but then I'm not a fan of Microsoft either and yet I have a game machine from each company. BlueRay already had higher license fees than HD-DVD and SONY owns most of the Patents. Make no mistake, SONY is in the drivers seat and their products are generally more expensive than similar competitors and my experience has been that the products are no better... which is how I came to dislike SONY. Remember, the technology does make disks and players more expensive to produce at first In the short term I think it will make things worse... in a couple years it will be better the format war ended. The question with BlueRay is how long they will chose to push it as a high end format in addition to DVD and how much of an impact the higher license fees are on prices. SONY seems happy to market low and high end game machines as long as they can sell them. If they do that with DVD and BlueRay you can forget a price drop. I think it will take people turning up their nose to DVDs before prices will drop. BTW, I have had some time to mess with the HD-DVD drive and I'm starting to understand why people are claiming it had some better features after seeing them for myself. I haven't hooked up my BlueRay drive yet so I'll have to compare head to head later. Panasonic actually developed Blu-Ray, with monetary backing from Sony and several others. They share the Patents with Sony. Painting Sony as "the bad guy" is really simply not true, since Blu-ray has, from day one, been licensed and manufactured by every major Home Video CE company - except Toshiba. Whereas, Toshiba was the SOLE producer of HD DVD drives and players, save a few horribly produced and ridiculously overpriced Dual Format players by LG.

Sort of. DVD took off because studios started releasing movies to DVD at consumer prices, $25-$30 right off the bat, but VHS releases always came out for "Rental only" first for like the first 6 months, and if you wanted to buy the movie within that time the VHS was somewhere around $90-$120. VHS movies that were already for Sale were $15-$20 each. DVD's were still $25-$30 - just like HD/Blu are now. It wasn't that DVD's were necessarily cheaper than Blu-Rays or HD DVD's. They weren't. But they were WAY cheaper the the VHS delayed release schedule movies. Um... I was an early adopter of DVD and availability of titles kinda sucked until players and movies dropped in price. Rental only VHS prices may have helped but I don't think many people justify spending hundreds of dollars on a player just to get a movie sooner. HD movies not only have an expensive player and disks, they also require an expensive TV to take full advantage of them. When you combine that with less of a difference between DVD/HD than DVD/VHS and adoption is bound to be slower. And if your argument is correct... HD is released the same time as DVD. No matter how you look at it, adoption is bound to be slower. The whole "I don't notice a difference" stuff really is silly. There is a HUGE difference. HUGE. I swear the only people who say this are those making excuses why they haven't jumped in yet. Of course adoption is going to be slow, most Home Theater people would prefer it that way. Mass adoption also brings with it rushed releases and low quality players. But pretty much every TV on store shelves today is HD compatible, and player prices are coming down MUCH quicker on Blu-Ray than they did on DVD players after just a year in the market.

Sort of. DVD took off because studios started releasing movies to DVD at consumer prices, $25-$30 right off the bat, but VHS releases always came out for "Rental only" first for like the first 6 months, and if you wanted to buy the movie within that time the VHS was somewhere around $90-$120. VHS movies that were already for Sale were $15-$20 each. DVD's were still $25-$30 - just like HD/Blu are now. It wasn't that DVD's were necessarily cheaper than Blu-Rays or HD DVD's. They weren't. But they were WAY cheaper the the VHS delayed release schedule movies.

Ok, so how does this work? It doesn't see like it's there, even though the emulator source codes makes notes about how it's "supposed to work". I'm specifically trying to get it to work in the port of Atari800 to PSP. Not having this makes H.E.R.O. and Moon Patrol for the 5200 completely unplayable. Does anyone have any more details on how this works?

no Ok, so then what are the differences between the real and the demo's available here?

Also - shannon - with the latest release of PSPATARI from ZX - if you set the PSP clock speed to 300 or higher, vsync to on, and in the ATARI800 emu menu go to Sound Settins and select YES for High Quality Pokey, the sound and vidoe are 100% perfect, no scratchiness, no pops, just perfection. Since ZX went to full PSP GU support in the last few releases on all his Atari EMU's, the speed has increased dramatically, so things run much smoother overall. I'm tinkering with the sound in PSP7800 now, as it still gets a little prickly here and there, but we'll get it sorted soon enough.

no, there isn't. With the Pandora's Battery & Memstick, EVERY PSP is unbrickable.

You should try zx's latest releases. They're a whole lot smoother.

unbricking a PSP, or just plain avoiding a brick in the first place really is pretty simple at this point.

Remember that the VCS colours are a little different than the A800 colours. The Atari800 emulator already contains some code handling NTSC/PAL palette difference, with updated palettes, although they hadn't released it yet. You can get the latest version from their CVS. Also, I've tried to add brightness/contrast/hue controls for this lates Atari800 version; I've included some code in this thread, you may try it if you like. Please give me some feedback if you like/don't like my default palettes. These worked out Great! I adjusted the brightness(1.25) and color(.50) controls up just a bit to get more punch, since true NTSC colors can be a bit dull. Looks fantastic. Thanks a Million.

the PSP screen is nearly twice the size of the GP2X, and it's got a much faster processing core making most emulators run better than the GP. Plus the scene for the PSP is much larger than the GP, so the amount and quality of homebrew games available is humongous by comparison. and with Custom firmware, it can do PSX games natively, something the GP will never be capable of. Speaking of which - I've been working with ZX-81, the PSP coder who developed the ATARI 7800(Prosystem port), 2600(stella port) & 5200(Atari800 port) PSP emulators. We recently added the vsync option and updated the color palettes, and they all run pretty much perfect now... http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/serendipity/index.php

I know that a while back, someone corrected the NTSC and Pal palettes for the Stella, and Prosystem emulators source files, and they have been incorporated into the source that a friend of mine uses for his Sony PSP ports of these emus. But he also has made an Atari800 port, called PSPATARI. However, the palettes are the ones in the old source files, which have incorrect NTSC and PAL color values. Does anyone have updated versions of the colours.h and colours.h source files to replace in the source code so that a new PSP port with corrected color palette values can be incorporated? Thanks.

I've played the demo versions of Bon*Q and Beef Drop in various emulators for a while now and love them. But I'd like to know what are the differences in the Cart version, other than the "Demo Version" text not being there? Can someone buy the final rom version? (for those who don't own real hardware)

This game is pretty much terrible all around. The Evolved games aren't interesting enough to warrant buying it, and the regular versions of these games, both arcade and 2600, are emulated so poorly, it almost feels like they rewrote them for one of those crappy NES-on-a-chip emulation toys, and then ported them to PSP. MAME4ALL PSP and PSP2600 both deliver flawless emulation of all the games in this collection, and a whole lot more that atari stupidly left out. Don't waste your money. Dowgrade your PSP to Custom Firmware and download the Emulators. You'll be much happier.