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Movie Cart


rbairos

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  • 4 months later...
7 hours ago, 4ever2600 said:

Possibly, but you also have to have a specialized cart to run it.  Hardware shown in the posts.  I think he is revamping hardware and streamlining it currently. 

There's no playable game, its just streaming movie files.
They can be played on the specialized carts (only a few prototypes currently exist), or as an .mvc file (supported by Gopher and Stella).
Not sure if I still have the mvc file for the Dragon's Lair video, but there may be other mvc files floating around on this thread.

Sorry, I've really dropped the ball on moving this forward.
The new hardware design is ready, except making the firmware updatable in the field, which is half done.
I should just put it out there.

But now, this has got me thinking that I should somehow extend the mvc file format to support some basic-like scripting to allow full motion video style games like Dragon's Lair.
Not exactly sure what that might look like, but could be something basic like:

10 PLAYFRAMES 1 800
20 IF JOYSTICK==32 THEN...

Would also need provision to draw on the screen for scores and what not.
That would be a big project, but fun.

First I gotta get the new hardware design up.



 

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2 minutes ago, rbairos said:

Not sure if I still have the mvc file for the Dragon's Lair video, but there may be other mvc files floating around on this thread.
 

 

I have a 160 MB 'dragonsLair.mvc' on my machine but I'm not setup anymore to do these.  I have put a small snippet of a screen recording up. But it's rather dim, sorry...
 


 

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14 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

 

I have a 160 MB 'dragonsLair.mvc' on my machine but I'm not setup anymore to do these.  I have put a small snippet of a screen recording up. But it's rather dim, sorry...
 


 

looks good

Could you post the MVC?

Oh...160 mb.....too much?

 

Edited by gambler172
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  • 3 months later...

Update:

I've finished version 2 of the PCB board:

Highlights: easily accessible SMD parts / can be made in an assembly house cheaply / uses revised kernel with background+pf colors / drop-in compatible in combat cart / super fast reliable boot-up

Now I'm wondering where to go with this.
I'd like to put them up for sale (roughly at cost) but I have a few questions:


1) How important is a shell ?  The PCBs are drop in compatible with combat-carts though it takes a little dexterity to set it all in place with the existing dust-cover, wire spring etc

2) How important is PAL (or ability to update the firmware in general) ?
    I kinda just want to put it out there as is, which would mean features are locked in place forever. (NTSC, color/bw, brightness, volume, pause, forward+rewind)
    Alternative is developing code to update firmware from SD-card, with a little more work, and a slightly pricier ($1 more) chip.

3) What's the best way to sell them?  Atariage? Tindie?  Anyone have any experience with that?

4) Content.  I wouldn't be able to ship it with any copyrighted material, but users would be tasked with encoding / obtaining their own content.  (Though free to use samples would be available)

5) Delivery from Canada. Haven't looked it up, but I suspect delivery from Canada would add another chunk of change per unit.
    Alternative, would be if there's enough interest, I send a box to someone who's interested in redistributing them from the US

 

6) What price would people generally expect for the bare PCB board + sdcard.  (Again, Im just looking to make these available at roughly break-even).

My goal is to get them out there for anyone who's interested and wants to play around / make their own home-movie collections, etc


Any feedback appreciated.

Thanks.



 

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A shell: yes, I would like to have one but you can keep it simple (e.g. the PlusCart Shop offers an inexpensive label and instruction how to make a shell out of a normal Atari cartridge) or offer a) the PCB with the necessary things to run this, b) a shell and c) instructions and packaging and so on 

 

Is PAL important: don’t know - will it run on my German TV or is the „output“ NTSC? If so it would be nice to have an autodetect or switch (software or physically)

 

Where to buy: easiest is Atariage if they made the additional stuff. Maybe eBay is ok or a seller in the US and Europe (and I think UK will be fine)

 

What price: I would pay around 40 - 60 Euro for the pure thing to run on my Atari

 

 

But: keep it simple for the beginning - PCB only and NTSC support will be enough to satisfy many of us nerds who wants one

Edited by Bomberman94
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Thanks. That's good info.
Don't think I'm up for creating a full collector-worthy boxed package, so I'm leaning towards:

Fully assembled PCB 
SD Card with demo video (16 GB card is roughly 10 hours if I recall)
Label

Link to online instructions:
How to include PCB into standard Combat shell (no modifications necessary unless you want a slot to access the SD card)
How to create custom video content
How to upgrade firmware (got to develop this part still)

Maybe an initial run of 15.

Don't commit me to this, but price may be around the $25 USD range.
Shipping will be extra unfortunately. (Either from Canada, or if someone wants to resell from AtariAge etc that's okay too).

Probably open source it all as well.

Ideally I sell those, people put them in their own shells (either as dedicated permanent specific movies - my favourite, or sd-card accessible content).

Does that sound useful?

Thanks,
Rob.
 

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12 minutes ago, cbelcher said:

Would love to see it open sourced - I like to build my own hardware.  Version 1 was easy if you could find the parts...

Thanks!  

Version 1 was cool, but the parts are no longer active unfortunately. And they were pricey and bulky, making a big PCB.
I did try my hand at SMD soldering for version 2, and did one fully assembled, but it wasn't my favourite thing but was doable.
To be honest, both PCB and assembly prices are so cheap now that's what makes this feasible for me.
Cheers

 

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12 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

You could include Night of the Living Dead on the SD card, it's public domain!   (Suggestion by GammaDev)

 

- James

I like the idea of a full movie, but unfortunately this one is black and white.
I've searched for color movies in the public domain, but nothing really jumped out at me so far.|

EDIT: Closest to a non-eyebrow-raising recentish full length color movie in the public domain I've found is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_Conquers_the_Martians

EDIT:  This doesn't look so bad:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charade_(1963_film)

A few big-names, lots of face close-ups.  People speaking slowly and clearly (1960s audio requirement)


 

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On 7/31/2023 at 8:48 PM, rbairos said:

Thanks. That's good info.
Don't think I'm up for creating a full collector-worthy boxed package, so I'm leaning towards:

Fully assembled PCB 
SD Card with demo video (16 GB card is roughly 10 hours if I recall)
Label

Link to online instructions:
How to include PCB into standard Combat shell (no modifications necessary unless you want a slot to access the SD card)
How to create custom video content
How to upgrade firmware (got to develop this part still)

Maybe an initial run of 15.

Don't commit me to this, but price may be around the $25 USD range.
Shipping will be extra unfortunately. (Either from Canada, or if someone wants to resell from AtariAge etc that's okay too).

Probably open source it all as well.

Ideally I sell those, people put them in their own shells (either as dedicated permanent specific movies - my favourite, or sd-card accessible content).

Does that sound useful?

Thanks,
Rob.
 

Put me down for one if you do an SD card version.  

A version that would be able to connect to wifi and access my media box on my home LAN, or accept streaming video from a player device such as Roku or Chromecast would be even cooler.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/30/2023 at 9:50 PM, Cappa310 said:

Hello, where can I download some of these Atari2600 formatted movies so I can watch them using my harmony cart?

Unfortunately it's not compatible with harmony cart, as it requires special cart hardware, but I am in the final stages of making some sample carts for sale very soon.

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