Four days ago, YouTuber Chroma Lock Uploaded the build log of his latest hardware project on his channel. This time, he showed off a Game Boy Color capable of playing video over its original cable via a Raspberry Pi Pico and custom software optimized for the workload.
Generally speaking, simpler videos mean higher playback FPS – the connected USB webcam has surprisingly good clarity and smoothness compared to the classic Game Boy camera accessory – but most videos It’s best to play in monochrome, as colors are limited to 4 palettes, which makes the movie more difficult to run on the Game Boy Color’s 160 x 144 pixel display.
The last streaming utility designed to be used with the Raspberry Pi Pico, Game Boy Color, and cables is an application called GF United Televisionuploaded to GitHub by ChromaLock and built based on some other open source software. Video compression reduces video quality to 1 megabit per second. Still, the link cable can only receive up to 64 KB per second, making the final video frame even more compressed. This also makes things like dropped or cracked frames more common, but playback does generally “work”.
The full ChromaLock video not only demonstrates video playback, but also explains in detail the tool’s development process around the limitations of the Game Boy Color system. Video playback speeds can reach up to 60 FPS when using grayscale or monochrome. When using color, video output is usually limited to around 12 FPS.
I also tested some video game streaming, but even streaming original Game Boy games was a much worse experience than natively running apps and modern 3D games. Destroy eternity The resolution is too high to be read on the Game Boy Color’s older, lower-resolution display.
The main motivation for the ChromaLock project seems to be just to complete the infamous demonstration Oriental Project The music video “Bad Apple” plays smoothly on the Game Boy Color. Since the film is already monochrome, running it at 60 FPS on the Game Boy Color is actually quite doable, albeit with some strong judder due to the streaming method.