Playing Movies On An Atari 2600
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Playing Movies On An Atari 2600
The original Xbox and PlayStation 2 both let you watch DVD movies in addition to playing games. But the Atari 2600 long predates the DVD and almost predates consumer VHS tapes. And yet, as covered by TechEBlog, [Lodef Mode] built a cartridge that lets it play video. Pretty poor quality, but it is video!
The MovieCart adapter, as it is known, loads footage from a micro SD card with a color palette limited by Atari 2600 hardware capabilities. It’s not some sneaky video pass-through either—the Atari really is processing frames. At 80×192 pixels the resolution is just enough to figure out what's being displayed on the screen.
Sound is present too, in a pleasingly lo-fi quality, & thanks to the prodigious storage available on microSD cards, you can play a whole feature length film. If you genuinely care to watch flicks this way, you can order a MovieCart from Tindie that comes with a preloaded public domain copy of Night of the Living Dead on a microSD card.
- Via Neatorama & HackADay