How can I create my own video player using my Sony Ericsson cell phone?

[jwxie]

I have an idea. I need some helps:

I have a sony ericsson cell phone (a Walkman series). What I want to do is to take out the screen (I don't know whether it is a LCD or just plain glassy screen, please correct me).

Basically I want to make my own little video media player. I just want to make a cheap one for fun - not for sales or anything. Simple one.

What exactly do I need to accomplish this?
[1] a screen
[2] a processor
[3] a program
Can you guys give me a deep help, in great detail what exactly I need??

I am a rookie, thanks for help.

 

[hamster143]

That is a big project, especially for a rookie.

The way to go is probably to get a pre-built ARM board like this one

http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7200

and a video controller like this one

http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7KV

and hope that it's compatible with your LCD screen. Then you'd install Linux on the board, find open source player software such as mplayer, build it and upload onto the device. It won't be cheap and it won't be particularly easy. And the device won't be able to play anything beyond 320x240 resolution (if that), because the 200 MHz processor isn't powerful enough.

 

[jwxie]

wooo thanks hamster..
$119 for that board...wooo
i was thinking about those $20 budget robotics project i did lmao

well here is the case.. i want to do this because i need it for my cornell admission application. i want to surprise them and let them see my creativity and uniqueness, so the cost cannot be high... i mean max is around $30 which seems impossible ATM, since media processor is not the same as those robotics processor range from $5 - 20, since the technology itself is different...

The screen is just the regular cellphone size, those 4cm x 3cm one...

i don't know... but you are giving me something valuable, thanks! and yes, i just want to do a simple one - play / stop by switching the system on and off - this is easy, just a little trick with the programming...
any suggestion that you think is helpful... any suggestion to make this possible, for now?
(i am a freshman engineer so i really don't have that deep experience in EE)

but greatly thankful for your reply!

 

[hamster143]

TI makes some inexpensive video processors with MPEG/H.264 decoding support, such as TMS320DM355 ... but figuring out how to integrate one of those into a complete product will be difficult, to put it mildly. And you still need an ARM development board to put it into...

On the other hand, if you do figure out how to build one, that's probably a useful real-world skill that might help you get a job as an embedded engineer eventually.

Maybe someone else here can think of something that I overlooked.

If you don't want to go to such great lengths, surely you can think of something simpler to impress Cornell guys.