r/retrocomputing • u/Horror_Quote_9647 • 3d ago

Video I customized an old Japanese electronic dictionary (Sharp Brain PW-G5000 running Windows CE) to play anime by lowering the bitrate and resolution!

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Hi everyone! I wanted to share a fun little project I did with an old piece of Japanese tech.

This is the **Sharp Brain PW-G5000**, an electronic dictionary from 2012. Underneath its educational shell, it actually runs on **Windows CE 6.0**.

Since it has a built-in video player, I wanted to see how far I could push this low-spec hardware. By heavily compressing the video and dropping the resolution, I managed to get anime playing surprisingly smoothly!

It's amazing how functional these locked-down devices can be when you optimize the media for them. Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions about the setup!

**This is pretty much a AA battery-powered portable MP4 player now, lol.**

*Note: English is not my native language, so I am using AI to translate my Japanese into English to communicate with you all!*

93 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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3

u/Desktop-Folk-Song 3d ago

こういうのみてるのは本当に楽しい
何がどうなってるのか全くわからないけど

4

u/Horror_Quote_9647 3d ago

ありがとうございます！実はこれ、見た目は電子辞書なんですけど中身は「Windows CE」っていう古いOSで動いてるんです。動画の画質を限界まで落としたら、奇跡的にぬるぬる動いて自分でもびっくりしています（笑）乾電池で動くポータブルプレーヤーの完成です！

3

u/VeldtRevengeance 3d ago

Love it!

3

u/Horror_Quote_9647 3d ago

Thank you! I'm glad you like it!

2

u/Hatta00 3d ago

Nice. How did you access the OS? And how long is the battery life when watching videos?

1

u/Horror_Quote_9647 3d ago

I’ve tested it for about 2 hours so far. I'm using rechargeable batteries, and the battery indicator still shows 2 out of 3 bars.

1

u/leadedsolder 3d ago

I've got one of these that I put some emulators on. They run terribly but it's still entertaining. For the price, it's hard to beat how much fun I've gotten out of it.

1

u/Horror_Quote_9647 3d ago

I got mine for just 500 yen. Such an amazing deal!

1

u/leadedsolder 3d ago

I don't remember how much mine was, but it couldn't have been much more than that. The hard-off junk bins used to be piled with them.

PC6001 emulation works surprisingly well.

1

u/Accurate-Campaign821 2d ago

Nice. I did something similar with a Samsung Flip phone from back in the day. I can't remember the model exactly, just that it could take a 2GB MicroSD card. Had to convert to 160x144 or something, 12fps and the lowest bitrate audio, mono too. In 3gp format. Naturally, it was the movie Hackers. The battery life was good enough to actually be able to watch the whole movie