New Media iPlayer for Nintendo DS

Well, waiting in the DMV line just got more fun. A new flash card for the Nintendo DS has been announced and launched. The "DS iplayer" has officially launched and I was lucky enough to get my hands on one to demo. The DS iPlayer lets you play many forms of media from a microSD card without any conversion. So, now you don't have to play a game - you can watch your favorite movie or television show on a beautiful 3-inch screen.

The Look

The card itself looks just like any other DS cartridge. Plasticy (yes a real word) with metal connectors. It has a slot for you to put in your microSD card where you have your media files backed up. It even comes with it's own USB adapter so you can easily transfer your files to the microSD.

The Interface

The interface or GUI looks very beautiful. Kinda reminds me of an Apple Ipod. The buttons are all touch pad capable and work just like any other media device. Meaning; the arrow is for play, the double arrows fast forward or reverse, and the side ways equal sign is for pause. At the beginning screen you get 5 options to choose from; Video, Music, Home brew, Files, and System. Again they are pretty much do what they say, to watch a video go to video and so on. It does support homebrew applications but of course it does NOT support illegal roms.

Support

This thing is amazing. Without any conversion or having to download drivers or codecs it supports most of the media file types in use today. For video it supports wmv, xvid, asf, avi, divx, flv, mpg, 3gp, and mov. For audio it supports mp3 (of course who doesn't), wma, wav, ape, ogg, flac, aac, and anything recorded on the DSi (it has its own format not sure of the extension. The video play is very nice. Of course it is still on a small screen so it is very hard to identify any blocking or bad textures. The audio play is as expected for those tiny speakers, however for fun I hooked up the "headset" to my home theater and you would think it was playing an actual cd. It does play with the clam shell closed for those that are into running and spent all their money on the DS instead of an MP3 player.

My conclusion

This is a must have for any video/audiophile. I, myself, love games but every once and awhile I do want to relax and watch some cartoons. With support of a 32g MicroSD you can put plenty of videos/songs and make your Nintendo DS compare evenly to the Video Ipod. Check out iPlayer for more information or where you can pick one up.