I wanted to know about what DS can be used for besides gaming.
I know there is a pack out there which lets DS to be used as personal organizer, and includes a few simple games such as sudoku, but like us PSP users, does DS also have homebrew, custom software, personalization, etc?

Could it be, for example, used as two way radio or file transfer using wi-fi, or store game saves, hack into games, load roms, or have emulators of possibly older gameboy systems? Because nothing beats playing GBC roms on my PSP! It had also been a while since I went into my bin of countless GB games, and I probably have to get them vacuumed before I could play them on any GB !

        

My DS is capable of all those things

There is an "add-on" which you can purchase that would let you play downloaded games, MP3s and Video on your DS.

The DS already has a built-in GBA slot so you can already play both GBA games and DS games.

Japan is trialing a download service where you can download games from a kiosk. Two versions exist: (1) you pay more and keep the game and (2) the game deletes once you power off your DS

There is an Opera browser add-on available in Japan which will become widespread soon.

There is a TV tuner add-on in Japan which will also become more widespread (hopefully).

More to come for sure!

Eastern Canuck

Remember, for every mile of road there's two miles of ditch.

These are really interesting, as for watching a movie, I wonder what is the FPS it suports.

TV tuner would be a great advantage over PSP.

        

Don't we have "Location Free TV" in our PSP? I realize this costs a lot of money to get but the options still there. Now we just need ORB Streaming on our PSP's...

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Location Free is probably the worst way to get TV on your PSP, since it requires broadband at home, broadband at where you want to watch TV on you PSP and a PC running at home (at base).

How difficult could it be to get a USB Tuner done? Not too difficult, I guess.

        

A bit of info on frame rate for the DS using their media player, the Play Yan. This information is from IGN back in February 2005. I'm not sure but I would think improvements have been/will be shortly made. Viewing will certainly be better now on the DS Lite with the improved back lighting.

"We found compression times to be a bit slow. On a Pentium 4 3.2GHz machine, it took about three minutes to compress a three minute high-quality AVI file to the highest Play-Yan setting (480kbps, 240x176, 30fps). The resulting file size was 12,664KB. Reducing the quality to the standard setting (352kbps, 240x176, 30.0fps), and the file size was reduced to 9,632KB with compression taking just about the same amount of time. Reducing quality further to the lowest setting (224kbps, 240x176, 15fps) and the file size was reduced to 6,408KB with a two minutes and ten seconds compression time.
These settings translate to low to reasonable video quality when clips are played back on a Play-Yan hooked up to a DS or GBA-SP. We noticed clear artifacts even in the highest quality setting, mostly on videos with high brightness. However, both the highest quality and standard quality settings make for reasonable viewing, especially with darker footage. Lowest quality is a bit harder to look at thanks to the drop in frame rate, but we've found ourselves putting up with worse on the iRiver color 320 series player, so if you want to fit a lot on a small SD card, the lowest setting could be your thing.

Actually getting videos up and running on Play-Yan is much simpler than it is on Sony's PSP. You can copy your movie files to any location on the SD card. After starting up Play-Yan, a startup menu asks you to select between viewing movies and listening to music. Select the movie option and Play-Yan scans the SD card, including sub-directories, and displays all ASF movie files in index form. We didn't have to worry about any sort of naming convention, neither for directories nor for movie files."

Eastern Canuck

Remember, for every mile of road there's two miles of ditch.

Thanks Canuck, since then, actually there has been improvements to how PSP handles videos, although not officially but still it came a long way.

I would like to see how movies look on DS screen, and if LITE is out with a reasonable price, I may think of getting one, because original is pretty bulky.

        

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuB7c...20Lite%20Video

Video playing on DS Lite. Not great but gives you a vague idea.

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?cat...oducts_id=7482

Latest version of Play Yan for DS and DS Lite. Full specs, just click where appropriate.

Cheers.

Oh, and yes, the original DS is very bulky. The DS Lite is, quite simply, beautiful. I love it.

Eastern Canuck

Remember, for every mile of road there's two miles of ditch.

Just for general interest Hyedipin, there is a game shop here in Singapore that I am a member of (great discounts do come with membership, as they say). Anyway, their website includes a forum. Costs nothing to register in the forum, like here.

There are a couple of people who provide amazing updates for gaming, especially for the DS and Nintendo as it is much bigger here in this part of the world.

Check it out.

www.gamescore.com.sg

My handle is the same there as it is here so feel free to say "hi".

Cheers.

Eastern Canuck

Remember, for every mile of road there's two miles of ditch.

Thanks for the link and the video. It seems to be running pretty smoothly, but the problem is paying $80 to get videos played on DS is costly.

I will try to find some time and stop by the forums over there. Too bad they didn't let guests review contents of topics first. And I agree that DS did much better than other handhelds everywhere in the world, except US.

        

True enough, it is costly. There is, of course, the "other" add-on route which allows you to not only play video but also "downloaded" games from the net. One thing Asia is good for is opening up possibilities! Personally I have always been one to buy original. Not because of any higher moral being, but simply because the originals always work and I know what I am buying.

Ok, I admit I wasn't always buying original when I was living in China but that's simply because it was next to impossible to find at times.

Not doing so well in Brain Age at the moment but I'm working at it!

Cheers.

Eastern Canuck

Remember, for every mile of road there's two miles of ditch.

I have seen several DS Emulators for PC, to try the game since it is near impossible to play the same way you can on your DS, but most of them are only experimental.

As for china, believe me, most of the time when you think you are buying the original, it ends up being a copy (they make it so well, impossible to detect)

        

Some guys controlling a robot with a NDS.

I think this page is one of the most complete compilations of links, emulators and hombrew utilities, you might wanna check it out.

My personal favorite, besides the VoIP thing is PC remote browsing. I've found 2 utilities that do this:

PointyRemote
DSVNC

If anyone asks me to do it, I might feel like writing a couple reviews or something hehe...

(Guess who's back...)