iPlayer hands-on impressions

[Hit]

Looks like this simple small card has a better video processor then the DS has

 

[Sga]

What is the homebrew format ?If it's .nds , you can run NDS Rom , be we can't start NDS rom normally , right ?
But if we can't launch NDS rom because the format is too heavy , you can launch the homebrew "Y'S Menu"and with you can start NDS rom !So ...we can lauch nds rom !

PS : if my english suck , it's because i'm french !

 

[Vincent T]

Wouldn't it be easier to just have a Cyclo DS and wait for a firmware similar to this. And wait for their support to bigger GB cards?

 

[tajio]

Awesomeee~! That is so freakin awesome ^^

I wants one... But... Sticker is sorta plain xD

The sticker is just a temporay one, it's still in the works

.

Anyways, once I get my DSi I'm so buying it with my AceKard 2i/M3i Zero!

 

[wolffangalchemist]

no roms playability...
sounds like the Datel Games n' Music all over again, but with good video playback this time.

 

[antonkan]

When will the iPlayer flashcart come out?

 

[TraumaHoundNDS]

This looks great and seems to perform pretty much as promised. Extra-thanks for the accompanying video, your write-up is pretty thorough but actually seeing it in-action really helps it sink in.

I'm digging this cart and I hope it comes out soon and with a decent price!

 

[Slowking]

On a side note.... Yay, Urusei Yatsura! Anyone know what that other anime is though?

Maison Ikkoku. Takahashi is a genius.

I knew that was Takahashis style the moment I saw it, just couldn't place it, as I've never seen Maison Ikkoku. I should really do that sometime, though I'm still not through Ranma 1/2 (only watched it in german and the network canceled it because the ratings went down after they moved it around timeslots so much nobody knew when it ran anymore) and Inu Yasha. I really need to catch up...

@topic
Really nice. Wouldn't have thought that it would be able such a variety of formats so good. Ofcourse it still has a few flaws that have to be ironed out with firmware updates but for an initial release it's damn good.

 

[UltraMagnus]

Looks like this simple small card has a better video processor then the DS has

well, if the processor is on a FPGA, it is a specially designed one just for processing video, something the DS isn't great at, however its processor is far more general purpose.

 

[shaunj66]

The iPlayer team have just released a new loader that incorporates a bookmark function for videos

Now who's great idea was that?

I've also got some battery life information to report:

DS Lite, loudest volumes with headphones, brightness level 2 will let you get just over 4 hours of media playback.

 

[Maz7006]

Thanks Shaunj66 i was kind of apprehensive about the battery life

 

[Toni Plutonij]

Wouldn't it be easier to just have a Cyclo DS and wait for a firmware similar to this. And wait for their support to bigger GB cards?

No it wouldn't, because if you checked the first post, and also, read trough the thread a bit, you'd see that this cart has it's own processor for handling video, so it isn't possible to just get "firmware working on other flashcarts" and also, what do you mean "support bigger GB cards" if you're talking about microSD cards, they are up to 16B in size, and soon there will be 32GB released..That's as far as current SDHC technology allows..

 

[cmonster]

Sorry for being off-topic but I want to say that you're awesome for watching Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku. My heart literally skipped a beat when I heard the opening for Maison Ikkoku playing since I thought I accidentally opened the file on my computer something.

On-topic question: Can it play subtitle files? The only reason why I would want to use iPlayer over my PSP is if it truly can play videos without having to convert them at all. It would be so sweet to just drag and drop videos that I want to watch before leaving the house and not having to plan it hours before hand.

Also, I highly doubt this, but can it play h.264 videos at all?

[edit]

Nevermind, just read the rest of the topic. Sigh, will there ever be a convenient video player that can just do everything? I really hate having to convert everything as it's a waste of disk space.

 

[shaunj66]

Sorry for being off-topic but I want to say that you're awesome for watching Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku. My heart literally skipped a beat when I heard the opening for Maison Ikkoku playing since I thought I accidentally opened the file on my computer something.

MI is one of my all time favourite shows. I haven't really started watching Urusei yet but plan to.

In the full review I will try re-encoding h264 videos at a lower res and bit rate to see how it handles them, but then if you're going through that hassle you may as well just convert them to DPG really.

 

[bubbleboy]

Hopefully they release some sort of library to allow us to take advantage of this extra CPU. Unfortunately, I do not have a working slot-1 in my DS so I wouldn't be able to use it anyway.

LOL, me too! I used it for the passme right when the DS was first hacked, then tried an original cart a few weeks ago and the spring mechanism was broken. I've been playing from a Slot 2 Supercard for years now, no problems at all.

 

[cmonster]

Sorry for being off-topic but I want to say that you're awesome for watching Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku. My heart literally skipped a beat when I heard the opening for Maison Ikkoku playing since I thought I accidentally opened the file on my computer something.

MI is one of my all time favourite shows. I haven't really started watching Urusei yet but plan to.

In the full review I will try re-encoding h264 videos at a lower res and bit rate to see how it handles them, but then if you're going through that hassle you may as well just convert them to DPG really.

Maison Ikkoku is probably my most watched/loved show of all time, as well. Good to meet another fan, I don't come by one very often. Urusei is up there but it's very different from Maison Ikkoku. It's more along the lines of Ranma, if I were to compare it to another Rumiko series. You should also check out the Rumic Theater ova, especially Mermaid Forest, if you haven't yet.

But anyways... yea, it would be almost exactly the same as converting them to a different format. If it weren't for the space issue, I would totally convert all my videos/animes into divx.avi or something but that would literally be another 2 TB. At least it could handle all the other standard formats; it's definitely a step into the right direction.

 

[Smartpal]

This is so awesome, can't wait for the review! Thanks for bringing it to us so early! GBAtemp rocks!

 

[Szyslak]

Really nice first impression shaunj66. Thanks for the write-up while you're working on the review. The card has definitely got some potential.

 

[Beige]

I so plan on buying one. Honestly, I'm hoping they release a library for using the onboard CPU and RAM. It would ease up on emulation a bit, allowing better Genesis and SNES emulation, we could use it for typical applications to allow better file cache, and all sorts of other things. Actually, because of this hardware, I can see how Soft Reset can work with homebrew.

I'm going to say it flat out, kudos to these guys on not incorporating a ROM loader. They said they wouldn't do it to avoid legal issues with Nintendo and I have to agree with them. This makes it easier for this to hit retail shelves. If someone does make a ROM loader for this, I will likely track them down and destroy them and the source. It's that simple. Everyone who is reading this thread, realize that if a ROM loader is released, it will not be from the iPlayer team themselves.

What is the homebrew format ?If it's .nds , you can run NDS Rom , be we can't start NDS rom normally , right ?
But if we can't launch NDS rom because the format is too heavy , you can launch the homebrew "Y'S Menu"and with you can start NDS rom !So ...we can lauch nds rom !

PS : if my english suck , it's because i'm french !

1) It won't launch ROMs natively.
2) YSMenu doesn't have its own loader, it is entirely dependent on the loader available in the flash card's firmware. As long as this doesn't load ROMs, YSMenu won't be able to do much of anything.

QUOTE(wolffangalchemist @ Jun 17 2009, 04:06 PM) no roms playability...
sounds like the Datel Games n' Music all over again, but with good video playback this time.

Don't forget, this will play music in better quality (GnM had bass issues) and will have auto DLDI patching, and probably better Homebrew compatibility at that.

 

[Sga]

We can launch video
But , it say we can launch HOMEBREWS !Whats is the format of the game for it's play only homebrew ?