Teased earlier this week by the hacking group Lost Nintendo History was a homebrew release that would add TV-out to the Nintendo DS Lite, through the use of CFW and an open hardware circuit board. Today, the team managed to deliver on their promises by uploading their release on GitHub, as well as writing up an explanation of their process on their website. According to them, they'd found out that there was a TV-out feature leftover in the DS Lite's SoC, and that with some effort, they would be able to restore the function, allowing anyone to output their DS on their TV without having to resort to extra "bulky or cumbersome hardware" to do so.

Available only and specifically on the DS Lite, the method involves the custom firmware flashME, which reenables the TV-Out feature normally disabled on boot. Twilight Menu and a DS flashcart are also used, in order to boot the NDS_TV_OUT_ENABLE.nds file. Finally, you'll need a circuit board, of which the schematics, gerber file, and finer details are provided in the GitHub release. All of these things combined allow for you to play your DS Lite on your TV, with audio. You can output one screen at a time, and switch between the top or bottom with a single press of a switch on the circuit board. An installation guide and writeup are available on the project's GitHub, linked below.

On December 2020, we discovered that the Nintendo DS Lite's SoC (System on Chip) had a hidden feature: a leftover TV(Television) composite video output signal. This project contains our hardware designs and software code to restore this hidden feature and make it usable again. More details here

Contents

• Schematics & design & BOM
  • Can be found in this respository under /pcb
• Production Files
  • Gerber files are available in the releases page
• Documentation
  • Some base explaination of how the system works, how the PCB and software act altogether, etc. can be found here after the Installation section
• Tutorials
  • For a quick installation/usage tutorial, click here
  • Video Tutorial coming later this month

Acknowledgements
This project wouldn't be possible without the contributions of Gericom, Nitehack and pedro-javierf.

Source
Download Link

 

[Armadillo]

Cool, but also ewww composite.

 

[orangy57]

Cool, but also ewww composite.

I agree, apparently it's a digital signal that they're converting over to composite with the PCB so it's hopefully possible to output the signal as component or RGB since the composite-out was just a proof of concept.

If they were to do something like HDMI, there would need to be some sort of fancy digital signal processing since you need stuff like EDID chips for HDMI and the signal would need to be upscaled to reach the minimum HDMI bandwidth

 

[Zeldaplayer67]

Cool, but also ewww composite.

2006

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

Looks sick, bit of a bummer it's composite tho

 

[Armadillo]

2006

?

Snes and megadrive had rgb in 1990. 2006 doesn't fly as an excuse for composite.

 

[tech3475]

?

Snes and megadrive had rgb in 1990. 2006 doesn't fly as an excuse for composite.

I blame these people:

 

[Deleted User]

Or to create a GBA Macro with additional TV Output.

Thats not a bad idea, but the lack of hdmi would be abit lacking since it's composite only, but hey, the idea is there!

 

[Ryab]

Cool, but also ewww composite.

well remember that the DS came out in 2004

 

[Jokey_Carrot]

well remember that the DS came out in 2004

RGB has been in game consoles since the early 90s and In computers since like the mid 80s.

 

[Crazynoob458]

this is cool i should try it on one of my disassembped ds lites

 

[XDel]

I already got one, it's called a Wii U.

 

[Aheago]

Now we just need a homebrew to use controllers with the system somehow so that we aren’t tied to our TV with a super short cable

 

[Ryab]

RGB has been in game consoles since the early 90s and In computers since like the mid 80s.

Consoles around that era still used component though

 

[Armadillo]

Consoles around that era still used component though

No, most consoles had some sort of multi av out and one of the options was RGB, no modding.

Just because the US didn't settle on a standard RGB connector, so stuck with composite or S-video, doesn't mean the rest of the world did as well. Europe had RGB via scart.

Master System, SNES, Megadrive, Playstation, Saturn all had RGB from their multi out as standard. You just needed the right cable and a tv that supported it.

 

[AncientBoi]

Is this like leftover pizza?

 

[Ryab]

No, most consoles had some sort of multi av out and one of the options was RGB, no modding.

Just because the US didn't settle on a standard RGB connector, so stuck with composite or S-video, doesn't mean the rest of the world did as well. Europe had RGB via scart.

Master System, SNES, Megadrive, Playstation, Saturn all had RGB from their multi out as standard. You just needed the right cable and a tv that supported it.

Also remember this is nintendo in 2004

 

[Panzerfaust]

Snes and megadrive had rgb in 1990.

Sega Master System had RGB out in mid 80s

 

[Jokey_Carrot]

Consoles around that era still used component though

Componenet only came around with the ps2 and xbox.

 

[Flame]

as always TWiLightMenu with the magic.

TWiLightMenu is on everything now. my toaster wen?