The latest iPlayer review

Prologue: DS does not lack for multimedia functionality by homebrews, Even though Nintendo itself does not give DS much too such functions. Now we already realized listening music, reading e-book, playing video on DS. And among these functions, listening music, reading e-book is considering as perfect, supporting all the popular formats. You only need to copy the files into your TF, then you can enjoy it. But the video playing function is still not very convenience. To watch video, We need the homebrew Moonshell, which supports DPG format only, so that we have to convert the videos to DPG format befor playing. Fortunately, iPlayer will be the ultimate solution for playing main format videos on DS.

【The packing】

The packing with pure white ground colour and pink design on it, which is the theme colour of DSi defined by Nintendo.

The blue in right bottom does not look very well

the back of packing

The mark “i” is the same to DSi

everything looks similar to common flash carts.

packing with a CD contains system files, and a multi language handbook.

【The presentation】

iPlayer looks no difference with common DS carts or any flash carts. I do not know why the back guard bar disappeared six. The screw is in flank place.

The sticker looks ugly, but who cares?

The TF slot is spring type, very well.

After removing the sticker, three chips appeared, what provide hardware decoding for videos.

Removing the sticker

Front side

Back side

【Interface】

We can see five icons on the bottom screen menu, easy to handle. In fact, every supported files could be launch in the Files option.

iPlayer is compatible with DS, DSL, and DSi.

The interface

When selecting the video and music, the top screen shows the play list. In the playing process, video is displayed on top screen, and bottom screen is control panel. When selecting operation menu, the playing process have to be stopped, but the system can record the place where stopped.

video player interface, and the audio player interface is the same

have to be stopped

The operation of video, includes three mode original, standard, and full screen.

default is original mode

The operation of audio player could be selected, no need to stop playing, Playing mode: Loop all, sequence play, random play, Loop single, single play.L/R button: could operate the function of music selecting on/off.

System Opreration menu includes Brightness Adjustment, Language, Skins,Backlit Time, Homebrew patch, and Restore defaults

System Opreration

System Opreration 2

【The quality of video and audio playing】

A KingSton2G TF is packed with iplayer(just for testing), which already contains a lot of supported videos. the list is below:

In fact, MP4 and MKV is also supported, but the performance is not good, there are slow down and crackles occured in the playing process, even if the code rate and resolution is not very high. So official video player banned these two format, but we can also play it in the Files option. There is no problem to play normal AVI and RMVB, but the subtitles.

352×288 resolution 3GP format, performance is perfect.

524×336 resolution rmvb format, subtitles is a big problem.

The official TF provide wav, mp3, ogg, ape, and wma five formats audio files, all supported perfectly, and beside the five kinds of formats, iPlayer also supports flac, aac, m4a formats and so on. There is no EQ like common MP3 player, but obviously is better than software decoding of Moonshell.

【Homebrew】

iPlayer is not like the other flash carts supported DS commercial roms, but all homebrews is allowed to be launch. We test Colours, NeoDS and so on homebrew softwares without problem. If enable the function of soft reset in system operation, we could use L+R+A+B+X+Y to restart. Interestingly, the official TF also contains Moonshell2 in it, but for now, maybe it is just used to browse pictures and read e-books.

Colors running is perfect

NeoGeo simulator

【Maximum endurance】

Official claims at 2 brightness level, with earphones and maximum volume, it could proceed to watch video for four hours. We tested with DSi maximum brightness, earphones and maximum volume, proceeded for three hours. We suppose if reduce the brightness, the maximum endurance will be the standard which official claimed.

【Overall】

iPlayer is worth enough to be considered is a milestone. No converting to play main popular video formats directly, So we can take the DS as a real media player. But we are expecting the solution of subtitles.

iPlayer official website：http://www.dsiplayer.com