I've got my review of sorts for the AM3 DSVision, the official Nintendo DS flashkart, up on my blog at http://www.nineoverten.com/2008/09/16/play...endos-dsvision/

Here's a video of it:

Wasnt there a thread on it before?

NICE!!!

zoro, questions...

01) how do we load the content, i.e. movies? do you buy another official game card? or we can buy online and download?
02) does AM3 works like R4? where you can play mp3+video via moonshell...
03) what does AM3's storage capacity? or it's like R4, where user can get MicroSD and insert?
04) video is jerking, is it youtube video framerate issue? or the actual movie is memang not smooth?

This post has been edited by penman: Sep 16 2008, 10:14 PM

I try to answer to the best of my abilities:

1. Buy online from the DSVision website. There are some free downloads available from the same site. Load the content into a microSD card.
2. No Moonshell. Like the video you saw earlier, it has its own media player. Unlike the R4, this doesn't run on homebrew-ed software. Hehe..official product ma..
3. microSD dependant.
4. That's because of my web cam keep trying to adjust the brightness or something...stupid thing. Actual playback is very smooth. But you have to wait a second or two if u skip forward in a movie or backwards.

Nice review there, certainly looks promising.

How would you compare the video and audio playback quality between Moonshell and the DSVision's movie player?

This post has been edited by colinwong89: Sep 17 2008, 02:17 AM

I would say the DSVision's movie player has an edge here in both video and audio playback quality, it's smoother and sounds nicer too. However, I'm comparing the Pokemon movie (on my DSVision) with an old Superman cartoon (on my R4, downloaded from moonbooks.net), so it might be a little unfair. Wait till I convert an episode of Macross Frontier to dpg format then I'll try again.

Hehe.

Yay...on Gonintendo! http://gonintendo.com/?p=56072

This post has been edited by zorocaster: Sep 17 2008, 08:01 AM

this will be a definite good buy!

does it have any region locking on the downloaded content?

my concern only like, currently it's japanese. Later on, when the US (eng) version available, we need to buy the US version...

What format and file extension is the Pokemon video in?

so essentially these movies come in SD cards? can they be moved around? or are they read-only?

Hmm. Not too sure on this. Will update if there's a US version available.

Hehe. This one is interesting. As far as I can tell, the format is proprietary, the movie itself is split into 3 files (probably merged back together by the media player), all using a .00x extension.

Yes, the movie are on SD cards. The files can be copied out but as in reply to Colin's question, they are of a proprietary format. The microSD card itself is writeable.

According to the manual (referring to the pics in the manual coz I can't read Japanese), you'll need to use an iTunes-like application to transfer content downloaded from the DSVision.jp to the microSD card. The folder structure isn't user friendly, so I guess that is why you'll need the application.

This post has been edited by zorocaster: Sep 17 2008, 03:00 PM

and let me guess again... that proprietary app works only for WinXP/Vista at the moment... and not working on OS X... am I right? >_<

The manual does mention the MacOS in the system requirements page...but I don't know whether it's a "YES we support MacOS" or "NO don't install on MacOS". Sorry arh...Japanese language n00b

Addendum:

Oopz. Sorry Penman, the website makes no mention about MacOS

This post has been edited by zorocaster: Sep 17 2008, 04:23 PM

I'm particularly being curious here, as those videos that use the ActImagine codec (eg. FFIV, Castlevania POR) look really blocky, and it's almost the same for Moonshell's DPG format. It doesn't seem that the problem lies with not enough bitrate, and might be the DS not having enough processing power, so I'm looking forward to an honest comparison

Honestly, I'm speaking from a layman's point of view as stuff like bitrates and codecs are really not my cup of tea (and so is watching movies on the DS actually, sorry). It's just my habit of going off the beaten track (rather than all these mainstream follow the crowd thing, yawn) being the reason for getting the DSVision in the first place.

As for my experience watching the Pokemon movie, I thought it was pretty ok, no slow downs, great visuals. Just that it is counter-intuitive a wide screen movie on a small screen. You might be interest to know that I managed to convert an episode of Macross Frontier to dpg format for comparison purposes. IMHO, the Pokemon movie is superior to that of my converted effort.

If you are interested in the technical details for the DPG file conversion (I'm using Super ©), here goes:
- Video Scale Size: 256:192
- Aspect: 4:3
- Frame/Sec: 15
- Bitrate: 432 kbps

Don't worry about it, I don't really care for watching movies on the DS either. It's just that I want to know if Nintendo had implemented new tricks up their sleeves for the cart of theirs. There isn't much media comparison to do between homebrews and official software, and incidentally that watching videos with homebrew software is still far from satisfactory for me, I thought if you could just provide more info about it.

Anyway, anything else notable to mention with the DSVision?

Thought you would never ask. Hehe. The application used to transfer content from the DS Vision website to the MicroSD card is a real piece of work. You'll need to do several things:

At the DS Vision Website
1. Sign up for an account.
2. E-mail will be sent (by DS Vision) with a link to complete the sign-up process.
3. Complete the Sign-Up process
4. Download the application (DSVisionSetup) and install it on your PC.

At the DS Vision Application. At this point of time, its best you insert your DSVision compatible microSD card into your card reader (make sure it is connected to your pc/laptop), for reasons that will be explained later.

The application detects whatever DSVision content on the microSD card, in my case, it's the pokemon movie.

1. The applucation is equipped with its own Web Browser, so use it to browse to the DSVision website
2. Login to the DS Vision website
3. Pick and choose what content you want to purchase (some content is free)
4. If you do not have your microSD card in your card reader, the website will not allow you to download the content..I don't know how it does that validation..even as a programmer I'm intrigued.
5. If you do have the microSD card in the card reader, the download will proceed.

As of now.. I'm still downloading some content..will update later.

Just tried Kumatanchi and I was surprised at the quality during the opening video. It's so much better than other in-game videos that I actually thought it wasn't a video at all.

Hope the quality of DSVision rivals that.