Another Ds Question, GBA games and movie quality Options

[mrjkwik]

I ordered 2 of the r4 cards, that way i will have them before my sons birthday (my daughter gets the other about a month after my sons bday). i'll grab the microsd's from ebay.

in order to play gba roms, i'll need a different kind of cart for that, correct? if so, is there one similiar to the r4, that has expandable memory? that way i can pick which size microsd, or sd, or whatever, i want to put in it.

also, what kind of quality are videos that can be converted to play on nds? about how big are the files (whether it be converting from dvd, or converting from say a 1gb divx/xvid file)?

thanks for the info.

[jon_jon]

To play backup GBA games on a NDS, you need a slot-2 device. I would recommend the EZ-Flash IV and the M3 devices.

[throwingks]

For movies you will probably use Moonshell. Moonshell plays DPG movies, in a pretty small resolution @ ~1/2 frame rate.

MicroSD has adapters to make it bigger if you need it for your slot-2 device.

[ILLusions0fGrander]

ive got a flash2advance 256MB cart... i sold my GBA. not trying to jack your thread, but theres still no way for me to transfer to/from the slot 2 flash card on my DS is there?

This post has been edited by ILLusions0fGrander: Apr 13 2007, 01:56 AM

[mrjkwik]

well, i ordered the microsd card from ebay. 1 gb kingston for 14 dollars. so i'll have that and the r4 in plenty of time, and after enough reading, i get how to do the ds stuff.

from what you said (throwingks), sounds like putting movies on it for him will be a waste of time. if the resolution is that bad (i've never played a ds, only a psp to compare, but i sold that a long time ago) and the framerate sucks, then whats the point, right?

np illusions, though, i dont know what your talking about

[throwingks]

ive got a flash2advance 256MB cart... i sold my GBA. not trying to jack your thread, but theres still no way for me to transfer to/from the slot 2 flash card on my DS is there?

An R4 acts as a passthru device. You should be able to use both GB and patched NDS ROMs from Slot-2 with your R4 is Slot-1.
However, I do not know of a way to physically transfer data between the 2 slots. I think you can do some stuff by setting up an ftp server and client on your cart and PC and connecting wirelessly.
There has to be a way to transfer data though, cause that is how the Official DS Browser works with its RAM pack. I just don't think any homebrew has been developed.

well, i ordered the microsd card from ebay. 1 gb kingston for 14 dollars. so i'll have that and the r4 in plenty of time, and after enough reading, i get how to do the ds stuff.

from what you said (throwingks), sounds like putting movies on it for him will be a waste of time. if the resolution is that bad (i've never played a ds, only a psp to compare, but i sold that a long time ago) and the framerate sucks, then whats the point, right?

np illusions, though, i dont know what your talking about

Its not really that bad. The resolution is the full resolution of the screen just not the full resolution of a DVD movie. 15 fps is hardly noticeable as well. I suggest you try it with a small vid and decide for yourself. It isn't very hard to do. If you need help, I will help you.

Personally, I think the video quality is decent. I just don't like watching movies on a handheld device. I have a 7" portable DVD player and I don't even watch movies on that. And, I travel for a living.

[mrjkwik]

so here's what i tried tonight.

i went ahead and converted a movie i already had in divx format (might have been xvid, cant remember which i did it in) using batchdpg. i then downloaded dpgplay v2.4 to view the file on the computer.

have you ever used dpgplay to watch one of your converted files on the pc? and if so, how close is this to what it appears to be on the nds.

i'll see for myself in about 3 weeks (how long the shipping is supposed to be for both the r4 and the microsd, both of which is coming from hong kong). just curious if i should expect what i see, or maybe a little worse. what i see on dpgplay isnt bad at all, especially for a 8 year old. his eyes are better than mine after all

and for anyone curious like i was, it took a 700+mb file down to a 235mb file.

[gainpresence]

The movies looks decent on the DS, if there are subtitles it will be hard to read, otherwise it's good.

Since the screen is so small (and thus low res), the resolution reduction won't make much of a difference, I think the frame rate is cut in half though, so action movies might look jumpy.