I'm always on the lookout for the newest gaming gear. Be they from third party manufacturers or from the system creators themselves But I have to admit that when I first heard about Nintendo's Movie Player add on for the Nintendo DS, I was completely stunned.
I did a search on Google to find out how many others have heard of this accessory and I was equally surprised that more Nintendo DS (or Gameboy Advance) owners didn't even know that this truly unexampled accessory for their Nintendo DS. I can only think that the hype around the Sony PSP and it's movie playing capabilities, we've all neglected to take a look at the less expensive Nintendo DS as anything other than a handheld game system.
I was stunned simply because I've been watching movies and listening to music on my NDS and GBA since their release date, with a really fantastic little accessory called the NDS / GBA Movie player.
The GBA / NDS Movie Player enables you to use your Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance SP, or Gameboy Micro to play video files and audio files and read e-books from basic Compact Flash cards. Maybe you're thinking that you'll only be able to watch movie clips or short films, I want to make it known from the get go by in stating that you can watch a complete full length movie with the Movie Player. You can use your PC and a normal Compact Flash card reader to transfer and convert your media files to the Compact Flash cards. The included software even converts files directly from DVD to the proper movie Player format.
What really made this accessory a must buy for myself, was the fact that in addition to movies I was also able to listen to my MP3 music on my Nintendo DS too - just like Sony PSP owners can. I won't go into which handheld system is better, or offers more... That's would negate the real reason for this article, which is simply to show Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance owners that their fun little handheld video game system is capable of playing all types of media files.
Now, I don't want you to think that converting your movies files requires you to be even remotely technical. In fact, the included software pretty much does it all for you. All you'll have to do is just click a few buttons and the movie will start to convert to the native movie player format. Not only can you take full length DVD movies and convert them, you can also take any type of downloaded digital video files and use them with the software.
I am not surprised that one of the most frequently asked questions is whether or not an entire 4 gigabyte DVD movie can actually fit on a 256Meg Compact Flash Card. After all, DVD movies are over 4 gigbytes in size, how could that 4 Gigabyte movie POSSIBLY fit on a CF Card that has just a fraction of the storage of a DVD disc.
The fact is that due to the smaller screen size of the Gameboy Advance or the Nintendo DS, you can easily fit a full length movie on a very small sized compact flash card. This is mainly due to the resolution of the GBA or Nintendo DS Screen. You see, in order for a movie to play on a large TV set it requires a larger resolution when displaying that movie. Because the size of the GBA Screen is considerably smaller, it does not require a very large resolution to display that same movie.
If you're wondering just what you could fit on a 128M - 1Gig compact flash card, read on, because I'm sure you'll be very surprised.
Before I list the amount of data you can fit on each card size, please bear in mind that I am going to list the amount of data in TIME. By that I mean simply that we'll think of the data in terms of the lenght of a movie. We know that most movies are anywhere from 85 - 125 minutes long, and the amount of data you can fit on compact flash cards will reflect just how much or how many movies you could squeeze on a compact flash card.
The listing below will clearly show that you can indeed fi an entire movie even on a 128M compact flash card, and up to 4 or more movies on a 1 GIG compact flash card.
The following is a list of the amount of storage you can have on various compact flash cards. You can fit 960 minutes (or about 6-8 movies ) on a 1GB Compact Flash. You can fit 480 minutes (or 3-4 movies) on a 512MB Compact Flash. 240 minutes, or 2 movies will fit on a 256MB Compact Flash. And for those of us looking for a really inexpensive movie player, a 128MB compact flash card will let you store 120 minutes, so about 1 full length movie.
As you can see, even a 128M compact flash card is adequate to store a full length movie.
In order to watch a movie on the GBA Movie Player, you'll first have to use your PC to convert the DVD movie to the proper file format for the player itself. This can be done quite easily with the included software that comes with the GBA Movie Player itself. And don't forget. You can do a whole lot more than just watch movies. You can actually listen to MP3 music, read e-books, and even load PDA type software onto the Compact Flash card which will essentially turn your Nintendo DS into a very functional PDA.
Rather than waiting for the Nintendo DS movie player, which will may or may not be released sometime next year, I strongly recommend that all NDS owners spend the $25.00 and get the GBA / NDS Movie Player right now.
Not only is the cost of this item ridiculously low, it is jam packed with features and functions that are above and beyond what even Nintendo's Movie player promises to do.
Hi, My name is Mark Thompson, and I write video game and video game accessory reviews for various online and offline publications. For more information on the
GBA Movie player please visit http://www.ps2cover.com/gba-movie-player.shtml
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