iPlayer for DSi is in stock (shipped in 24h)
Keywords : buy, dsi, iplayer, divx, linker, cheap, flash, asf, 3GP

The iPlayer is a slot-1 media player cart that, besides homebrew, doesn't have any ROM loading functionality. The iPlayer is solely intended for playing media files and homebrew, unlike other flash kits on the market that just use this marketing as a ruse to cover their other possible intentions.

Even though most flash kits on the market support media playback, their functionality is often limited to a handful of audio codecs and DPG video - a video format that is optimised for the DS. All DPG videos must be converted on the users PC using software before copying across to what ever slot-1 cart you are using. This is required because the DS CPU is simply not powerful enough to handle playback of the usual file formats you'll find online videos distributed in.

To combat this issue, the iPlayer has a built in CPU and extra RAM that enables it to decode various file formats on the fly, thus allowing the end user to view them back on the DS without prior conversion.

The iPlayer supports a variety of codecs including DivX, Xvid, Quicktime, Windows Media video, Realmedia, MPEG, ASF, VOB and Flash video. Other formats actually work, but are either unstable or just playback at a speed too slow to watch (see MP4, h264 etc.). MKV container formats are not available for playback when viewing files under the 'Video' menu but can still be loaded under the 'Files' menu, though most heavy duty formats in such containers, such as h264 for example, are simply not able to run at a decent speed. And for files with multiple audio tracks, only the primary audio track will play. You can not switch between audio tracks. Regarding subtitle support; contained and external subtitle files are not supported.

The majority of standard formats such as XviD, Realmedia etc. unless encoded at a ridiculously high bit rate actually play back surprisingly well. There are a few dropped frames and I've experienced a few sudden skips, but these are far and few between. Audio is also very good, and sound is outputted in stereo on the DS speakers, but the volume is ridiculously low when not using headphones. Fortunately you can increase the volume percentage to 200% to make it play at a level that's comfortable to listen to, but even at that volume it's still only equal to that of most DS games.

Video quality is very good and actually looks rather stunning on the DS Lite/DSi LCD screens, even with the limited colour palette. A good quality video file will look very crisp and clear (even so much that it makes the video compression artifacts so much more obvious!). Video plays back on the top screen, while the bottom screen shows the standard player controls and file info. The screens backlight turns off after a while to focus attention to the top screen. Regarding video frame size, you can choose to make the file play in its native aspect ratio (which, for widescreen movies makes it look ridiculously small), or you can set it to stretch the video window to fill the DS screen, but then this makes widescreen videos look too stretched. There is no option to view widescreen videos in 4:3 mode by cropping to the centre.