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Nintendo's First Podcast
celerityfm writes "With the US release of an MP3/multimedia player add-on for the Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance just around the corner, Nintendo is already busy creating content for it with their first Podcast, produced by podcast pioneer Carl Franklin. Check out the first episode, it's all about Nintendogs." Commentary is available at Press the Buttons. From that post:"From the sound of things, girls love Nintendogs. Dog training tips are exchanged, fans are briefly interviewed, and even a parent weighs in now and then. Ms. McCollom's segment goes in to why girls are apt to love raising portable puppies and just how the Nintendo DS's wireless mode enables gamers to meet new players and their dogs. Teen People even proclaims the experience 'better than Barbie', so if that's not a young girl stamp of approval, I don't know what is. "
Here is more info/price on the Nintendo media player http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000537028472/
-Dipster
I've been debating importing one for quite some time. Originally I discarded the idea because it turned out that videos encoded for the thing could only handle mono 8khz audio (Yes, eight kilohertz), which sounded horrible. However, a recent firmware update added support for AAC audio in the videos, allowing up to 320kbit 48khz stereo.
What put me off importing is the price; the unit costs $50 US in japan, but the importers sell it for $80, even before shipping costs. I understand they want to make a profit, but a 60% markup over retail is a bit much. Because it is expected to sell for $50 when it comes to North America, I think I'll probably just wait for it to be available here instead of importing.
When you think about it, the unit is really rather impressive. A hardware MPEG-4 decoder that can handle video at over a megabit, and AAC audio over 320kbit, at the same time, and it costs only $50.
My laptop also has an SD slot, so I can save some cash on an SD reader.
The only downside of the play-yan is that while it can be used in the DS, it only displays content at GBA resolution; the upcoming M3, a similar device, uses a PassMe type solution to allow it to run both in a GBA and on a DS at native res. This means that if I purchase the Play-Yan for my GBA, if I get a DS I won't be able to take advantage of the additional screen space.
Oh well. I'll probably still pick one up when it launches here.
From the wikipedia article you linked to:
"Possibly the first use of the term podcasting was as a synonym for audioblogging or weblog-based amateur radio in an article by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian on February 12, 2004." Adam Curry didn't event the word, but he did help popularize it.
What's interesting in light of all the talk these days over the term "podcast" is that many of the people who were doing it back in 2004 resisted people calling it "podcasting"! In fact there was an ongoing bet between the original hosts of the Engadget podcast as to whether or not the word "podcast" would stick or not. Well. The rest is history.
AJAX anyone?
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
It is just a GBA title. On the DS it still works, but at GBA resolution (Which is a lower than the DS).
None of this matters for music of course, but for video it does.
The restriction comes from this using the GBA socket. It has to, really, since the DS socket is so tiny. But because it uses the GBA socket, it has to stay in GBA mode. The DS is very strict about that, and it requires hacked firmware, or a PassMe (goes into DS socket, plug DS game into passme, passme redirects DS execution to GBA slot).
The M3 uses a passme-type device. Despite the fact that the M3 uses the GBA slot and works on GBA, thanks to the hardware hack it is also able to run in DS mode at native res.
The M3's site can be found at http://www.m3adapter.com/
Of course, the M3 isn't out yet, and I have a GBA, so the added bulk and probably added cost isn't really worth it for me.
You're right though about them probably not messing with it... being compatible with so many consoles all at once is awesome... heh.. when do we start seeing people putting play-yans in gamecube game boy players and making a Nintendo HTPC? :P
:)
An interesting thought, and one that is almost possible. The Play-Yan can actually decode video up to about 352x288, but can only display it at 240x160 due to the limitations of the GBA screen. If the GB player didn't have to follow the GBA resolution requirements it could certainly allow the GameCube to play back cable-TV quality content.
As it is now people will likely be able to use existing podcatchers and vidcatching clients with the play-yan and just sync to the SD card, so wifi syncing of podcasts/etc isn't really neccesary, but would be cool.
Not quite. The Play-Yan, at least with the new firmware, is only halfway there. It supports the MP4 fileformat, and it is very easy to encode/transcode for/to it with ffmpeg. However it is highly unlikely that existing content on the internet will play without transcoding. This probably isn't an issue though. ffmpeg is quite fast, it is opensource, and as a command line tool it should be easy to throw into whatever pipeline you want to use to get content onto the Play-Yan. Simply set your setup to transcode the file before copying it onto the SD card and you are set.
HOWEVER I would LOVE my iPod to wirelessly sync and if Nintendo were to do this with the Play-Yan I think we'd see Apple push that feature through pretty quickly given the large GBA install base and that with the Play-Yan Nintendo is effectively competing with Apple.
Ah, but the GBA install base is only a potential. It only becomes a real competitor if the Play-Yan install base is significant. 100 million people could own GBAs, but if Nintendo only sells 1 million Play-Yans, they aren't exactly cutting into the iPod Shuffle marketspace.
Not to mention that the cost of a GBA, plus Play-Yan, plus 1GB SD card exceeds the cost of a iPod Shuffle. The 1GB iPod Shuffle goes for about $129 US, while if we say the GBA can be had for $50, the Play-Yan is $50, and perhaps $100 for a decent 1GB SD card, we're already approaching double the cost of an iPod Shuffle.
Of course, the iPod Shuffle doesn't play video, nor does it play games, and it doesn't even have a screen, so that extra $70 gets you a lot of extra functionality. Still, I think the two market spaces are far enough apart that they won't interfere with eachother.
It should be noted that one of the reasons the Play-Yan works more reliably than other unofficial solutions is that the Play-Yan has dedicated decoding hardware onboard in the form of an MPEG-4 decoder chip. This is how it manages to decode 352x288 video at 1mbit with 320kbit AAC audio in realtime. Even writing your own video playing solution for the gameboy and running it in an emulator, it would be unlikely that you'd be able to match the Play-Yan's performance. However, you would certainly be able to get some video decoding working; the generation 2 Gameboy Movie Player accessory (The predecessor to the M3) relied entirely on the Gameboy CPU, if I recall correctly. It was forced to use special audio and video codecs.
Of course a GBA emulator for the iPod is still really cool