Work-in-Progress: First Look on Viewboy DS2TV Adapter Prototype

April 27th, 2006, 17:54 Posted By: wraggster

Awesome News article from Lik Sang



Lik-Sang.com has recently been contacted by SyberSoft about a couple of prototypes that have been built and that are considered ready for mass-production. Both projects are converters displaying the image of your Nintendo handheld on Television sets. One is for the Gameboy Advance SP, the other is, more interestingly for the smoking hot Nintendo DS system. The products follow up on a growing trend and were deemed to come out of the drawers at this point in time I guess... The first step in this direction was the TV de Advance for the Gameboy Advance back in 2002.



Both these new peripherals are based on the same kind of technology as the Blaze Adapter for the PSP: the image is being captured through a lens and mirror dispositive placed inside the product, then rendered through an AV Cable. All these modifications that were necessary using the good ole TV de Advance are no longer required. If this new technique is for sure welcome for those who don't like soldering irons and loss of warranty, it comes with drawbacks, as we have seen earlier. First of all, this method implies splashing out a low-resolution image, optimized for a small screen, into a larger and wider one on the big TV. For sure, some colors will look washed out and the graphics won't be amazingly bright. This was true with PSP adapters and it's even more visible using the GBA SP or the Nintendo DS, since the quality of the original signal you are tinkering with is already considerably less. On any television we used, the graphics appeared a bit blocky and slightly blurred up. In fact, when we played it on a Plasma TV of 44 inches, the image was converted into a smaller window embedded in the screen (see pictures below). Furthermore, any fingerprint or dust you leave on the handheld TFT or on the protective window of the TV Adapter will show up in a very obvious manner on your larger panel. Still, all in all, we have to reckon we actually expected worse results than what we actually obtained (again, because of the low-res signal the NDS/GBA are sending out in the first place).

Still, the list of "minus" points needs to be further extended when driving your focus solely on the Nintendo DS iteration of the accessory. Naturally, the particularities of the Nintendo DS make it difficult to emulate the experience on a big TV screen. As a matter of fact, the popular gizmo from Ninty offers two different screens, and one of them happens to be touchable with a stylus or your fingertip. There is no work-around for this. Hence, only the top LCD display can be broadcasted on a larger screen, and whatever needs to be done on the touchscreen, well, stays on the touchscreen. This will sometimes force you to move your head away from the TV in order to look at the tactile panel, and vice versa. We found it to be more troublesome than simply glimpsing from one small screen to another on the standard DS... as one could have guessed. Things won't go completely wrong in a game like Mario Kart DS, as you spend most of your time focusing on the road, turning with D-pad and triggering actions with buttons... But for the games that have their entire gameplay centered around the touchscreen gimmick, a TV Adapter session quickly turns things into a nightmare experiment.

All these problems and limitations are to be expected with such gadgets, which are usually appreciated by some for the fact that they allow to share a bit of the fun with those around you [rather than letting them watch your moves on a tiny screen], and also by those tech-lovers who just love any occasion to freak around. In other words, if the product is most certainly not the next big thing on the mass market, there is still probably some kind of a niche for it. Especially when you consider that the makers have an SRP of 29.95 US$ in mind for their baby. The current samples are respectively fitting only with Gameboy Advance SP (not with Gameboy Advance or Gameboy Micro) or with Nintendo DS (not with Nintendo DS Lite). But that of course could be changed through some redesigning work, if so would be wished by the potential partners, distributors or mass-manufacturers out there. The current team is in fact all ears open when it comes to feedback, advice and suggestions on where to go next with their plans. More importantly, they are also on the lookout for OEM buyers or other potential partners with an assembling arm and distribution channels, in order to bring the idea from conceptualization to mass production. Any interested party is welcome to get in touch with the team behind this effort through this email account: ronATNOSPAMsybersoft.lv

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