Backstory: Once upon a time 5 years ago, I ordered an audio player called the Neuros. What a great audio player it was! It was big like a brick, but I didn’t mind that since I only used it in my car. It supported MP3, ogg, WMA, & a couple other file formats and it could transmit on FM radio frequencies, so I could listen to it on my car stereo. However one sad day in about December of 2005, it died and I was (GASP!) forced to go back to using CDs.
Fast forward to about now, I’m looking to get that awesome capability of being able to play my music in 3 main file formats (MP3, ogg, and FLAC) back and listen to it on my car stereo, while having many GigaBytes of storage space. The Ipod won’t work because it doesn’t support ogg or FLAC formats and is rather expensive. I can’t get another Neuros because they discontinued it! And besides, I want to be able to listen directly through a plug-in line rather than over a transmitted signal, because the sound quality on the Neuros, while being pretty good compared to other wireless audio solutions, was still rather poor.
Well, I have a Nintendo DS and a slot-1 cartridge for it called the EZ-Flash 5+, or EZV+ for short. It allows me to use my DS to run homebrew software of all kinds, including one called DSOrganize which can play MP3, ogg, FLAC, and many more formats! The cartridge has a small slot in it that reads microSDHC or microSD cards, so that is where all of the data is stored. The SDHC spec supports cards up to 32 GB, although at the time of this writing there are only 8 GB cards for sale. BTW, the cards are the size of my fingernail.
I downloaded DSOrganize today and tested it out. It works great, supports playlist files, and played every file I threw at it flawlessly. Now I just need a car stereo head unit with an aux-in jack in the front, which are surprisingly easier to find now than they were the last time I looked for them just 2 years ago. Even most of the low-end car stereo units have them now. Basically, I get one of those and install it, then run an audio cable from my DS-headphone jack to the car stereo and I have musical bliss.
So let’s compare prices and capabilites of the setup I want to an Ipod 8 GB. I’m not going to include the price of the car stereo, since that would be required for both.
DS solution:
Nintendo DS lite: $100-$130
EZ-Flash V+: $25.50
8 GB microSDHC card: $38.50
Total: $164-$194
Pros: Plays all the music formats I want it to, supports playlists, swappable memory cards so you can load different/more music onto it without going back to your computer, can be upgraded to have more capacity when bigger microSDHC cards come out, and can play games.
Cons: NOTHING EVER (completely objective viewpoint)
Ipod solution:
Ipod 8GB: $194
Pros: Can play more video formats (actually a con, I don’t want to crash my car because I was watching Romper Room while driving)
Cons: Can’t play all the audio formats I want, can’t swap memory cards out on the go, can’t be upgraded, can’t play games on it.
Conclusion: With the Ipod, you spend more to do less. With the DS, I get the novelty of playing music off of a gaming system, yay! Really, I already had the DS and the EZV+, so for $38.50 extra I get to have enough storage space to rival modern audio players. Plus when the bigger microSDHC cards come out I can swap one of those in for more capacity. Try doing THAT with an Ipod! I just ordered a new car stereo and will have it installed next weekend, and also just ordered the memory card which should arrive this week. The setup should be complete by next Sunday!
