Teased earlier this week by the hacking group Lost Nintendo History was a homebrew release that would add TV-out to the Nintendo DS Lite, through the use of CFW and an open hardware circuit board. Today, the team managed to deliver on their promises by uploading their release on GitHub, as well as writing up an explanation of their process on their website. According to them, they'd found out that there was a TV-out feature leftover in the DS Lite's SoC, and that with some effort, they would be able to restore the function, allowing anyone to output their DS on their TV without having to resort to extra "bulky or cumbersome hardware" to do so.

Available only and specifically on the DS Lite, the method involves the custom firmware flashME, which reenables the TV-Out feature normally disabled on boot. Twilight Menu and a DS flashcart are also used, in order to boot the NDS_TV_OUT_ENABLE.nds file. Finally, you'll need a circuit board, of which the schematics, gerber file, and finer details are provided in the GitHub release. All of these things combined allow for you to play your DS Lite on your TV, with audio. You can output one screen at a time, and switch between the top or bottom with a single press of a switch on the circuit board. An installation guide and writeup are available on the project's GitHub, linked below.

On December 2020, we discovered that the Nintendo DS Lite's SoC (System on Chip) had a hidden feature: a leftover TV(Television) composite video output signal. This project contains our hardware designs and software code to restore this hidden feature and make it usable again. More details here

Contents

• Schematics & design & BOM
  • Can be found in this respository under /pcb
• Production Files
  • Gerber files are available in the releases page
• Documentation
  • Some base explaination of how the system works, how the PCB and software act altogether, etc. can be found here after the Installation section
• Tutorials
  • For a quick installation/usage tutorial, click here
  • Video Tutorial coming later this month

Acknowledgements
This project wouldn't be possible without the contributions of Gericom, Nitehack and pedro-javierf.

Source
Download Link

 

[playstays_shun]

Cool, but also ewww composite.

just a matter of time before they get RGB or component output

The fact it can display out at all is an accomplishment!

 

[godreborn]

this was a planned feature, but according to Nintendo, there were problems with it.

 

[Foxi4]

Now *this* is an interesting project I'll have to dig into. I always wondered how the IS-Nitro stations got video signal out of what seemed to be bog standard DS'es.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

I agree, apparently it's a digital signal that they're converting over to composite with the PCB so it's hopefully possible to output the signal as component or RGB since the composite-out was just a proof of concept.

If they were to do something like HDMI, there would need to be some sort of fancy digital signal processing since you need stuff like EDID chips for HDMI and the signal would need to be upscaled to reach the minimum HDMI bandwidth

The nds max res is 256x192 4:3; do you really need hdmi for this...s-video or rgb tecwould be really all you need, composite is capable of max 720x480


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Now *this* is an interesting project I'll have to dig into. I always wondered how the IS-Nitro stations got video signal out of what seemed to be bog standard DS'es.

Devkits have extra hardware and are more powerful than their retail counterpart, effectively a more pc spec version of the console, more ram, extra cpu power, and hardware specific to software engineers

The is nitro box contains all the hardware,the nds that's attached is just a "dummy" unit

 

[godreborn]

Devkits have extra hardware and are more powerful than their retail counterpart, effectively a more pc spec version of the console, more ram, extra cpu power, and hardware specific to software engineers

this is true. when gears of war 3 was leaked from epic's website. someone put it on the ps3, but the ps3 can't run it, because it doesn't have enough ram. the 360 and the ps3 have the same amount of ram, but the 360 has shared ram meaning that the os' ram can be used. the ps3 doesn't allow for this. only the consoles with twice the ram can run the bootleg.

 

[Lostbhoy]

DMCA'D in 5....4....3......

 

[godreborn]

DMCA'D in 5....4....3......

knowing Nintendo, it wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

DMCA'D in 5....4....3......

This is safe, since the nds line was discontinued, plus it's not anything ninty gonna lose money on

 

[SaberLilly]

this is cool, isn't there converter boxes that can convert the composite signal to HDMI? I mean i mean it would still probably look like butt. At the same time though that would make video capture easier right?

 

[godreborn]

This is safe, since the nds line was discontinued, plus it's not anything ninty gonna lose money on

remember all the retro sites with old games, closed by NIntendo somewhat recently.

 

[Lostbhoy]

This is safe, since the nds line was discontinued, plus it's not anything ninty gonna lose money on

This........

remember all the retro sites with old games, closed by NIntendo somewhat recently.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

remember all the retro sites with old games, closed by NIntendo somewhat recently.

Yeah but remember that it's a rom hosting site, this simply is a hardware extension, using an existing feature included with the unit when I bought it, all the hardware is, is a dac and some passives, the software is using devkitpro hopefully, they never took down flash me

 

[godreborn]

Nintendo will find some excuse.

 

[BvanBart]

Better download the source quick. Nintendo is likely going to C&D this pretty quick.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

I doubt it, people had built such devices before but more complicated

Better download the source quick. Nintendo is likely going to C&D this pretty quick.

 

[Foxi4]

Devkits have extra hardware and are more powerful than their retail counterpart, effectively a more pc spec version of the console, more ram, extra cpu power, and hardware specific to software engineers

The is nitro box contains all the hardware,the nds that's attached is just a "dummy" unit

That makes sense, I haven't looked into the IS-Nitro units that closely. I suppose using a dummy unit as a controller and storing the hardware in a larger enclosure is quite a bit easier to manage.

 

[godreborn]

I think the lack of cpu power is why this thing was abandoned. I don't think they could get a good enough picture due to that or it wasn't large enough. Nintendo has mentioned this feature in the past and why it was abandoned, so I'm trying to remember.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

That makes sense, I haven't looked into the IS-Nitro units that closely. I suppose using a dummy unit as a controller and storing the hardware in a larger enclosure is quite a bit easier to manage.

 

[tfocosta]

Beautiful! What's next? A potato-charged portable version of a PS2 with a GBA backlit screen glued on it?

 

[Deleted member 668561]