My iPod Video 5.5G, which I got as a gift for Christmas a couple of years ago, has been good to me. It does what it was made to do — play music — very well, and it’s still playing videos and that nice game of Pong. However, there are times when I get bored with the relatively dull iPod UI, when I wish I had more games on it, or when I wish I could use my own equalizer settings to play my music the way I want to play it. The beauty of having a popular device, like the iPod Video 5.5G, is its community of dedicated hackers, working night and day to improve it. There are many alternatives to the original Apple firmware, but amongst the various ones, I believe that Rockbox is the most reputable and trusted, and also the one that appeals to me the most for its simplicity (sorry, iPod Linux).

Capabilities

Rockbox can do a boatload of things with the iPod that the original Apple firmware couldn’t — like using Windows Explorer to import music to your iPod (meaning you don’t have to go through iTunes to upload or download your music), more flexible customizability (you can tweak even the fonts you want to see), and a support for a huge variety of file formats (http://download.rockbox.org/manual/rockbox-h10_5gb/rockbox-buildap1.html). But amongst all these, I found the following to be the deciding factors for me:

1. Themes

There are 14 themes for the iPod Video in the Rockbox Themes Directory. Granted, a good portion of them don’t look too hot, but I think there at least one or two that are pretty eye-catching. It’s just a guess — since there used to be a lot more themes that looked a ton better — but I’m assuming that Rockbox developers removed them due to the lack of Album Art capabilities. Works fine for me. If themes are your major concern, then I’d consider using iPod Wizard to tweak the current iPod theme, and just leave Rockbox alone — but if you’re looking for more than just a theme change, read on.

2. Built-in Gameboy

What? You can play Gameboy on your iPod? Yes. For free. Rockbox can play Gameboy and Gameboy Color files by default (granted, Gameboy Color files might be a bit laggier if I’m not mistaken). All you have to do is a quick Google search for ‘Gameboy Color ROMs’ and a ton of results will pop up. I have two things to warn you about: these sites will be shady, and this is not legal if you didn’t already buy a version of the game. I’ve got a legitimate version of Pokemon Red, so I can play it on my iPod. By the way, always go with Charmander — I know it’s a pain in the ass to play against Brock and Misty, but it’ll pay off.

3. Equalizer

I think the factor that sealed the deal would be the built-in equalizer that Rockbox offers. Unlike the iPod default firmware, which only offers presets (such as ‘Bass Booster’), the Rockbox firmware offers pretty full equalizer that allows you to put more emphasis on different frequencies (I think that’s the word for it). A must-have feature for audiophiles or people that get really into their music (but if you were an audiophile, you’d already be ranting about the shortcomings of the iPod, so I can’t see why you’d have one — haha).

Installation

In the olden days, we had to drag and drop files that we downloaded and unzipped from our desktop to the iPod’s drive directory. Not anymore! With the release of Rockbox Utility, Rockbox is a lot simpler to install (not that it wasn’t simple before), so there’s really no need to write a tutorial (plus I don’t really enjoy writing tutorials that much — sorry folks, there are just too many pictures I have to create, then crop, then upload, and then link to — it’s a heck of a process just for a couple of graphics).

Take the Leap!

If you’re afraid because you haven’t done anything like this before, remember that you can always return to your old firmware via iTunes (the iPod System Restore comes in handy). It can be undone! Just remember — follow instructions to the word, don’t do anything stupid like pull out the iPod USB cord while transferring, and relax. But I’d like to say here that if you do manage to brick your iPod, I hold no responsibility for it.

Good luck.

It’s not exactly what I wanted it to be, nor expected it to become: Nintendo’s new DSi is still one pleasant surprise.  Where do I begin?

Source: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2008/10/dsi3.jpg

It’s got a camera.  0.3-megapixels.  Whatever, right?

SD-card for MP3 playback.  That sounds pretty interesting, especially considering the possibilities now that storage is available on the DS officially.  If you’ve heard of R4, you’ll know that this opens up for piracy — basically, you can play ROMs of games on your DS that you can download for free.  SD cards make this much more budget-friendly (as opposed to smaller MicroSD cards), but also open up much more storage (SDHC is going up to 32GB, although I’m not 100% sure whether or not the DSi will be fully compatible with SDHC).

Bigger screen — 17% bigger, making it a “whopping” 3.25 inches.  Not too bad — I could always use more screen real estate.

NO GAMEBOY ADVANCE SUPPORT. Unfortunate, considering how I still have many GBA games I’d love to play on my DS (Pokemon Sapphire and Final Fantasy: Tactics Advanced come to mind).  For a split second, it makes me concerned, but I realize that it would have to eventually be purged — out with the old, in with the new.

Last thing to be considered: connection with the Wii, which I thought was the main selling-point.  It’s got some Photo-sharing feature — nothing big, in my opinion (how many photos have you got on your iPod?  thought so).  Not to be ignored is its DSiWare Store: similar to WiiWare, DSiWare is downloadable content for your DSi.  This somewhat excites me, as this sounds like a more legitimate way to be using the SD storage.

All in all, the DSi is shaping into a very interesting contender.  However, I would’ve liked its connection with the Wii to be stronger, somehow.  Sadly, we in the North Americas will have to wait until late 2009 to be able to pick the DSi up off a shelf, so don’t hold your breath.  Or, fly over to Japan and pick it up next month.

• Video via Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5057889/first-look-at-the-new-nintendo-dsi-in-action
• PC World Hands-on: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/151781/hands_on_with_nintendos_dsi.html