Initial batches of R4′s could be language swapped by soldering but if you buy the current R4′s, you can’t use firmware from different languages. So in order to counter this you have to patch the _DS_MENU.DAT. This file contains the text for the menu and dialog boxes.

I bought a Chinese R4 ’cause it was cheaper. The Chinese and English R4′s are the same except for colour. Chinese=white and English=black. (some new batches of English R4′s are white though) And of course the language. Other than that, they are identitcal.

Tested on the latest English firmware, 1.18 (may NOT work on new versions)

1. Download the latest English firmware from www.r4ds.com
2. Download the latest language patcher (right-click, choose “save as”)
   
3. Extract firmware files and put the _DS_MENU.DAT file in the same directory as patch.exe and info.db
   
4. Run patch.exe
5. Detect info/settings?   Y
   
6. Type in name of dat file, _DS_MENU.DAT
7. It’ll ask you if you want to run it on M3 hardware, type N
8. It’ll ask you if you want to run it on Chinese or Japanese hardware, type 1
9. Copy the patched _DS_MENU.DAT to the root of your microSD with the other firmware files.
10. Done. Enjoy your new English R4 Revolution DS for the Nintendo DS Lite.

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The Moonshell DS application can play DPG video. It does a very good job and compression is pretty good. The R4 Revolution DS has Moonshell builtin. You can play DPG on any DS cart that allows you to load Moonshell.

I stumbled upon a very good batch converter for DPGs, it doesn’t have a nice gui but it’s very well made. Just drop the files in a folder, run a text program, hit 2 keys and it starts converting. EZBuilder rocks and is the best converter not only for DS DPG’s but PSP formats, and many other devices too!  Tell all your friends.

EZbuilder 3.0 beta is out, but it’s in Chinese for now so I’m sticking to the old version which works very well.

Software needed:

EZBuilder (English Site)
EZBuilder (Chinese Site official)
AVISynth
KLite Mega Codec Pack

• Download English version of EZBuilder.
• You need codecs, I usually use the Klite Mega codec packs from free-codecs.com
  • This has every codec under the sun, DIVX, Xvid, RM, QT, etc
• Download and install AVISynth. I’m using 2.5.7
• Unzip EZBuilder to a directory (www.7zip.org to download decompresser)
• Copy the videos you want to convert into the MediaFile folder
• For SRT subtitles, put them them in MediaFile folder with the same name as the movie. ex. shrek.srt with shrek.avi
• For SSA/ASS/IDX/SUB subtitles, put them in Subtitle folder
• Run ezbuilder.exe
• Choose [2] ” Nintendo DS About “
• Choose [1] NDS-DPG
• Wait, encoding times varies with your CPU, I have core2duo 1.8Ghz and it converts pretty fast.
• When your file is converted, it should show up in the DoneFile directory
• Copy the WHATEVER.DPG file in the DoneFile directory to your microSD card
• Launch Moonshell and watch

Hints:

1. Try not to have funky characters or spaces in your file name

2. Use the NTFS Link Shell extension

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