Nintendo's upcoming DS handheld becomes a more and more talented device by the day. After recent confirmation of wireless networking capability in the device, CNN Money now reports (citing analysts at American Technology Research) that the DS will possess some form of movie playback capability.

According to the report, a two-hour movie compressed to fit on a 128MB flash RAM card has been demonstrated running on the DS, although it omits mention of when or where the demonstration took place.

Movie playback is an obvious potential use of the system's two screens -- you could have the playback controls on one screen and the movie displayed undisturbed on the other. Nintendo has also shown no opposition to third-party development of video playback solutions for the Game Boy Advance. Two such systems were displayed at E3 2003, and Majesco recently announced plans to market Nickelodeon cartoons on GBA cartridges later this year.

There's naturally some distance between the device supporting movie playback and companies actually marketing movies to play on the DS. However, developers could at least use the feature to present more impressive pre-rendered movies in games.

Sony has of course openly promoted movie playback as a key feature of its upcoming PSP handheld, due to debut in Japan alongside the DS late this year and in North America and Europe shortly afterward. The PSP features built-in support for the H.264 video compression codec and advanced surround-sound support, and Sony plans to market movies on its proprietary UMD optical discs.

As more news of the DS' many talents arise, we'll continue to update with new details.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in 1UP.