Streaming Video Service Coming To the Wii 103
Gamasutra reports that Nintendo is partnering with a company called Dentsu to "distribute original streaming video programming via the Wii, with a 2009 launch confirmed in Japan, and an eye towards a later Western launch." According to a press statement, some of the videos will be free, and some will cost money. This will help to answer concerns that the Wii was lagging behind the other major consoles in video content.
The beeb's been doing it for months... (Score:3, Informative)
BBC iPlayer - on the Wii! [bbc.co.uk]
Re:What about the quality? (Score:4, Informative)
You do realize in United States 1080i has ben the norm for years too. And just recently TVs are now 1080p 55 Pixels height (about the size of an Icon) isn't that much of an advancement. It is more on what the broadcast standards are in the area. Most people can't tell the difference between 480i and 720p and 1080i and 1080p for you to tell the difference between 1080i and 1125i you would be watching the pixels more then the movie, and have a really good eye for detail.
The Wii is no XBox or PS3 but it does have enough juice to do the job. The 480i which is the same as most DVD players output. Which gives a rather clear picture. It is no Blueray but it is clean and clear and you can see what is happening without it looking like you are watching life threw a screen. The Wii just needs to decode video in real time, that is the heavy processing. But it is just 2d stuff. Most legal streaming media is at 480 or less even if you have a box that can handle HDTV the size of the data is still to big to get on the internet or most connections.
Re:What about the quality? (Score:3, Informative)
1125i and 1080i are the same thing. OP is just using different terminology. Much like 480i is actually 525i but has some extra lines that aren't used, 1125i is the actual, full range of scan lines in HDTV of which 1080 are actively used.
It's just a difference in terminology. In fact, if you look in the manuals for TVs that talk about 1125i, they'll usually say something like "Supported resolutions: 1125i (1080i)." I've only ever heard of the term being used in Japan. Apparently one of the old analog HD broadcast standards there (MUSE) used the term 1125i to describe their broadcasts. Now, everyone still has to use the term for fear of looking like the worse product. Think of it as the TV version of calling a billion bytes a gigabyte in the hard drive world; the company that doesn't will look like a worse product to the uninformed masses.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sad (Score:2, Informative)
The Internet Channel was free for a limited time. I think the first year or so that it was out. There is indeed a fee for it now.
How to watch video on the Wii (Score:1, Informative)
I tested a bunch of streaming/converting solutions that all involved watching low-quality videos through the Opera browser. They were all slow, pixelated and frequently ran out of memory.
I then installed the Homebrew Channel on the Wii (using the Twilight Hack, no hardware modification). It was dead simple to install, and now I watch all my divx and xvid videos through mplayer (wii version). It works great, although from what I've read the processor chokes on HD content (most video torrents I get are 720p or so). Oh, and you can either load the videos on the SD card or plug in an external hard drive or USB key for the videos. My other beef with it is the crappy fast-forwarding which sometimes freezes the Wii.
As an added bonus, there's a ton of applications available on the Homebrew Channel (anything from emulators to utilities to multimedia). All free.