Wii System Menu 4.0 Released

dougisfunny writes "The Wii System Menu 4.0 has been released. It adds a number of features that people have been waiting for, including the ability to use SDHC cards, as well as the ability to download and play things directly off of the SD/SDHC card rather than the internal memory. This was announced at GDC09 by Nintendo's President Saturo Iwata in his keynote address. More information can be found at Nintendo's website."

Re:Sigh

[ragethehotey]

This has nothing to do with ability of the system as there has been homebrew for a while that enables this feature, but rather that royalties would have to be paid in order to legally enable it. If consumers would be willing to eat the price of the upgrade without bitching, I am sure they would be willing to sell it to you. (Remember how the original xbox required a seperate remote in order to use DVD playback?)

Re:Hacks

[i.of.the.storm]

Yeah, I would advise you to just use the Twilight Hack and install the Homebrew Channel and then update - the update does not remove the Homebrew Channel but it does close the hole for the Twilight Hack once and for all, or at least so it would seem. There isn't really a drawback to having the Homebrew Channel on your Wii, except for the maybe 1meg of space it takes up. That way if you later decide you want to use homebrew, you won't have to wait for the next exploit. Team Twiizers, the team behind the Twilight hack, have been sitting on other exploits for when this finally got properly patched, but it's going to take them time to actually put out the next hack so if there's any chance you want homebrew just hack it now and then update.

Re:Kills Twilight Hack, Temporarially

[i.of.the.storm]

Their updates always say that, but it's usually not true if all you've done is install the Homebrew Channel. More invasive (irresponsible) hacks might cause problems but if you stick to the Homebrew Channel only (and DVDx I guess) so far there are no problems. Team Twiizers is generally careful about what they do.

Re:Kills Twilight Hack, Temporarially

[i.of.the.storm]

Actually, it sounds like from what marcan [hackmii.com] said, it might have closed the hole more or less permanently.

# Twilight Hack no longer works. Iâ(TM)d like to remind everyone that this exploit has been in use for over a year. Whether it comes back or a new game exploit takes its place, I think we can say itâ(TM)s served us all well.

While this doesn't necessarily mean that the hack is dead, it seems like they're moving on to the next exploitable game. Also, you don't really need the Twilight Hack once you've installed the Homebrew Channel, and this update does not remove the Homebrew Channel. I held off on updating for a while but I actually buy WiiWare games, so this update is actually useful for me, and I keep my Homebrew Channel. The Twilight Hack finally being fixed does not really matter to me.

Re:Kills Twilight Hack, Temporarially

[millennial]

Yes, it's true. Once you've installed the HBC you don't need the disc anymore.

Re:Hacks

[i.of.the.storm]

Right, so I should probably include relevant links for those too lazy to Google. Consider this a mini-guide to homebrew on the Wii.

• The Homebrew Channel [hackmii.com]: This is essentially a launcher for unsigned code on the Wii. Follow the instructions on the page to install it onto your pre 4.0 Wii. As of now, there are no hacks to install it on 4.0 but it will only be a matter of time. This page also includes the Twilight Hack, which is a hacked save file for Twilight Princess that causes the Wii to crash and I presume elevate privileges so that you can run unsigned code from SD. The idea is that you run the Twilight Hack, which launched the HBC installer, and then it's on your Wii's system memory.
• HackMii [hackmii.com]: The blog of Team Twiizers, the group that does all the ground breaking hacking of the Wii. Definitely add them to your RSS reader if you decide to hack your Wii. It's also an interesting technical read. Note that Team Twiizers are firmly against piracy, and any mention of it there will not be tolerated.
• WiiBrew [wiibrew.org]: Also run by Team Twiizers and co, this is the wiki for Wii homebrew. Contains apps and general information about Wii hacking, as well as technical information on the software and security of the Wii. In particular, this list [wiibrew.org] is a fairly thorough list of legit homebrew applications on the Wii.
• The Homebrew Browser [wiibrew.org]: This gets a special mention out of all the apps because it's basically a package repository type program for the Wii. The guy also runs a blog at codemii.com [codemii.com] with updates on included applications and also a few basic Wii coding tutorials.

Phew. That's probably the most effort I've ever spent on a Slashdot post. These links should be enough to get anyone started. Since I'm tired of typing HTML tags, I'll just list a few recommended apps: GeeXBoX is an excellent media center app, and there's also a handful of mplayer ports, then there's all the emulators, Gecko OS lets you tweak a few aspects of the System menu as well as use cheats (but don't use them online, people have been getting banned), FTPii is useful if you're too lazy to take your SD card out of your Wii, there are a few Wii Linux distros in their infancy, and of course, a plethora of games (including Quake!).

One last thing, Team Twiizers is working on something called BootMii, which is essentially a replacement of some very low level boot code on the Wii. Once this is finished, Wii homebrew will essentially have complete access to everything on the Wii. Keep an eye out for it; among other things it should make a Wii relatively brick-proof. It'll be on Hackmii of course.

Re:Hacks

[KDR_11k]

Gecko OS also breaks the region lock which is pretty damn useful.

If you want the real info on menu 4

[Pvt_Ryan]

go to hackmii.com [hackmii.com]

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me rephrase the key point for you.

Playing DVD movies on the Wii will ruin the device over time.

Summary is wrong

[tomhudson]

as well as the ability to download and play things directly off of the SD/SDHC card rather than the internal memory

No, you can't play the game directly off the SD/SDHC card. You can save downloads and games to the card, but they still have to be loaded into system memory to run. The earliest articles about the update were clear on that. - that the big thing was the rasing of the storage limit from 2gigs to 32gigs, but that it was for storage only.

Still, upping it from 2 gigs is a good thing. Hopefully they'll upgrade the Opera browser to start using all that space.

Re:Kills Twilight Hack, Temporarially

[Anonymous Coward]

If that is all you want, just buy a gp2x instead and connect to tv:
http://www.gbax.com/gp2x.html

Re:Sigh

[hal2814]

The price of the licensing isn't the only thing to consider. The Wii media and drive are very similar to DVD specs but they are not DVDs. The most notable difference is that the data is read backwards. If Nintendo is going to sanction folks using the Wii to do something its hardware was never intended to do (run backwards for hours at a time), then a significant amount of QA time would have to go into making sure the unit isn't damaged in the process.

BAD CAR ANALOGY WARNING:
I can run my car at 5000RPM but that doesn't mean I can keep on doing it day in and day out without any adverse effect.

Does running the Nintendo's laser backwards damage the unit in the long term? I don't know the answer to that but Nintendo probably doesn't either. And until they bother to spend the time and resources to find out, you're going to have to go out of your way to do it.