Nintendo Releases Wii Browser For Free, Updates Flash 163
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo has released an update for the Wii Internet Channel (a version of the Opera browser). It is now a free download (if you already paid for it, you get a free NES game), and finally supports Flash 9 content after being limited to Flash 7 ever since it was launched in late 2006."
http://www.youtube.com/xl (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/xl [youtube.com] is an easy way to access youtube content from your wii
Works perfectly in mine with the OLDER version of the internet channel
Re:hahah finally :) (Score:4, Informative)
I should have waited (Score:2, Informative)
Meh, at least there's a slight compensation =/
Regarding Youtube, we tried watching some videos but I found the framerate to be very laggy, especially in the full-screen mode. I didn't do extensive testing of YoutubeXL vs standard Youtube site, so I don't know the full extent of this issue, but I'm hoping it improves with this upgrade.
Re:The Wii is on the way down (Score:4, Informative)
Wii Fit Plus
Wii Sports Resort
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Red Steel 2
New Super Mario Brothers
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
+ a bunch of 360 ports that probably won't be as good.
+ a bunch of sports games that are better on the Wii thanks to the Wii Motion Plus.
Post Christmas there is:
Mario Galaxy 2
Metroid: Other M
No More Heroes 2
+ a bunch of 360 ports that probably won't be as good.
Re:Finally useful... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Does it work with Hulu? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Finally useful... (Score:3, Informative)
...for watching videos on YouTube?
Haven't even bothered to install the browser so far, my wife's netbook runs circles around a Wii for couch surfing.
Actually I'm genuinely curious: Who uses the Wii browser and for what?
YouTube works wonderfully, though YouTube seems to serve pretty low-res videos at the moment (I don't think Wii has the processor power to decode HD videos anyway). So it works, but doesn't look exactly glorious - but still pretty watchable if you squint just right. And in this version, based on cursory testing, the YouTube XL fullscreen mode finally seems to work at tolerable framerate - it used to work nicely in non-fullscreen, but went sluggish in fullscreen. (Incidentally, Flash 7 for Linux suffered from the same problem but they fixed it in newer versions...)
And I've mostly been using the Internet Channel for watching streaming video and HomestarRunner stuff, quickly checking game guides, and occasionally posting to identi.ca. It's not the fastest browser around and goes sluggish on JavaScript-heavy pages like Slashdot (then again, so does my Athlon XP 3000+ desktop.) And there's no AdBlock to alleviate these things. And of course, I haven't figured out how to set up the USB keyboard layout to non-US layouts, but that's a minor problem. All in all, it does most of the stuff I'd expect from a set-top box browser just fine.
!Flash 9 (Score:5, Informative)
I am (unfortunately) a Flash dev.
The new Internet Channel supports Flash Lite 3, not Flash 9. Flash Lite 3 supports all the ActionScript Virtual Machine 1 (AVM1) content that will run on or before Flash 9. However, it does not support AVM2 content -- that is, content created with ActionScript 3 or Flex. ActionScript 3 was released with Flash 9. I don't know of any Flash 9 content that isn't written using AS3/AVM2 -- if you're trying to be backwards compatible (say, you're a corporation, and every 0.01% penetration counts) you're gonna code in Flash 7 or 8 anyway.
This opens up a bunch of content written with Flash 8, but it still means you're not going to able to use, say, the vast majority of games on Kongregate or YouTube HD. Besides that, the browser has so little memory available to it that any "high end" Flash content is off-limits anyway. This update really doesn't do much for me.
Re:I hope the sensor bar can deploy airbags... (Score:2, Informative)
I believe that I read in the update notes that the new browser is using Flash Lite 3.1, which is like Flash 8 only... lite-er?. At any rate, my first (and only) attempt to load Pandora caused the browser to lock up solid.
Not Flash 9 content ! (Score:4, Informative)
Although the updated Internet Channel identifies itself as a v9 Flash Player, it is actually still incapable of playing what anyone considers 'Flash 9 content' such as applications that use Adobe's Flex framework (or indeed anything that needs ActionScript 3).
It's really 'Flash Lite 3.1' as explained at http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/faq/
Re:The Wii is on the way down (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, there certainly is [wikipedia.org].