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Wii Entertainment Games

Wii System Menu 4.0 Released 94

Posted by Soulskill from the storage-is-good dept.
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."
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Wii System Menu 4.0 Released More

Wii System Menu 4.0 Released

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  • Hacks (Score:2)

    by emag ( 4640 )

    I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that this disables the homebrew hack stuff again...for the next couple days? Perhaps I should actually hack mine before installing this update (also explains why my Wii's been flashing).

    • Re:Hacks (Score:5, Informative)

      by i.of.the.storm ( 907783 ) on Saturday March 28, 2009 @12:10AM (#27367919) Homepage
      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:Hacks (Score:5, Informative)

        by i.of.the.storm ( 907783 ) on Saturday March 28, 2009 @01:21AM (#27368211) Homepage

        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.

  • Still no native DVD playback? Is this ever going to happen? If it does, I can finally disconnect my PS2...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Millennium ( 2451 )

      Are you telling me you don't have a DVD player yet? You can get those things for less than the cost of a Wii game nowadays, never mind the Wii console.

      • Re:Sigh (Score:4, Interesting)

        by int19 ( 778341 ) on Saturday March 28, 2009 @12:45AM (#27368087)

        Some people don't like to have half a dozen devices connected to their TV's if one device is capable of performing most of those tasks. I fondly recall the "debates" I had with the gf over where to put the DVD player I insisted we buy after I got frustrated with our PS3's lack of IR remote-control support when I have an otherwise homogeneous system with my Logitech Harmony.

        Others, still, do not have enough input sockets on their TV's to support new devices. If I somehow only have one component input, to which my DVD player is currently connected to, and later buy a Wii, it would be nice to not be forced to balance like a monkey trying to reach behind the TV to rewire each time I switch devices.

        • Some people don't like to have half a dozen devices connected to their TV's if one device is capable of performing most of those tasks.

          Certainly no one on Slashdot! That's grounds for having your geek card revoked.

        • Hey man, I don't know if you're still having problems controlling your PS3 over IR but Nyko makes a PS3 IR remote [nyko.com]. I use it and I'm pretty happy with it-the only thing it can't do is turn on the PS3, but that will happen automatically when you put in a disc.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sodul ( 833177 )

        Why would he want to have yet an other device plugged to his TV and home theatre system.

        The back of my TV stand is full of cables, just on the power cables side I have:
        - TV
        - Home Theatre
        - Subwoofer
        - MythTV backend
        - Mac Mini (act as my dvd player too)
        - Wii
        - Cable modem
        - Wireless Router
        - Gigabit switch

        Now add the cables for TV, audio and network and it's a huge hair ball back there. I was more than happy to reclaim the DVD player space an

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      You can with the homebrew channel + mplayer or geexbox. However, It is not that good: people wrote proof of concept but no actual stable code.

      I believe nintendo sells a software to do DVD playback, they will not give it away.

      Oh, BTW, homebrew were already able to read SDHC.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)

      by ragethehotey ( 1304253 ) on Friday March 27, 2009 @10:53PM (#27367557)
      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:Sigh (Score:5, Funny)

        by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Friday March 27, 2009 @11:31PM (#27367775) Journal

        My PS2 fanboy friends used to give me a hard time about that dongle because the PS2 does DVD playbackit out of the box. That is until i pointed out that I could save my games out of the box.....

      • Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Saturday March 28, 2009 @12:46AM (#27368093) Homepage Journal

        All Nintendo would need to do is create a DVD channel and pass on the cost to the people interested. At the same time Nintendo may have other priorities, so this would take a back seat.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by hal2814 ( 725639 )

        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 bu

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Monsuco ( 998964 )

          The most notable difference is that the data is read backwards.

          Game Cube disk are essentially DVD's with part of the disk missing, and they are not read backwards (or at least not on the game cube). If it can play those, I see nothing wrong with playing a movie. A simple Wii Shop Channel Channel could be made, just like with the browser. They could also make an SD / Flash Drive movie/music player. Heck sell em together and call em the Media Channel.

        • a laser doesnt care if its changed direction.

          Its like saying playing an audio tape backwords fails faster, only idiotic tech incompetent manager type assholes would buy that from marketing. Go back to school.

          The disc still spins the same direction, inwards or outwards matters zero.

          Nintendo doesnt make dvd motors/firmware/laser diodes, its an OEM component.

          Listen dude, if the licence is $2, and they sold 50m Wiis, then not having a dvd makes them a $100m, any greedy prick that goes to hell would choose the 1

      • I'll allow the 20% profit, and give $2.40 to nintendont.

        If i can buy a $29 dvd player that still makes profit, then im sure nintendo can too.

        Or do they really prefer to keep that extra $2 * 50 million units to themselves.

        3 years and still no price drop on a $80 piece of hardware.

        Sure if it sells, keep the price up, but doooods, get this system into more poorer peoples hands who can only spare $150.

        And stop ripping of people outside usa, why does usa get to have all the good prices, or is this a 'we nuked yo

    • Re:Sigh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Donniedarkness ( 895066 ) * <Donniedarkness@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday March 28, 2009 @01:04AM (#27368171) Homepage
      It's not going to happen. From what I've read (and I've read, and worked with, a lot), the DVD player in the Wii is not suited for the continuous reads that a movie would demand-- it does short burst reads. Playing movies on it will, over time, ruin the device.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Based on two unfortunate experiences, I would agree. For my job, I travel a fair amount and before I leave each trip, I spend some time with my 4 year old playing Mega Man. HE LOVES Mega Man.

        On two trips, we paused the game for a moment and walked away to do something. A week later, I come home from my trip and find the game still paused. Whoops! This works great... until you try to use the system again. Nasty error code and a $100 fix from Nintendo to get the drive to work again.

        Don't leave the disc on!

        • On two trips, we paused the game for a moment and walked away to do something. A week later, I come home from my trip and find the game still paused. Whoops! This works great... until you try to use the system again. Nasty error code and a $100 fix from Nintendo to get the drive to work again.

          Don't leave the disc on!

          Or just lay off the 10,080 minute movies.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Monsuco ( 998964 )

          Don't leave the disc on!

          Why can they not just make the drive stop when paused. It shouldn't need to read it when paused.

      • This is a complete myth. Plenty of Wii games read the game disc continuously, and there is no evidence that continual reading causes any damage to the laser whatsoever. That said, DVD playing with homebrew is currently not the best quality and is a bit buggy, but things are improving week by week.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by coaxial ( 28297 )

        Why would you have a special made substandard dvd drive when you can get a commodity one for only a few bucks wholesale at volume that can run continuously?

        I have severe doubts that a "short burst only" drive exists anywhere in the world.

    • Convert your movie files to M-JPEG [wikipedia.org] and play them off an SD card through the Photo Channel [wikipedia.org].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zoloto ( 586738 )
      I'd rather have the ability to plug in my USB HDD or be able to mount a network share (SMB/NFS/SSH) directly on the wii to access my iso'd movies that way!
  • Uh, you shouldn't be encouraging people to downgrade to this version.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mrbcs ( 737902 )
      Nintendo warns you that if you have "modified" your system, you shouldn't do this update. It can apparently brick the wii.

      • Re:Kills Twilight Hack, Temporarially (Score:4, Informative)

        by i.of.the.storm ( 907783 ) on Saturday March 28, 2009 @12:11AM (#27367927) Homepage
        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.

        • I would imagine it is part of the standard boiler to cover their ass in court. They guarantee that the Wii will work with official software with the Nintendo seal of quality and all that. Once you use stuff that they did not make or approve, you are on your own. If you break something, it is your own fault.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by i.of.the.storm ( 907783 )
      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 y

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ragethehotey ( 1304253 )

        Also, you don't really need the Twilight Hack once you've installed the Homebrew Channel

        Is this true? Because its the only reason I even own zelda, and would love to be able to give it to a friend to have if this is the case.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by millennial ( 830897 )
          Yes, it's true. Once you've installed the HBC you don't need the disc anymore.
        • That seems strange. Do you use the Twilight Hack to launch homebrew every time or have you just never gotten into homebrew? Once the Homebrew Channel is on your system you can launch homebrew through it from an SD card. Just install the HBC [hackmii.com] and you don't need TP anymore. You just have to be careful not to delete the HBC, and check wiibrew.org before every update in case it removes the HBC. So far, no updates have, although they have removed hacked TP saves.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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.

        No, you don't seem to understand at all, there is no need to move to a different game.

        For eternity people will be able to buffer-overflow zelda, it's a pressed disc.

        The problem is hacking the wii's system software (ios) to gain control of the co-processor that handles all the security certificates etc.

        Hacking zelda and controlling the PPC is child's play, the ARM doing the gruntwork is the goal.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Toonol ( 1057698 )
          For eternity people will be able to buffer-overflow zelda, it's a pressed disc.

          No, it's easy enough for an OS update to close the hole. If you tried to use the buffer-overflow trick with Zelda on an updated Wii, it will no longer work. If you mean that it will always work for an non-updated Wii, with an older OS, you are correct.
      • Well, I of course read that too, but previously Nintendo has killed off the Twilight Hack, and look how long it still survived. I wouldn't say it's permanently dead, but yeah, it's a possibility.

        It doesn't kill the HBC, you're right, but I think it's better to be safe and keep the TP Hack option open, just in case something goes wrong.

    • Re:Kills Twilight Hack, Temporarially (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Toonol ( 1057698 ) on Saturday March 28, 2009 @02:42AM (#27368503)
      Losing an exploit, but gaining significant and long-anticipated new features. This is only a downgrade to a fraction of a percent of Wii users... and the majority of them are playing copied games, and Nintendo doesn't really need to worry too much about irritating them. They'll crack it again soon anyway; Nintendo just has to make these exploits irritating enough that normal people would have no desire to use them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Monsuco ( 998964 )

        This is only a downgrade to a fraction of a percent of Wii users... and the majority of them are playing copied games, and Nintendo doesn't really need to worry too much about irritating them.

        Actually, I suspect just as many use it for the video player and weird little wiimote games. I do use mine for emulators too, but the main thing I emulate is the SNES game Earthbound, since Nintendo refuses to release it on Virtual Console.

  • Has anyone with a mod chip installed this?
    If so what chip and any problems?

  • go to hackmii.com [hackmii.com]

  • Summary is wrong (Score:5, Informative)

    by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara.hudson@b ... m ['on.' in gap]> on Saturday March 28, 2009 @07:33AM (#27369443) Journal

    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.

    • Ummm have you tried it - yes you can launch games directly off SD card it takes a few more seconds to launch but it works. You need free space on your Wii to launch (it copies all or part of it to internal memory as it launches - sounds slow, but it seems much faster than the normal copy/move to SD)

      • No, you're wrong. [hackmii.com]

        If it copies to NAND (the internal Wii memory) before launching, then, by definition, games aren't being launched directly off SD card.

        • Re:Summary is wrong (Yes, it really is.) (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Ifni ( 545998 ) on Saturday March 28, 2009 @12:40PM (#27371033) Homepage

          It's splitting hairs - the game is being launched from the card (in that you navigate to the game in the SD card's menu structure and select it for play there), but it is then (automagically) copied to the system memory for execution - behind the scenes such that to the typical user it appears to be playing from the card.

          The end result, from a user point of view, is the same as if it were being played from the card except for one annoying point - the game size is still limited by the free internal memory on the Wii, meaning an 8 gig game is out, unless the Wii supports some system of virtualizing the system memory or loading the object in parts, which I suspect is possible.

          So basically, you are both right, it just depends on how you look at it - from the technical perspective or from the user perspective - as well as the semantic detail - launching as opposed to executing.

      • ... and people need to learn to read ...

        You need free space on your Wii to launch (it copies all or part of it to internal memory as it launches - sounds slow, but it seems much faster than the normal copy/move to SD) - sounds slow, but it seems much faster than the normal copy/move to SD)

        So you're saying the article summary is correct, and yet, you agree with me that it has to copy the game first - it doesn't play it directly off the SD card ... get real. Even the menu says as much if you click on the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Monsuco ( 998964 )

      Hopefully they'll upgrade the Opera browser to start using all that space.

      I'd rather em just upgrade Opera's Flash Player from the 7.x series to the 10.x series so I can watch South Park via internet on my TV.

      • I'd rather em just upgrade Opera's Flash Player from the 7.x series to the 10.x series so I can watch South Park via internet on my TV.

        I agree wholeheartedly, but I don't know how well the current Wii would be able to handle that ... it's got a sub-gigahertz cpu, after all.

        I think Nintendo is keeping their eye on the price point, and waiting for tech to catch up so that their next-gen (Wii 2, or maybe the W-II :-) will be able to do full hi-def without breaking the wallet or purse, and will still run co

  • I wonder if the larger storage space means we could see Sega CD titles on the Virtual Console. I'd love to play the Lunar series or Dark Wizard again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 )

      I'd much rather play the original discs in it, but there isn't a Sega CD emulator in the HBC yet. :(

      (It'd be nice if it supported USB CD drives for this reason, too.)

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