Would You Watch Movies On Your Wii?
As far as being a multimedia player, Nintendo's Wii has lagged behind its competition, though it never really seemed that bothered by it. Sure, some people might have complained a little about how the Wii is the only console that doesn't have DVD playback, but honestly, does anyone need yet another DVD player in their house? And gamers have been able to download and watch movies and TV shows as well as other assorted videos on their PlayStation 3's and Xbox 360's for a long, long time. But now Nintendo has teamed up with ad agency Dentsu Inc. to launch their own video distribution service on the Wii.
The difference will be that the content provided on this new channel will be created specifically for the Wii, as opposed to pre-existing movies and TV series like Microsoft and Sony. I'm not sure how well this is going to go over, being that it's going to depend heavily on what kind of programs they offer. Being the Wii, it's definitely going to be family-friendly, probably cartoons and kid shows. And being that the Wii has no hard drive, they're all going to have to be streamed, which will affect quality. But the Wii has a massive install base, and Nintendo would be foolish not to take advantage of that. Right now, I'm skeptical, but that condition could upgrade to curious once more details are released.
Nintendo, Dentsu To Distribute Video On Wii: Nikkei [Reuters]
Wootini
Posted to Video Games on 30 December 2008
· Comments (6)
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"...being that the Wii has no hard drive, they're all going to have to be streamed..."
This should REALLY read "being that the Wii has no hard drive, Wii owners are going to be hard-pressed to find any more room for yet ANOTHER channel." In the vein of console company myopia, much like the Xbox and its Repeating RRoD, and Sony's less-than-stellar cash calf "Home", its Nintendo saying "Yes, us too!" while they duct-tape two SD cards together and call it additional storage. Why are they putting so much effort into content delivery when there's no place to actually put the content? Give me a hard drive, a flash drive, ANYTHING I can run downloaded Nintendo aps off of that isn't "Shuffle it back and forth from the SD card at our painfully slow transfer speed", and I'll happily give them three of my credit cards of choice. Until then, I don't really want to hear about something else that can take up space I don't have.
ew. can't imagine
Considering that the Wii is only capable of outputting 480p, I think I'll stick to watching DVDs on other players that can at least upconvert picture quality on our HDTV. Besides, is there anyone in the developed world that DOESN'T have some sort of DVD player by now? There's really no point at all, imo.
I wouldn't care. I already don't care about most of the channels that aren't games or shopping related.
However, I am having a major issue with the system in that it's the only system connected to my SDTV in my upstairs living room, and I can't have more than one thing connected to that TV at once, and having a DVD player on the Wii would solve a LOT of headaches regarding that room. Bah.
Actually, I had wanted my Wii to play DVDs this Christmas period. Beening back at my parents, I have no other DVD player in my old room so the if the Wii played DVDs it would have solved a lot.
Streaming movies is a bad idea.
But as the BBC iPlayer proves most people are happy to stream content. And indeed the iPlayer delivers pretty good results. It depends what Nintendo offer.