So Eoco mentioned this on Thursday, about a homebrew channel that allows you to play DVD's and video files off an SD card. So I was wondering if Nintendo will get off there asses and make it so there is a channel that plays DVD's. I mean common would do you think, its not a no brainer that THIS FEATURE SHOULD ALREADY BE BUILT INTO THE WII.

mhe,they should,but dosen't rally look to me like is the most important thing,thats why I have a home theather system in the living room for :thumbsup:

How 'bout the DVD just shows up on the channel in the top left hand side instead of making a whole new channel.

I'm not gonna buy a whole new Wii just because it can play DVDs.... I have several DVD players.

I don't even know why this is an issue anymore. Are you seriously hurting for a DVD player? You can get them for $30 nowadays. A good one is like, $99. I've spent more than that on Wii points.

Griping over the Wii's lack of DVD playback is a sucker punch. It's not REALLY a fault because there are so many options out there for playing DVDs, and the Wii was never sold as being a DVD player. If leaving out DVD playback made this thing even fifty cents cheaper, I think Nintendo made the right call.

Meh, personally I don't care. My Xbox (original) can play DVDs, my laptop can play DVDs, the computer in the den in my house can play DVDs, and we have a DVD player on the TV in the living room. Really I don't care if they add a DVD player or not, it doesn't really matter considering how many DVD players are in my house as it is.

The homebrew DVD player is only just functional at the moment, from what I hear it plays videos incredibly slowly.
Not to mention the Wii isn't meant to play DVDs and there's a chance that doing so could mess up the laser which is already pretty fragile.

I didnt think it was fragile, but yeah, I heard about that, too.

Frankly I dont give a damn. In my own room I have a PC that can play DVDs, and in the main room, we have a 360 and a PS2 that can.... if the Wii cant play DVDs, woop-de-freaking-do. (Incidently, the 360 we've had issues with this too... it's fussy about what DVD movies it will or wont read as a disc in the drive)

I didnt think it was fragile, but yeah, I heard about that, too.

Well considering how easily some of them broke to the point where they couldn't Smash Bros, that makes them seem fragile to me.

I don't ever see it happening to be honest.
In the room where the Wii is we have a DVD player sat next to it anyway..
You can pick up a DVD player for about £15-20 and it will work fine, just buy one if your that desperate to watch DVD's..

The argument that you can pick up a DVD player cheap is pretty weak. It has everything in it that it needs to play DVDs other than a little bit of software. The fact that you can buy a DVD player dosnt mean you should have to. For people that only have the Wii it would make a great little compact DVD player all neat and tidy without the need for a second box, power supply and set of cables to the TV. Their main argument was keeping the price down but selling software online would negate that just like the XBox did with its remote bundle.

The argument that you can pick up a DVD player cheap is pretty weak. It has everything in it that it needs to play DVDs other than a little bit of software. The fact that you can buy a DVD player dosnt mean you should have to. For people that only have the Wii it would make a great little compact DVD player all neat and tidy without the need for a second box, power supply and set of cables to the TV. Their main argument was keeping the price down but selling software online would negate that just like the XBox did with its remote bundle.

IIRC, MS caught major grief for making people shell out for the DVD playback when Sony was providing that feature free. Nintendo would probably get a similar reaction if they were to sell the DVD Channel online... Only, I'll bet it would be worse because it's currently more fashionable to bash Nintendo than it is to bash Microsoft. And if you think that saying DVD players are cheap is a weak argument, then ask yourself seriously how many people currently don't HAVE a DVD player? And of those, how many would have that problem solved if they could play movies on the Wii? I just don't see it being that big a deal. It's an easy thing to pick on because it's a silly problem that Nintendo doesn't really care to fix, and few people would really be affected if they did.

Still not the point. If you could have two boxes under your TV or one box, which would you pick? If I had a DVD player and bought a equally DVD capable Wii I guarentee you the DVD player would get given away or tossed in the attic.

As for people bashing Nintendo, do you think they care? Besides, the percentage of "it sucks they're making us pay for it" to "wow! look at this wonderful feature we can add to out wonderfull Wii!" will make it not matter anyway. The people who do the most complaining are usually always the minority.

It would actually be silly to give it away for free because theres almost 30million Wiis out there, if 10% payed for a $5 DVD download thats still $15million in almost pure profit for very little work..... and I would bet the percentage would be a heck of a lot more than 10%. Fact is, Ninty dont have to do anything right now. The other two do while N just use their philosophers stone to change piles of Wiis into piles of moneys.

Meh, personally I don't care. My Xbox (original) can play DVDs, my laptop can play DVDs, the computer in the den in my house can play DVDs, and we have a DVD player on the TV in the living room. Really I don't care if they add a DVD player or not, it doesn't really matter considering how many DVD players are in my house as it is.

I feel EXACTLY the same way.

I must have a dozen DVD compatible devices.

I heard a legitimate excuse for the DVD-lessness of the Wii: The Wii-DVDs (For games) spin in the opposite direction of your normal DVD player. This would mean that they'd either have to release an add-on attachment, some weird firmware update, a DIY kit, or just leave it be with no DVDs. This sounds pretty likely, considering how anti-piracy and anti-homebrew Nintendo is when it comes to the Wii. It's just the sort of thing they'd do...

Although, that's just a rumor I'd heard from someone who had heard it from a friend who swears they saw a Wii disc spinning backwards. He turned out to be one of those Youtube flamers when I tried to determine if it was accurate or not. :lol:

Still not the point. If you could have two boxes under your TV or one box, which would you pick?

Before I answer your question, let me just ask: how confident are you that a Wii could be made into a full-featured DVD player? It doesn't support HDMI output, nor can it upconvert anything (AFAIK). There's two very desirable features ruled out. Also, the wiimote doesn't have as many buttons on it as even a basic DVD remote, so the user interface is going to be pretty crippled... unless you buy some aftermarket remote, which will of course add to the cost.

As for your question, I would only pick the one box IF I were convinced that no tradeoffs had been made in cramming two devices into one unit. History has shown that usually isn't the case. Looking back at the consoles that supported movie playback, the only one that offers as good/better performance than standalones of the same generation is the PS3.

So, I understand your point about convergence, but if you're going to sell me on the idea, you need to convince me that the DVD playback will be as good as anything I can get out of a standalone. Otherwise, I'm going back to my previous point.


As for people bashing Nintendo, do you think they care?


No, I don't, which is why I don't think Nintendo cared to include DVD playback in the first place. They knew they'd catch a little heat for it, but gambled that in the end, it wouldn't hurt them. Nintendo has shown themselves to be good at many things over the last 10 years, including taking it on the chin when they run against industry conventions.


It would actually be silly to give it away for free because theres almost 30million Wiis out there, if 10% payed for a $5 DVD download thats still $15million in almost pure profit for very little work..... and I would bet the percentage would be a heck of a lot more than 10%.

I don't know the latest stats on how many Wii users download anything, so I'll just let this go. However, don't discount the fact that Nintendo would have to give the DVD Consortium a royalty for each Wii that becomes DVD enabled. That's a bill they probably would rather not pay.

Fact is, Ninty dont have to do anything right now. The other two do while N just use their philosophers stone to change piles of Wiis into piles of moneys.


Agreed. The other two consoles are playing catch-up. For all the attention MS and Sony gave to the media-center capabilities of their systems, I don't think it mattered when push came to shove. 360s sold because of Halo and Madden. PS3s sold because of Resistance. Wiis sold because of Sports and Zelda. it was the GAMES that got people to go down and buy a system.

And that's why this DVD stuff is much ado about nothing.

I don't know why everyone cares if there consoles play DVDs. i have a DVD player already, don't you?

But yeah this feature would still be cool.

Actually now that I think about it I remeber reading in an old Issue of Nintendo Power that the Wii would not come out with a DVD, but might come out with a addon that alloed it to play DVD's. Well it seems now that it dosen't even need a add on. So seriously is it really that costly to do???

Usually I just watch a movie on my console when I wanna watch it in high de-:lipssealed: