Help with Wii Media Center

[ChadTower]

Consider a homebrew solution that will certainly appear before long.

[yalborap]

A streaming media channel probably isn't gonna happen.  Afaik wii hardware only natively supports .mov files.  Why is beyond me because it's only a popular format for really high quality video, which is a waste on the wii's puny 480p display.  Nintendo could do it, but it would require some sort of software decoder (which is what the wii media player is using) to do so, which doesn't sound like nintendo to me. 

Now what is more likely is that the final version of opera will support standard opera codecs, meaning you can have access to all media.  This is how they will get people to fork over 5 bucks for the full version even though the free one works fine. 


Regarding a flash based player......

The flash player is a program just like any other, it's just written in flash so the wii can run it, so somewhere in the code is a variable telling it where to get the stream from.  All one would have to do (and again I'm not a flash programmer, maybe flash 7 can't do this)  is get that variable from a text box on the client side webpage instead in which a user would type in the full smb path to the file.

It'd look something like:

//network/group/pc/shared foldername/file.mpg

Then the flash player would setup whatever kinda of magic it's using to play non .mov files on the wii and instead of bridging a connection to already streaming media on a program running on the pc, it'd simply access the file directly via smb share and do all that stuff on it's end. 


See mpeg files, for example are an "automagic" streaming format.  If you have a mpeg player it can open a file from anywhere, even the network or on the internet and assuming your connection is good enough it can read it right across the net.  All that is required is a flash7-based mpeg player to get things working this way on the wii assuming of course flash 7 can read files over the network, which seems likely considering it is a web technology. 

What you're forgetting is that's not how it works. How it works is when the FULL browser is released, for a while it's free, then everyone who doesn't jump on while it's still free will later pay some money for the EXACT SAME thing. It's not a 'well here is a free one AND THIS TOTALLY AWESOME BETTER ONE THAT COSTS MONEY' situation, it's a 'hey look at this thing we made you can get it for free for a while' situation.

[rampy]

I'm not sure why you'd expect SMB support to be built into Opera.  Opera only supports filesystems presented by the operating system.  The likelyhood of Nintendo adding an SMB client is pretty slim considering they don't even support DVD video.

The absense of DVD playback is most likely a licensing/cost issue to keep the price down initially (relatively).

[rampy]

I rounded up a few links to posts about using orb and stuff on the wii

http://www.byopvr.com/displayarticle661.html

how's folks playback of youtube (via sofatube) stuff?  is there anyway to get it to "preload"/cache a little bit better.  Not sure if I just have a lousy wireless connection (bandwith issue), or if the wii struggles a little bit with playback of flash video.

*shrug*

rampy

[stephenp1983]

What is the difference in ORB 1.0 and 2.0?  I'm still using the original one would my experience be better with 2.0?

[Howard_Casto]

I rounded up a few links to posts about using orb and stuff on the wii

http://www.byopvr.com/displayarticle661.html

how's folks playback of youtube (via sofatube) stuff?  is there anyway to get it to "preload"/cache a little bit better.  Not sure if I just have a lousy wireless connection (bandwith issue), or if the wii struggles a little bit with playback of flash video.

*shrug*

rampy

I had that problem until I changed the operating channel of my router.  For whatever reason, 6 is lousy on the wii, changing it to 1 or 11 helps tremendously.  Any other stuttering issues are just due to the wii being kinda puny.  It's only slightly more powerful than the xbox with about 12 megs more ram, so consdiering what pc equivelent resources are required to play high res flash stuff it is a miracle it supports flash at all. 
I think youtube has preferences somewhere in their site though, so you could manually set it to a slower conneciton than you actually have and it'd cache a bit more.


About the smb thing...  I'm not that familair with opera (cause it sucks) so of course I assumed it supported smb shares considering every other browser I know does. 


Rampy is right about the dvd thing btw.  The wii can read physical dvd discs right now because the wii discs are based on dvd's.  All that would be required to play dvds would be a software decoder and a liscensing fee.  The latter would be the only thing nintendo would have to sweat.  Since the xbox is less powerful and xbmc has a really good software dvd decoder, I think dvd support, at least at the homebrew level, is a given. 


Now on another note I think the wiimail system might be the best exploit to get media on the wii (aside from the sd slot of course).  You can already send vids and pics through it's just the wii mail servers have a 1mb limit.  Now if someone were to figure out how to change their wii's email address to say a gmail one, there might be some options.

I'll be happy when we can figure out how to send true 480 p dvd quality video through the wii.  Until then these other options seem a little iffy considering my modded xbox is right below it.

[AlanS17]

I think the best exploit may be the online purchasing system. If someone can figure out how to emulate the download and registration of a ROM or app, they're home free.

[Howard_Casto]

I think the best exploit may be the online purchasing system. If someone can figure out how to emulate the download and registration of a ROM or app, they're home free.

The problem with that one is that nintendo has complete control of the shopping channel's access.  You can re-direct email and such with standard methods that would cripple the wii if they were to block it, but with the shopping channel, they can change the access/download/verification protocol to anything they wish.  Nintendo has already done this actually right after week one. They can also "force" the firmware update on you by not allowing you to add any new content to the wii unless you have a certain version of the firmware. 

[ChadTower]

All they have to do is either bypass or satisfy the verification on a ROM or app, then you can put it there from a secondary source.  Just like any other recent console.

[AlanS17]

All they have to do is either bypass or satisfy the verification on a ROM or app, then you can put it there from a secondary source.  Just like any other recent console.

That more along the lines of what I was thinking.

[Samstag]

About the smb thing...  I'm not that familair with opera (cause it sucks) so of course I assumed it supported smb shares considering every other browser I know does. 

No browser supports SMB.  Browsers support filesystems.  The operating system provides the SMB client.

That's not to say they can't add SMB client support, but it's not something browsers are expected to handle themselves.

[rampy]

I'm pretty sure my wifi channel isn't at the default as I had some interference issues previously -- but it couldn't hurt to double check and re-jiggle the handle.

Another way to stream music with a wii "optimized" browser...  (via digg) there's also an *cough* adult site now that is wii browser friendly... lol!
 
http://www.teknision.com/wii/player.html

[AlanS17]

Another way to stream music with a wii "optimized" browser...  (via digg) there's also an *cough* adult site now that is wii browser friendly... lol!
 
http://www.teknision.com/wii/player.html

While the interface is a little prohibitive, this is the first example of music on the Wii that shows promise in my mind.

[Howard_Casto]

Finetune is awesome.  Apparently so awesome that us wii users killed it after only two days. 

[AlanS17]

Leave it to us to overly-exploit something.