Wii News Channel released early.

[Howard_Casto]

I woke up this morning to discover that familiar blue glow on my wii.  As I suspsected they released the news channel about a day early. 

All-in-all I'm both impressed and disappointed at the same time.  The channel has a ton of news stories both nationally and internationally.  The text to read the articles is very clear, making it easier to read than some supposedly "wii friendly" news sites.  You can navigate by either category or the wii globe.  Pictures are included in some articles, which is a pleasant suprise.  If you hold down the 1 key, you can highlight text for later reading.  There is also a news "slideshow" feature, which is rather useless, but sort of fun for a general overview, like a rss reader on the pc. 

Unfortunately, that is the extent of the good things I have to say about it.  The categories are too broad, with some having as many as 50 headlines, just on the national level.  Naviagation is also a pain, with two large naviagation bars, similar to those used on the photo channel used as primary navigation.  These bars are supposed to go away when you start scrolling through the article, but they only do if you point the wiimote towards the center of the screen, meaning you have to either live with the bars or hold your wiimote up while reading.  I thought that there would be a good "digital" navigation mode like there is in the internet channel so I held my wiimote on it's side.  Well the bars go away, but the dpad is still mapped on it's side, meaning you press left to scroll up and right to scroll down, ect.....

The channel also lacks any video news.  It seems to me that this would have been the most logical format to present certain headlines in (like sports and entertainment) but we are limited to a single picture per story apparently.  Also there isn't any way to filter news by preference/location ect.... This means scrolling through a lot of stories to find something you are interested in.  Also many articles have weblinks at the bottom, but you are unable to click on them.  It seems it could have been possible to have these links take you over to the internet channel.  My biggest gripe is one I sort of expected..... lack of news coverage in many areas.  Nintendo made a deal with the AP, and while the AP are good at bringing you huge national stories, they are inadequate for more local ones.  Taking a look at the news gobe this morning, the south-east coast and the midwest are particularly de-void of any articles, with whole states not having a single story.  While nothing interesting might have not happened thee today, I'm sure things did happen, but the AP is unwilling to write about them.  International news is even worse, with whole countries lacking news.  I think there were three whole articles in the entire continent of south america.


So there you have it.....  the news channel, not great, not horrible just "eh it'll do". 

I would love to hear others reactions to it. 

[shmokes]

It's kinda cool.  Not especially useful if you have a computer, but kinda cool.  Here's a complaint, though.  I fired it up and went to the sports page where there wasn't a single tennis-related article.  WTF?  The Australian Open is going on right now.  That's like not finding a single basketball-related article during the playoffs.  Do the Japanese hate tennis?

[Howard_Casto]

Well it's like I said, international news is severely lacking.  It hinges on how many members of the IAP are in that region and how often thy submit news on the national level.  Here in WV I think we have a single newspaper that really deals with the associated press on a regular basis.

[sphetr2]

I like how when you zoom in and out, the text repositions. It looks cool.

A feature I would like to see in the future is when you click an rss feed link in opera, it adds it to the news channel. I would like that: not having to boot my computer whenever I want to check Joystiq + digg rss.

I was surprised by the lack of an 'electronic entertainment' section. Is it supposed to be in Tech? I saw ONE video game article, and it was about PS3. Lame.

It's nice, though, if you don't get the paper. Unless you care about the local happenings. 

[shmokes]

I hope we see some more channels.  I wonder if Nintendo will ever let third parties make channels.  I don't really see any good reason not to since downloading them would be optional and they would presumably have to go through some kind of approval process, but I kind of doubt it anyway.  At any rate, I'd like to see a movie trailer channel.  I'd use that quite a bit.  As it is you can't use Apple's movie trailer website because the Opera browser isn't capable of playing Quicktime movies.  Even if it did that would be a much less elegant solution than a dedicated channel.

[Howard_Casto]

I hope we see some more channels.  I wonder if Nintendo will ever let third parties make channels.  I don't really see any good reason not to since downloading them would be optional and they would presumably have to go through some kind of approval process, but I kind of doubt it anyway.  At any rate, I'd like to see a movie trailer channel.  I'd use that quite a bit.  As it is you can't use Apple's movie trailer website because the Opera browser isn't capable of playing Quicktime movies.  Even if it did that would be a much less elegant solution than a dedicated channel.

Heck I would like to see a movie channel period.  As long as we are talking standard def, the wii is more than capable of showing streaming video.  Nintendo seems to be scared of video atm, which sucks because they could make a whole channel that shows trailers of upcoming products and games.

[MustardTent]

I'm pretty disappointed in the news channel.  The only way I was able to find the globe was by selecting a story, and there it was -- the globe button, in the bottom right as part of a menu.  I thought it would be more like the weather channel, where you navigated the globe, and then selected from stories and subjects as you arrived to your location of interest.  Instead, you have to pick a subject, then actually read a story before you can get to the globe.  That sucks.  The lack of pictures sucks too. 

I'll just stick to my favorite news websites, thanks.

I like HC's idea of a preview/trailer channel -- that would actually be useful.

[shmokes]

You bastard!!! That was my idea.

Just kidding.

But, yeah.  I noticed that today about there being no intuitive way to get to the globe.  It seems extraordinarily strange to make you navigate to a story before the option becomes available.

[sphetr2]

Wait - it looks like you can read RSS feeds in opera. Now I wish they would just move those feeds and put them in the News Channel interface.

Ironic: Firefox thinks RSS is spelled wrong.