We’ve been having a rousing discussion in the CG chatroom about whether or not the Wii, in its current incarnation, could handle HD streaming. As is, you can’t officially watch DVDs on it, but like most things these days, it’s been hacked to playback DVDs. Nintendo says it needs more than a firmware update, but the guts of the Wii are powerful enough to do so with a software flash or so we think. But the fact of the matter is that the Wii can only output 480p so, why would anyone want to just stream SD content?
All of this was brought on by an interview with Curt Marvis, the president of digital media for Lionsgate. He was quoted as saying that the Wii will start streaming movies and TV shows this year. It makes perfect sense considering the Xbox 360 now streams Netflix and Sony just scored a deal with NBC Universal for the PS3. But both stream HD content whereas the Wii can only stream SD. We can all praise HDTVs and the like, but not everyone has an HDTV. Is Nintendo planning on announcing the Wii HD at E3 this year? Can the studios profit from streaming SD content?
via Variety
I think it would make more sense for Nintendo to introduce a Wii with a real hard drive in it – at least 40 GB.
And this might be a personal preference, but I’ve never liked the idea of introducing varying versions of a console that supposedly do the same thing – i.e., introducing the Wii HD. I guess if the games play the same way it could possibly work, but wouldn’t that cause some confusion with buyers picking up said games? There would have to be an SD and an HD version of the same game, and not to demean Wii owners but its “mass appeal” means lots of their users won’t know the difference (or to look for it until they’ve made the mistake) between SD and HD. Seems like a bad idea.
I totally agree. Not sure if you saw this second rumor, but I honestly don’t see new hardware coming out anytime soon. But I don’t see the appeal of streaming SD content either.
Thanks I hadn’t seen that. It would definitely make sense for Nintendo to do something to address adding more storage, although it would be nice not to have it sticking out the back.
As far as streaming content, the Wii doesn’t seem like a full on media device like the PS3 or 360. I didn’t think that was their cup of tea, but nothing wrong with pushing the device to do more. Although it would seem kind of half ass to only offer SD, I guess that’s better than nothing.