Topic: Modded Wii DVD playback

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

NST could do it.  They're not working on Project Cancelled anymore.

[Tanookisuit]

I'd buy a DVD channel for $10 or less.  I'd love to not clutter up my TV area with multiple devices.

[EasyCure]

I'm with the wear and tear worrying crowd on this one. we have more than enough dvd players in this house (5 and 2 pc's with dvd drives) so i could care less. Besides the player in my room is almost as small as the wii so space isn't a problem for me.

on a similar note, gonintendo had a picture up of a white dvd player about the size of a wii with a white box and a giant “WEE” name in the wii font plastered on the front of it. it actually looks alot like the dvd player i have, just in white (mine is black)

[Kairon]

My DVD player offers me way more functionality than a Wii DVD channel would, I'm sure. Also, it's a combo player with VHS. VHS!!!

[EasyCure]

Pft standalone vhs player ftw. Its basically the center of my entertainment center...

[NeoThunder]

I wana know if this DVD playback on Wii is in progessive scan or 480i

[JonLeung]

I'm in the camp of "I already have half a dozen DVD-playing devices in my household", but if the Wii is capable, I wouldn't mind making full use of it.

[the1st_fret]

I don't want the Wii to play DVD's. I already have a DVD player. It was said at the conference last year they weren't putting one in coz most people already own one or more, plus it would have added to the price of the system. I like that the Wii is a "Games Console"  with no bells and whistles. The Wii is seen as a step behind the PS3 and 360 because of Graphical capabilities, and since those 2 have moved onto HD-DVD and Blu-Ray its just another way of makin the Wii look behind if they're gonna use a DVD player.

[matt oz]

Quote
Originally posted by: JonLeung
I'm in the camp of "I already have half a dozen DVD-playing devices in my household", but if the Wii is capable, I wouldn't mind making full use of it.

Exactly.

Don't piss on an idea just because you don't like it, or you may not make use of it.  If they implement it, then don't use it!  Let everyone who wants to use it do so.

Same argument for voice acting in Zelda games.

[UERD]

If they can do it without raising the price, why not? Otherwise, it's just not worth it for a lot of people.

[BranDonk Kong]

Well, Nintendo would win the "format war" if they added DVD support to the Wii, if you think about it. PS3 and 360 already support DVD, but if Nintendo touted it as a new feature or something, it could really hurt Blu-Ray and HD DVD, because if it was successful, it would show that people don't want to move on yet.

[Mashiro]

Quote
it would show that people don't want to move on yet.

People don't want to move on yet lol. I don't think Nintendo is needed the show the big companies that. But like every conversion it takes time, and when it involves the medium of video in our homes (which involves just about everyone with a TV) it takes that much longer.

The vast majority of the market won't be upgrading to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray anytime soon. Much like the conversion from VHS to DVD, DVD to whatever no format emerges as the champion will take some time.

The fact that 2 formats are still batting over which will be the next mainstay format is enough reason for the masses not to adopt either yet. DVD will be here for quite some time.  

[BranDonk Kong]

I refuse to buy HD DVD for now, because the XBox 360 plays WMV HD movies, which are virtually identical to HD DVD and Blu Ray as of now.

[UERD]

I don't think either format will really catch on. It'll take at least five or so years, and by that time there'll be some new technology that's more than an incremental step forwards, and people will move to that.

Most people aren't willing to make the huge investment, especially because neither format is overwhelming the other, dual-format hardware is rare and expensive, and the near future may very well be discless (digital distribution, perhaps).

[Michael8983]

This "new format" thing is crap. Whichever one wins, neither Blue-Ray nor HD-DVD will become the new standard replacing DVDs. They'll simply find a place with a small niche market of tech-nerds who are willing to put several thousands of dollars into their entertainment centers.
DVD will remain the standard for a few years to come until eventually they're replaced with digital distribution. Much as CDs have been replaced with MP3s.
It's just a matter of allowing the technology to evolve to the point of making it accessible to the mainstream.

This is why the PS3 is doing so poorly and the 360 is doing ok but still being outsold by past-generation hardware.
Sony and MS made the mistake of making consoles for the small but deceptively LOUD minority of internet tech-geeks while Nintendo made a console for EVERYONE else.

[Rhoq]

Quote
Originally posted by: NeoThunder
I wana know if this DVD playback on Wii is in progessive scan or 480i

I'm going to guess 480i. Have you seen how awful the film clips in the Godfather: Blackhand Edition and the trailer at the beginning of Scarface: The World Is Yours look?

I have no interest in playing DVDs on my Wii, especially since my Toshiba HD-A2 (HD DVD) is one hell of an up converting player.

[BranDonk Kong]

If games run in progressive scan, then so do the DVDs. If you have your Wii set to 480p, then it's outputting in 480p, even if the game is not, it's still technically being "upscaled", but you will still probably notice interlacing in said game. DVDs are all 480p (unless it's encoded improperly, or recorded from a VHS or another interlaced source), so if you had your Wii set to 480p, they'd play in 480p as they were meant to be. It's kind of like how your monitor may be set to 1280x1024 at 85hz, but you might be playing a game and only getting 15FPS, but the video card is still outputting 85hz.

[Chozo Ghost]

I remember when I played LOTR on my Gamecube and it had full motion video of the cast talking about the game and playing it and stuff. I think it was encoded in Divx format, or something like that.

Anyway, my point is that the Gamecube discs could have held full length movies (with additional interactive content or whatever). If Nintendo were so inclined, they could ignore DVD entirely and release their own sets of movies in a new format specific to the Wii. This way they wouldn't be forced to pay licensing fees to the DVD consortium because it would be their very own format. It would also help if they would let consumers burn their own content to DVD-R discs and play them on the Wii. Remember, the Wii uses DVD discs, but the format is not DVD video. That's how they're avoiding the licensing fees for dvd playback. But video stored on DVD discs in some license-free format wouldn't cost anything extra and the functionality could easily be added with a firmware upgrade.

Remember, Nintendo already did something close to this with the GBA carts that had episodes of sponge bob and such on them... Why not with their own Wii format? Yeah, you might think of the PSP and how those movies failed, but if Nintendo allowed consumers to make their own movie discs then it would do better than UMD.

[UERD]

Quote
Yeah, you might think of the PSP and how those movies failed, but if Nintendo allowed consumers to make their own movie discs then it would do better than UMD.

The issue with this is (alleged) piracy. Studio executives are so paranoid about their movies being leaked and pirated that it would be very hard for Nintendo to get them to agree to a proprietary scheme that allows for creating your own discs. I mean, Microsoft is building content-protection into Vista so that you can't play movies on your computer over HDMI unless the hardware has copy-protection locks, and they said it was the studios which made them do that. (Although I call BS on that, personally, but it at the very least played a role.)

[BranDonk Kong]

That's just HDCP, it doesn't have much to do with Microsoft, and it only applies to HD DVD and Blu Ray.