Ditching Your Cable Box for the Wii
April 4, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
The question about the value of subscribing to the Internet came up again for me this weekend. The discussion wasn’t so much around what video is available on the Internet, but more on the devices available to help you ditch the cable box for something else.
Nintendo Wii Internet Channel Example from Wii website
Of course you can access the Internet from your laptop and then stream video to your TV using a variety of options, but I found out this weekend that there’s a potential option for using the Nintendo Wii to serve as your Internet video portal in your living room.
There’s an Internet channel that you can download on the Nintendo Wii that allows you to access websites through the Nintendo Wii . Could you then use that channel to access your favorite video programming and display it on your living room TV? I haven’t tried this yet, the channel is $5 for unlimited use I believe.
This is what the Nintendo Wii website says about the Internet Channel:
The Internet Channel will change the way you surf the net forever. No more hunching over your computer. Just download the Opera browser for 500 Wii Points and within minutes, you’ll be a professional sofa surfer, pointing-and-clicking your way around the web with your Wii Remote. Opera supports Adobe Flash and JavaScript so you can even watch most movies on your favorite video sites!
If you’ve used this method to watch Internet TV on your own TV through the Nintendo Wii , please let me know. I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.
I probably need to get my version of the wii internet channel updated, I got it when the internet channel was still free… which was until July 1st, 2007.
However, it works fine for watching youtube videos, however, I haven’t tried watching, for example, Hulu, or the tv stations that put shows online.
So, what are these “variety of options” to stream movies and tv from your laptop/desktop to your HDTV??
Thanks,
Lou P
I don’t think you will be ditching your cable service if all you have is a Wii. At the moment the Wii browser has flash 7 on it which limits what sites work on it. Most video sites require flash 9 or above. Such as Hulu or TV.com
Hopefully Nintendo updates the browser one of these days.
It supports Flash 7 so basically you *cannot* play video on any site that matters (YouTube, Hulu, etc). It’s basically just a simple way to point and click at the screen, nothing really revolutionary here.
Thanks for all the feedback. Sounds like this is just the start of something that could be pretty nice as it keeps developing. I did read that the Wii Internet channel uses the Opera browser, so I guess part of it will depend on their extended support of the newer versions of the Flash player as well.
It is awesome, I think it is the best thing about the Wii, 500 Wii Points and you over a million sites! Thats a deal! Plus, with youtube, you can watch your favorite videos, TV shows on your TV!