The Wii finally gets DVD playback -- no thanks to Nintendo
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Aug 13th 2008 9:39AM
posted Aug 13th 2008 9:39AM
[Via TehSkeen; Thanks, brakken]
Please note: If you're a current Engadget commenter, you do not need to re-register. Simply login and you will be prompted to select a username.
sweeeettttt to bad my wii is useless..........
Thank god.... now I can finally play DVDs. Wait, just about everyone in the home entertainment market has probably owned a DVD player for quite some time.
It's doubtful that someone who has yet to take the plunge into the *budding* DVD player market has taken the plunge and bought a Wii.
Thank god. Now I can cut down on the number of DVD-playing devices in my entertainment cabinet.
hopefully they dont use Waggle for FF and Rewind, because if im watching a nice adult film i dont want the movie ... oh snap TMI... sorry about that!!
I don't have a DVD player. All I have is a PS2.
FINALLY I can upscale my DVDs to High Def, oh wait
That was such an idiotic move by nintendo - it really pissed me off when i put a DVD into my essentially DVD player sized Wii, with a dvd player.
In any case - tip of the hat to these amazing coders.
And a wag of the finger to Nintendo!
lol - great - now I have yet ANOTHER thing that can play a DVD in my house :D
This was my first thought.
Now I can eliminate ANOTHER thing from my entertainment cabinet.
@phoomp
WTF? You had a DVD player in your entertainment center?
No Wait, I remember that you could install a modchip to add DVD playback to a Wii.
According to the article, this one doesn't require your Wii to be modded.
and hence, you don't need to ruin your warranty in order to watch DVDs on the Wii now.
Oh How Wrong you are this is the FIRST Time ANYONE has ran a dvd on a wii ( Before i bought my modchip I did some research and there is not a cip or anything that will run dvds, With movies that is) Btw Im watching ALF Season 3 Off my wii Right NOW =D I now have a well working Dvd Player YAY!!
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/notag/unofficial-wii-dvd-playback-now-available-requires-modded-wii-291060.php
Title is incorrect Engadget.
I love the hombrew wii community. They've really turned my wii into a much more powerful machine. I can play emulated and homebrew games, mp3 and video files, and really just about anything else i want, i can do this all from my hombrew channel which downloads updates for the games and itself, automatically.
hats off to homebrew wii
Hey Overthrow-
I just bought a Wii , where can I find all this "home brew" stuff you're talking about. I know nothing of it.....
DVD Playback has been possible on the Wii for a long time... This is merely the most accessible version thanks to the Homebrew Channel. A word of warning though: watching DVDs on a Wii requires constant laser usage -- the Wii is not designed to do this, thus you may cause long term damage to your drive and console.
Er of course it is designed for reading dvds, do you think a Wii Game dvd with up to 4.7Gb of game data spins till the game loads then stops spinning?
yes thats actually exactly what it does it only spins and reads the disc when ever it needs to loa, like when game starts up loads from a save or when you enter a different area in a game that it needs to load it does not spin and read from disc constantly, neither do the 360 or ps3 except they are meant to be able to handle it since they were made to watch DVD's and such.
Regarding the rumors that this will damage your Wii's DVD drive, the software's designer responded in the comments section of the hackmii post...
"The myth of you being able to ‘burn out’ a DVD laser is pretty much what it says on the tin, a myth. This drive was designed specifically for two things. reading Wii games, and reading DVD-Videos. There are special commands in the drive for doing so. (We use these commands to read these discs without a modchip). So, these drives were designed with reading DVD-Videos in mind. (And even if they wern’t, you’re running the entire drive in spec. I’ve been told these myths came about when people were pot-tuning their PS2s, running them out of spec. Running any piece of hardware beyond the limits that were set for it will break it in the long run)"
So no, your Wii's drive is completely safe if you use it as a DVD player.
They don't underspec a DVD player especially for the Wii, it makes no economic sense for manufacture. You can just imagine the R&D meeting - 'how about we create a special DVD drive that cost more for us and performs worse than one we can get off the shelf?' Yes I can just imagine that conversation.
Forget the conspiracy theories, it's a plain old drive just like the shit one in your Walmart DVD that's been happily spinning for years.
Some have forgotten to mention the DVD playback on these things is awfully bad. I''ve tried it before and it's not worth watching, get a Xbox or PS3 with upscaling playback.
The Wii has what, 80MB of RAM? And the DVD holds up to 7.3GB or so? That's a lot of loading to do, and in many games (especially those involving mini games), I'd imagine you're pretty constantly streaming things.
Anyhow, I tried out the DVD playback. It's somewhat decent, except for three issues:
1) libdvdnav sucks just as much on the wii as it does on a PC. As in, it doesn't really work. I tried it out on a disk, got a big white square where the selection would be, and none of the buttons on the wiimote were bound to navigate. So it's useless. Part of this seems to just be a poor choice of key bindings, so that part at least could be resolved. But libdvdnav is pretty crap in general, so don't expect much.
2) The thing drops frames, and movement isn't smooth. It's pretty close to smooth, though, so I'd imagine that they'll eventually get it right with tweaking.
3) The player crashes if you try to change titles. For example, hitting "Play DVD" probably loads multiple titles as company logos are often in a title by themselves. And if you ever try to change titles (or restart playback), the app will time out trying to read the disk and crash. So it's horribly unstable. I'd expect this to improve over time, too.
So, in short, if they're going to rely on mplayer, we'll probably never get perfect DVD support (due to libdvdnav suckage), but we'll probably eventually get quite good DVD video playback.
I know that no one who buys a Wii doesn't already have a DVD player, but really, why not include it. There are probably 10+ devices around my house that play back DVDs, but if my PS3 didn't have that ability I'd have been pretty pissed. Enabling a DVD drive to play back DVDs shouldn't be a decision, it should just be automatic.
Not including the MPEG2 license shaves off about $30 per Wii. Nintendo was/is going for low price as a factor in selling the Wii.
That's teriffic. So basically, the console already had a DVD reader in it, it just wasn't able to play DVD's without a little software?
Excellent job, coders, well done.
I think Nintendo could have very easily put in the ability to playback DVD's but didn't because it is completely unnecessary, it adds a bit of cost and everyone already has a dvd player, even poor people!
They prefer the term "Financially Challenged"
i sold my wii for crack money. It does suck to be poh
i am not a programmer but, seriously, how much more would it have cost? clearly the components are already there. its not like this is some new, breakthrough technology. most of the nintendo programmers could probably whip it up in their sleep.
Im rich and I dont own any other DVD playing Device and I have a huge DVD collection. So you are actually wrong all of you, you are all so stupid!!! Some people hate stupid people, I am one of those people...
The cost is in licensing fees, not the actual software.
@z
ahh thanks for clarifying. i am surprised there are still expensive licensing fees involved with dvds, especially since you can get a cheapo for $25 at wally world. but if nintendo was trying to cut back costs, thats certainly one place to do it since its safe to say most people that own a wii own a dvd player of their own. still it would have been nice, one less player in the home theater system. maybe they could have put it as an additional feature and have a wii that costs $300. o well too late now.
@ass
(see alias)
Added cost? MPlayer is free software, been around longer than the Wii, too.
Yes and with MPlayer you *still* have to install libdvdcss to decode commercial DVDs.
This is why the "legitimate" players in Linux usually cost around $25 for a fully licensed decoder (with MS and Apple that cost is bundled into your purchase price).
@Down: Even though everybody has a dvdplayer already, doesn't mean they shouldn't add the function.. let's not forget, it's easier to have one device under your tv, than having a zillion which do the same..
Nintendo only didn't support dvdplayback because of the liceningfee's, even though they are only a couple of dollarcents per wii, nintendo choose to get the most profit out of the wii (hence no HD-output, or advanced hardware)..
and let's not forget, most tv's don't have that many connections, and switching connectors on your tv everytime isn't a good thing..
I challenge the Homebrew community to make it play Blu-Ray Disc. Get brewing!! :p Nah DVD Playback for the Wii could be cool for some people. I could see this coming in hand for my 10 year old sister in-law who just got a Wii and doesn't have a DVD player in her room.
brewing a blue laser would be rather difficult...
Exactly! ;)
Dumb-ass
@wud_e: Your brother's wife is 10 years old??? Crazy.
meinnit:
sister-in-law = the sister of one's husband or wife or the wife of one's brother or brother-in-law
funny though :D
HMMM. No one can take sarcasm around here. Thanks for the low rank and calling me DUMBASS you DUMBASS. I was being sarcastic. (Hence the Smily Face).
To the guy that said my brothers wife was 10. Just WOW!
On Topic:
Tried this hack on my Wii and my Sister-in-laws Wii. On my Wii it runs smooth but on hers it runs a little flakey. Not sure why. Might have something to do with the loud sound her used Rent-A-Center Wii makes. :D I told her that was not normal. I tried Van Helsing(FullScreen), Underworld(Widescreen) and Blade 2(WideScreen). Underworld Did not Work. Blade 2 is the Best I've ever seen the DVD played outside of my PC(The Wii is the only DVD device I have hooked to my TV with Component). It looked really good on my Toshiba 1080p/65".
I was a little dissapointed that my HD-DVD version of Harry Potter Didn't work.
LOL!
Great...so now the ratio of my 360/wii use will be 90/10 in favor of the 360.....Wait, I forgot, the 360 already does that, and it upscales also!!........Oh well, guess the Wii still sits.....
Wait for a looming firmware upgrade to disable this, then glitch and disable game dvd playback as well.
Now I will finally have a DVD player capable of 480p! (my other DVD player doesn't even do any HD)
i think you're being sarcastic, but 480p is not HD. progressive is better than interlacing, but it's not HD.
I'm sure the omission of the dvd playback was just a cost benefit analysis by Nintendo. Everyone pretty much has a dvd player already.
Not to mention Nintendo is the only console maker who earns a profit on each unit sold. That being said they'd be more pressed (but still probably profitable, just not as much) by adding in extra unnecessay features.
Well, let's see:
MPlayer - FREE
libdi hack - NOT NEEDED (when you're the manufacturer)
Yeah, it was an economic decision.
While Mplayer is free, it's also not legal to play back DVDs. To legally do that, they would have to pay the licencing fees, which would raise the price of each unit a fair amount.
@Jason: Unlike homebrewers who can crack CSS without repercussions, Nintendo has to pay a licensing fee per player. That's the cost here.
I'm waiting for someone to do the same for DivX. that would be useful to me.
Using the Twilight Hack and various Wiibrew programs for video playback, you can play just about any kind of digital video you want from the SD card (since most of these programs are based off of MPlayer).
This homebrew is also based on mplayer and SD card reading was already mentioned in the post, which means that you will be able to play virtually any video file in existence. How well it'll play things like 1080p h264 is another story though.
I'm inclining to believe that Nintendo wants to be stingy and not pay DVD playback royalties. That's all.
Exactly this. I'm pretty sure when they were evaluating the cost, they said "hey, we can save like $30 by not having to deal with DVD-Video royalties, so lets just not include that ability".
That's actually fine with me. You shouldn't have to pay frigging royalties just to read a DVD.
--but the Wii OS probably doesn't do Theora or Dirac either...
I believe you are correct sir! They removed MP3 playback for another format, to avoid the MP3 royalties.
Since Wii doesn't have digital audio output, how does one get discrete surround sound with this mod?
I don't think one does. Enjoy the stereo.
hopefully they dont use Waggle for FF and Rewind, because if im watching a nice adult film i dont want the movie ... oh shit TMI... sorry about that!!
Someone alluded to this above, but according to Wikipedia, there is a $15 to $20 license fee to the holders of the DVD patent in order to play DVD's. Plus there is a license fee to holders of the MPEG-2 patent.
Basically, Nintendo could have included this at virtually no extra effort, but it would have cost you an extra $20+ in the price of the unit. It looks like this was part of their effort to keep it under $250.
Is that to read DVDs or to play video DVDs, because that's an entirely different thing. If you have to pay a DVD patent fee, then that's already in the cost of the unit anyway and all they really needed to license was the codec.
The playing from the SD card interest me more. I want to dump divx onto a SD card, and watch it on TV!
Mplayer can already do that. not sure how good the Divx support is, but I'm fairly certain they have it.
Yay for another DVD player! I don't have enough ways to watch movies as it is....
I will never understand why people feel the need to have a dozen DVD players in their homes
awesome dude, people still working on Wiis
An idea... Access the USB port for a drive..... Skip the DVD...
Not sure if possible or how exactly they did this add on...
There's another piece of homebrew called GeeXBox which is basically a media center app for Linux that's been ported to Wii. It lets you play movies off a USB hard drive, and it's pretty fast too. The UI needs some work but overall it's very nice and convenient.
Right... I can't do it for four days but I will be back hoe soon near my wii which is already hacked so It shouldn't take long but will report back about it xD.
hey guys where do I get the software? Ive looked online and I cannot find it anywhere!! can anyone help?
Thanks, but I'll stick with my original modded xbox running xbmc. It upscales over the component cables (720p or 1080i) and has 5.1 digital audio, can play dvds or even video files off my NAS.
I'll stick to playing fun games like Boom Blox on my Wii.
I would be so thrilled if I owned a Wii!
I'm so thrilled that you don't.
For those commenting/compalining: "Yet another DVD playback device ..."
Our family Wii is in our Son's room.
With this "tweek" we can now have him watch DVDs in his room,
Instead of the main entertainment system, or via a laptop/computer (which are also primarily in the main room).
Think outside "your" world and understand that not everyone has the same setups as you do.
Could I have purchased a DVD player for his room... sure.
But now, I don't have to take up physical space for yet another device in his room.
Wow that is so necessary.... who does not have dvd player next to their wii anyway?? would look so damn empty without one....
Nintendo said way back when the Gamecube was released that they chose not to enable DVD playback on their systems because
a) Anyone who owns one likely already has a dvd player in every room
and
b) Commercial DVD playback requires a fee to be payed per unit to dvd standards comity or whoever the hell is in charge of licensing DVD hardware.
People really need to stop giving a damn about it and stop pretending like its a huge setback that they don't have ANOTHER dvd player.
Who cares? If you need to use a Wii to play DVD's maybe you'd be better leave your Y2K shelter and seek sunlight.
So when will Wii be able to link into Netflix Streaming like the Xbox 360?
Thats awesome! where do we get the file?
Http://www.squidoo.com/doughboy
I seem to recall Nintendo at one point saying that the system required hardware changes and not simply soft/firmware ones to enable DVD playback. Seems their bluff has been called, though not like it matters when anybody wanting a DVD player can just pony up the $40 (or less) for a standalone player rather than buying a $250 console to do the same thing.
Well as much as I want this to be a reality there is one thing that scares me. I don't go to Gamestop or whatever your local video game store is to buy Wii points cards, I do it online. And as far as I am concerned the Wii has been pretty hack proof. But this is almost inviting someone to steal info or simply just screw your Wii like a 5 dollar Vietnamese hooker (Full Metal Jacket reference by the way). I'll sit back for a few months before I install it to see what A) Nintendo will do about this (meaning they might brick your Wii like Steve Jobs and Apple bricked peoples hacked iPhones. Admit it this sounds like an app for the Wii) and B) see what happens to the people downloading it.
Thank the community for Freedom Software!
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://hackmii.com/2008/08/libdi-and-the-dvdx-installer/
Here you Guys Goo
Well below my TV I have an XBOX with a broken DVD drive and a PS2 with a broken DVD drive. So this is good news, to me at least.
Can they play DVD's from multiple regions?! That's my question ..
YES! got it working, now watching Futurama on my WII!!!
Ok... i no nothing about computers, so KISS (keep it simple stupid) 1. what do I need 2. how do i get it 3. what do i do when i get it? of course it would be cool to have an all in one player. stop complaining! but since i know nothing about computers, will this jack up my system? or void my warrenty? someone please give me the low down...
I've never used mplayer before but it seems to work pretty good. the controller setup seems pretty logical. i would say comparible to most dvd players.
Ok i feel a little backward .
I have 1 dvd player in my house and 6 computers.
cant wait for the wii to play divx off the dvd's so i don't need to plug my laptop into the tv to watch some divx.
My media room has a wii and amp and a projector since my other dvd play went on the blink.
Mplayer Player works well could be better.
D ;)