Is it possible to play HD movies from your Wii?

Nihilism · 03-23-2008, 05:30 PM

As of right now I know they only support motion jpeg for movie files. But if Nintendo were to update it to allow a more practical format, and perhaps an actual movie watching channel, would the wii be able to run 720p or 1080p movies?

Silent-Sniper · 03-23-2008, 05:40 PM

Don't be silly.

fertogo · 03-23-2008, 05:44 PM

dont think so

wezeles · 03-23-2008, 06:00 PM

The ATI card in the Wii could technically do a HD video signal, but I doubt the rest of the little white box has enough to handle it. It would be at its limits with compression technology and so on to be able to do it. If they added on a HD or maybe gave USB flash/SD slot linked to the internal memory to buffer it then maybe big maybe!

Still thats if its possibal, if they will do it is a big ole NO if you ask me, ha ha the reason you can play .mov files and whatever other little video files on the Wii SD slot now is because alot of digital cameras/cellphones/digital camcorders will record in this format. To allow an HD format would pretty much be saying "hey steel a movie and play it here" Nintendo is huge anti piracy and do not support it at all, They do everything they can to shut down what hits the Nitnendo via modchips/homebrew. Their attitude would be the same for other properties as well.

Wulf · 03-23-2008, 06:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nihilism

As of right now I know they only support motion jpeg for movie files. But if Nintendo were to update it to allow a more practical format, and perhaps an actual movie watching channel, would the wii be able to run 720p or 1080p movies?

Sorry mate, that little fun white box can't handle it now.

Clarke · 03-23-2008, 07:12 PM

Short answer: yes

Nihilism · 03-23-2008, 07:38 PM

You know, if the Wii has the hardware, Nintendo might intentionally do this to screw over Sony. Being that Sony now holds the monopoly on the HD media format. I doubt it, though.

Clish · 03-23-2008, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nihilism

You know, if the Wii has the hardware, Nintendo might intentionally do this to screw over Sony. Being that Sony now holds the monopoly on the HD media format. I doubt it, though.

although it is true that Sony 'heads' the Bluray format but there are also 170 different companies that invested in it, and since HD-DVD is gone, These 170 different companies are now competiting against each other.... Sony's "monopoly" on the HD format will only last until another company releases a Bluray Player that is cheaper than the PS3... and analyist believe that the first compnay to do so will be Samsung (within the next couple months)

goober_nut · 03-23-2008, 09:17 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't the Wii only do a max of 480p? Without a better output (DVI/HDMI) no matter if the Wii could play it, you couldn't watch it in that resolution.

wezeles · 03-23-2008, 11:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goober_nut

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't the Wii only do a max of 480p? Without a better output (DVI/HDMI) no matter if the Wii could play it, you couldn't watch it in that resolution.

You don't have to have DVI/HDMI for HD source they are actually fairly new to the HD realm. The component outputs could handle it. It wouldn't be the "best" picture but it would work fine.

For the Wii the games themself are limited to 480p but thats not hardware related, thats software. The possability to change to 720, 1080 is there although the power to support it is little. It's equivalent to changing the resolution on your computer monitor, most computers can do it but without enough memory and processing power its not going to come out perfect. This is why the other consoles have huge harddrives, most of it isn't used for the downloads but to acctually help the video processing along for the games and movies. The specs of the Wii would be able to just barely output a HD content movie, but they do not have the memory in order to do it. The only way they could make it possibal on the currernt sku's is to somehow increase the internal memory of the Wii itself I doubt any compression format could handle high end HD to fit.
Later on if they wanted too they could beef up processing power and the video card to handle more of the work load.

Bigger problem is its a DVD player in essence not a Blu-ray, and he is talking about playing HD content from a SD card the same way you can play .mov files off the SD card. Most consumers wouldn't jump at this notion in the first place. That would require you to download a HD movie onto the SD card and for the most part that capability to the common consumer would consist of illegal downloads to do it.
Nintendo won't go for this at all, they are one of the biggest anti-piracy companys in electronics/entertainment, also why they were the last to even switch to a disk format in the first place, way to easy to steal and homebrew off of.
Most likely you will not see HD untill they come out with the next console 2012 or so, and it will then be a industry and consumer supported format.

HD is not popular enough yet in the market, they don't need it to sell, thats obvious based on sales. Nintendo wont support it untill the majority of the market has the capability to use it. They have always been about the majority consumer not the niche scene.

FingerSub · 03-23-2008, 11:46 PM

Nope the wii doesn't even have component cables

.

wezeles · 03-23-2008, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FingerSub

Nope the wii doesn't even have component cables

.

Really? you sure?

I have component hooked up to my T.V right now.
You do have to buy them seperate though, they only come with composite cables in the box.

You need component cables in order to put it in 480p instead of the 480i default.

IdiotStorm · 04-02-2008, 12:16 AM

http://alluc.org play movies on wii, streaming video, certain movies in HD, movies in theatres right now on your computer/wii. I use this site to watch my movies on the wii.

[DT] · 04-02-2008, 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wezeles

For the Wii the games themself are limited to 480p but thats not hardware related, thats software. The possability to change to 720, 1080 is there although the power to support it is little.

Even if the GPU or backend that could handle processing 720 (x1280) output, the framebuffer doesn't have enough memory to handle a frame of that resolution @24bpp (or @32bpp if they're using an alpha channel for translucency).

For all intents and purposes (without getting into complex and performance killing workarounds like tiling), the output hardware is "hardwired" to only handle 480I/P.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IdiotStorm

http://alluc.org play movies on wii, streaming video, certain movies in HD, movies in theatres right now on your computer/wii. I use this site to watch my movies on the wii.

Regardless of the online source possibly being encoded in an HD spec, if you're streaming this to your Wii, you are +not+ seeing it in HD (plus the bitrates on those sites are so low, it's not even close to real HD).