Wii DvD playback?

[rollen]

Just wondering been seeing lots of rumors and articles on the subject and me soon to be a Wii consumer I wanted to know from a experienced Wii owners if it can really play DvDs.

I tried the search for this subject nothing came up on your search I even put in Wii as a word and it still didn't want to find anything which I find out considered I just said Wii 4 times in this one post alone.

Thank you in advance.

 

[wezeles]

Still nothing confirmed, its a possability in the future to maybe help boost sales, the wii has the capability to do so now with a simple "mod chip" but that voids the warranty.

Really its a needless extra, who doesn't have a DVD player these days? Who cant afford a 19.99 one at Walmart? There is no point lowering the life of a video game console by playing DVD's on it. How many Ps2's died from over heating because of people using them for games and Movies? :lol: May they rest in peace.

 

[rollen]

True, I barely play consoles or even watch TVs. I'm more of a computer gamer and what not so yeah. If the Wii doesn't come with that feature I guess I'll just keep using my PC.

 

[vashivihan]

yeah no. dvd on wii is not something i am looking forward to as i have 2 dvd players.:yesnod:

 

[gidget]

i'd be all over a dvd-channel one less component on my shelf and has component-out... i estimate a $15 download since you can get cheap players for $20-$30

imagine... some programmer could make a mint without ANY hardware manufacturing...

 

[sremick]

I understand why it'd appeal to some people but it certainly has zero value to me. I have owned a DVD player for many, many years and even my several-year-old current model is far-better than anything the Wii would spit out using its hardware.

That said, I believe that the Wii hardware could play DVDs with nothing more than a firmware upgrade. I also don't believe that Nintendo will produce such an update... instead, it is my personal opinion that Nintendo will leverage this feature as a reason to buy the 2nd-edition of the Wii whenever that comes about, along with color options and more memory. A marketing technique that has been immensely successful with Apple and their iPods.

 

[AutumnWind]

DVD is dead. Within a few months, if it isn't blu-ray, it'll be entirely worthless anyway.

 

[[DT]]

DVD is dead. Within a few months, if it isn't blu-ray, it'll be entirely worthless anyway.

Not even close - get back to me in 5 years when SD-DVD is still outselling HDM and HD downloads and we'll try again.

:lol:

 

[rukus]

DVD is dead. Within a few months, if it isn't blu-ray, it'll be entirely worthless anyway.

you are wrong.

 

[sremick]

DVD is dead. Within a few months, if it isn't blu-ray, it'll be entirely worthless anyway.

Wow, you couldn't be more wrong. As much as high-def might be exciting and a visual improvement, the real-world sales numbers and market do not even come close to backing up your claim. Walk into any DVD store or rental place and compare the amount of space devoted to Blu-Ray compared to the amount of space devoted to traditional standard-def DVDs... that will tell you something right there.

Fact is, most people still have standard-definition TVs and have no intention of upgrading anytime soon.

Also worth taking into account (and something most people don't think about) is that most people who do buy HDTVs buy 720-line ones, since 1080-line displays are so much-more expensive (and often they don't even realize there are two "levels" of HDTV, they just think they're all the same). 480 lines to 720 lines = 1.5X improvement in resolution. They don't realize though that when watching widescreen movies on their old 4:3 standard-def TV, they weren't even getting that full 480 lines. Worst case, watching a 2.35:1 aspect-ratio movie on a 4:3 screen means that you're only getting 363 lines of resolution. That's almost a third the definition lost from your standard-definition content! By simply upgrading to a 720-line HDTV, it's possible to be able to view the full 480 lines of resolution already contained on all your existing DVD collection... an improvement in definition of 1.32X by only getting a new TV.

"But wait," you say. "Once they have the HDTV, they can buy a Blu-Ray player, at which point there's no point in them buying anything but Blu-Ray discs!". Perhaps, but remember again: a lot of movies are shot in 2.35:1, which means even on a 16:9 widescreen HDTV there are black bars on top and bottom. So with only 720 vertical lines of resolution on your typical HDTV, you're now down to 533 vertical lines, a mere improvement of 11%. Is someone going to pay hundreds for a Blu-Ray player and replace all their DVDs for a 11% increase in quality on a huge percentage of movies? I doubt it.

Although no-doubt that some clueless consumers will do it anyway. But those same suckers will then go and tell their friends "It doesn't look any better, don't bother, it's not worth all that money" (which is basically true, being just a +11% improvement).

(This doesn't count the clueless people who might choose to display 2.35:1 content horizonally-compressed on their 16:9 screen in order to get full vertical resolution. But I consider watching video in a distorted aspect ratio to be an abomination that should be banned).

Blu-Ray done right involves the ability to see the 1080 lines at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but pulling that off is big-bucks at the moment and outside most peoples' budgets.

 

[sagema]

Rukus is partly right. I hope all of you realize HD DVD was outselling Blue Ray, and they cancelled it in record time. They will have no reservations on cancelling another successful format. It's called a monopoly, and don't be surprised if DVD disappears this year. Will it happen this year? I don't know. Welcome to the era where the consumer gets less choice than ever. You know they clone meat now, import apples from China, and most food today is becoming severly dangerous to even eat. Enjoy.

 

[sremick]

DVD will not be disappearing this year. There's nothing to worry about being "surprised" about. Regardless of whether HD-DVD was outselling Blu-Ray or vice-versa, they are a drop in the bucket compared to current DVD sales and rentals. It's going to take a lot longer than a year for that to shift significantly. This technology is still sufficiently complex, still sufficiently expensive, and most consumers are not as easily-sold on the benefits of HD>SD as they were for DVD>VHS. Most are perfectly happy with their current 4:3 set, and even if they have an HDTV it was only because they wanted something big and flat, not because they were going high-def now or anytime soon.

You'd be surprised at how many people think that all they need to get "high-def" is to get an HDTV. When it doesn't make their DirecTV and DVDs look 10X better, they decide the whole HD thing is BS and that's what they tell all their friends and family who are on the fence and waiting for their rich early-adopter friends to make the jump first and relate their experiences. I've got one family I've been trying to explain it to for months now and I still don't think they get it.

What people on these boards don't realize is not everyone is as technically-adept (or even give a flying fsck) like they do. As much as high-def might get them all hot and bothered and needing to change their underwear, the majority of consumers are stupid, and have better things to do than blow thousands of dollars on replacing all their AV equipment and video collection just because the Best Buy commercial tells them to.

Blu-Ray is still in its infancy, and they're still dicking with the spec, making many current players obsolete. The dust needs to settle more and Blu-Ray needs to get its act together before it'll really take-off, and that includes having Blu-Ray editions of movies not look worse than the SD DVD versions (that's right, you heard me. Bram Stoker's Dracula is one example). The VHS->DVD transition is still fresh in many consumers' memories and the bar has been raised very high now for that the tipping point will be to get them to adopt and transition yet again. Most consumers still just don't care about high-def. If they did, there wouldn't be so many TV ads. There weren't this many when DVD came out... it sold itself.

And this is coming from an AV nut who is working on his own high-def projection 7.1 home-theater system. I'm just under no illusions about reality and am not letting my own interests skew my perception on how the world works. The fanboys need a reality-check.

 

[wezeles]

The bigger problem will be ON-Demand service and downloads. Standard DVD sales have been slipping for years as download fetures such as DVR's "Tivo"and On-Demand download service has come out.

I personally haven't paid for but a handful of DVD's over the past couple of years, most to finnish a collection, but have a few hundred downloaded that I paid a fraction of the price for on my DVR.

Blu-Ray is doing the best outta the HDDVD formats, but the total of Blu-ray/HD-DVD disk sold is still less then the total sales of "Titanic" on DVD just to give you an idea. So they are winning a loosing fight.

Physicall media is changing you see it even in our video game consoles where more and more content is download content instead of physical media. I think this is becoming more and more popular not only for the ease of use for the customer, but because for the first time in a long time the "entertainmet buisness" has a way to protect itself from piracy in this fashion.

Even in the future as "DVR" and video game consoles have some type of physical media "port" to transfer your content to another device "take a game or movie to a friends house". For instance if you could take a VC game over to another Wii via SD slot.
They have figure out a way to hardcode the purchase information onto our devices, and unless the common customer wants to pay for heavy modding that could in tern destroy there own device, this will cut down on Piracy dramatically, and is being heavily supported by the entertainment industry.

Many experts and analyst have determind that by 2015 75% of the entertainment we buy will be downloaded instead of purchased in a store. So far this trend seems to be right based on media sales and how popular "on-demand" is getting on almost every level of our lives.

Our future entertainment devices will consist of nothing more than huge HardDrives for downloads and memory card slots for transfer. DVD's and even HDDVD are becoming an outdated technology that is quickly fadding.

 

[sremick]

The bigger problem will be ON-Demand service and downloads. Standard DVD sales have been slipping for years as download fetures such as DVR's and On'Demand download service has come out...

The problem there is that the on-demand stuff is highly-compressed and isn't surround-sound. I didn't invest in a nice surround-sound home-theater audio system only to switch to watching movies in a format that can't take advantage of it. Plus the video looks like crap, there are so many compression artifacts on the on-demand and even normal movie channels that I can't bear to watch them on my big TV, and it's only getting worse as they crank up the lossy compression just so they can cram in more channels I don't care about. Plus most movie channels aren't widescreen, which was one of the first reasons I stopped paying for HBO, Cinemax, etc.

 

[wezeles]

The problem there is that the on-demand stuff is highly-compressed and isn't surround-sound. I didn't invest in a nice surround-sound home-theater audio system only to switch to watching movies in a format that can't take advantage of it. Plus the video looks like crap, there are so many compression artifacts on the on-demand and even normal movie channels that I can't bear to watch them on my big TV, and it's only getting worse as they crank up the lossy compression just so they can cram in more channels I don't care about. Plus most movie channels aren't widescreen, which was one of the first reasons I stopped paying for HBO, Cinemax, etc.

A good majority of my downloads are 720/1080 HD content with surround sound, you just have to know what to buy and where to look, its not a huge indusrty yet but its growing faster than HDDVD.

Everyone seems to be dabbling in there own way of doing it untill they figure it out it's just gonna be slowing rolling out. Even though its not a huge market yet the sales for on-demand downloaded movies is more than both formats of HDDVD movies, and getting larger.

They really need to make an industry standard before it blows up as a popular consumer format like VCR/DVD.