Wii Media Centre Tips

This article is a follow up to yesterday’s article entitled PS3 Media Centre Tips.

The main way people view content on their Wii is through the Wii’s Internet Channel.  This is powered by Opera, and costs 500 points from the Wii Shopping Channel.

Getting Favourites onto Wii

Opera’s favourites work well on Wii, but typing can be annoying.  It now supports USB keyboards, so you could try using your computer’s keyboard.

Another way of adding links is by using WiiBrowser.com.  This site allows you to add links to a password-protected page which you can then view on your Wii.

Web Video Sites

YouTube works well on Wii since they added youtube.com/tv.  By visiting this TV-specific site your Wii or PS3 browser will display content in a more TV-friendly format.

If you’re in the UK like us you’ll probably want to try iPlayer on Wii.  To use it, just visit bbc.co.uk/iplayer and it’ll load up like it does in any browser.  The BBC announced a deal with Nintendo in 2008 to better integrate iPlayer, but there’s not really much specific support at the moment.  It gives you prompts about which buttons to use to zoom into the video.

Another site to try on Wii is StumbleVideo.  This is videos recommended through people on StumbleUpon, so it’s a good way of finding popular videos quickly with minimal effort.

Hiding the Toolbar

Watching videos with that huge toolbar isn’t too great, so let’s remove it.  Click Start Page, Settings, then select either auto-hide or toggle with 1.

Stream Content from Your PC

One way of streaming content is through Orb.  Orb works through the Internet Channel, and will stream music and video from a Windows PC to Orb’s servers and then to your Wii.

TVersity (again for Windows) is perhaps a better solution.  TVersity actually provides a web server that allows web navigation of your content.  This can include videos, music and even a handy way to view video podcasts on your TV.  It’s pretty easy to use, once TVersity is installed just visit http://192.168.x.x:41952/flashlib.  This post is a comprehensive guide to the process: Setting up TVersity with your Wii.

Stream Content from Your Mac

WiiTransfer by Riverfold Software supports streaming movies, music and pictures from your Mac to Wii.  It costs $19 but you can try it out for free.