Wii Video
I'm always keeping an eye out for the next big video platform. Nintendo's Wii never really caught my attention since Nintendo doesn't even mention its video capabilities in its marketing campaign. So when I bought a Wii for my daughter's birthday I thought it would be just another toy that the kids abandon after a few weeks. But within a few hours of the console's debut every single member of my household had used the device and an unruly line had formed next to the TV. When I heard my mother-in-law shouting "Die! Die! Die!" at the screen in Korean I knew I had a hit on my hands.
Can this addictive little device be used to deliver video? Read more to find out.
I started my quest out with Red Kawa's Wii Video 9 video converter tool. This tool claims to convert video "into the specific video formats that are playable on the Wii". It produces MJPEG files in an AVI container (at 2 Mbps) and FLV files (at 512 Kbps). When I tested out an assortment of AVI and FLV files on my Wii I could see the AVI files but not a single FLV file was discovered by the interface. In visiting the support forum for the product it turns out that nobody has been able to get the FLV files to work, since the Wii only supports MJPEG in an AVI or MOV container. What kind of converter tool is this?
The free kind. It turns out that Wii Video 9 is just a shell for the FFmpeg encoder. If you're familiar with this encoder you know that it's the basis for a whole host of horrible encode tools. You'd also not be shocked to learn that the encodes produced by the Wii Video 9 converter look like they've been dragged under a bus.
So that tool is not going to get your video into the 20 million Wii households that have become bored with Wii Darts are looking for something else to do. But can you tap this market at all? It turns out that (when it comes to user provided content) the Wii only plays MJPEG files. There's an additional deal breaker in that the files must be under 30 minutes in length. And, lastly, the device only accepts these files via an SD card interface. So your business plan is going to look something like this "Green Screen Cinema will distribute crappy, short videos on a medium that costs more than the Wii itself".
Perhaps video won't be 'coming soon to a Wii near you'.