Here's something you might not know about me, kids -- while I've had an Xbox for four years, I've only ever owned five games for the system, three of which I bought expressly for the purpose of Bargain Bin Laden write-ups. Why? Xbox Media Center, fools! Pumping porn from one end of my house to the other with relative ease simply took priority. Using a home console as a media center has taken front seat with this new generation of hardware for a reason: it rocks. And now with the advent of Wii Media Center X, Nintendo's little white box can perform similar wonders.
Made possible through the use of the recently released Opera web browser, Wii Media Center X allows your Wii to play a variety of media stored on PCs networked with the system including MP3s, pictures, and even video -- provided it's converted to the right format. Big bonus: WMCX can do it all without a single extraneous storage solution -- no SD card required. And for us Xbox Media Center vets, the interface serves as a sleek, simple throwback to what we've come to expect from console-based media centers.
Check out the official site where you can download the software, read setup and use tutorials, and donate to the WMCX cause. Early reports say that the software is a little rough around the edges, but shows great promise. When you think about it, implementing a streaming media solution on a network-ready console isn't all that difficult -- take note for future Wii updates, Nintendo. This kind of feature could bring the Wii out of the stone age.
[Via OhGizmo]
Contest:
9:18 PM on 12.28.2006
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Still its a nice start and really Nintendo needs to give us a hand with some Divx/Xvid codec loving. Anyone a big VLC user here and tangled with its streaming ability? Can you connect to that via a browser?
Also the MP3 player does not yet work with the software, you can browse your HDD and such, but since its such an early version Ill be they'll fix things very soon.
Theres a PS3 version as well
Er, orb streams to WMP on my computers, I don't think there's a way to get it to output a stream the wii could render, yet...Ya here that orb? huh?
Its not a case of 'making it work for avi'. This uses the browser to play video and the browser only support FLV. You would need to write a plug-in for avi and then load that on to the system memory (probably via an SD card) and find a way to make the browser recognise it.
Support for avi.s isn't going to pop-up any time soon, it makes a lot more sense to use the 360 and WMC.