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Wii System Menu 4.0 Released
dougisfunny writes "The Wii System Menu 4.0 has been released. It adds a number of features that people have been waiting for, including the ability to use SDHC cards, as well as the ability to download and play things directly off of the SD/SDHC card rather than the internal memory. This was announced at GDC09 by Nintendo's President Saturo Iwata in his keynote address. More information can be found at Nintendo's website."
Are you telling me you don't have a DVD player yet? You can get those things for less than the cost of a Wii game nowadays, never mind the Wii console.
This has nothing to do with ability of the system as there has been homebrew for a while that enables this feature, but rather that royalties would have to be paid in order to legally enable it. If consumers would be willing to eat the price of the upgrade without bitching, I am sure they would be willing to sell it to you. (Remember how the original xbox required a seperate remote in order to use DVD playback?)
My PS2 fanboy friends used to give me a hard time about that dongle because the PS2 does DVD playbackit out of the box. That is until i pointed out that I could save my games out of the box.....
Good-bye
Just because you modify your Wii doesn't make you a pirate. There is a lot of interesting or nifty homebrew software. Wait, why am I replying to an AC/troll anyway.
Yeah, I would advise you to just use the Twilight Hack and install the Homebrew Channel and then update - the update does not remove the Homebrew Channel but it does close the hole for the Twilight Hack once and for all, or at least so it would seem. There isn't really a drawback to having the Homebrew Channel on your Wii, except for the maybe 1meg of space it takes up. That way if you later decide you want to use homebrew, you won't have to wait for the next exploit. Team Twiizers, the team behind the Twilight hack, have been sitting on other exploits for when this finally got properly patched, but it's going to take them time to actually put out the next hack so if there's any chance you want homebrew just hack it now and then update.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Their updates always say that, but it's usually not true if all you've done is install the Homebrew Channel. More invasive (irresponsible) hacks might cause problems but if you stick to the Homebrew Channel only (and DVDx I guess) so far there are no problems. Team Twiizers is generally careful about what they do.
All your base are belong to Wii.
While this doesn't necessarily mean that the hack is dead, it seems like they're moving on to the next exploitable game. Also, you don't really need the Twilight Hack once you've installed the Homebrew Channel, and this update does not remove the Homebrew Channel. I held off on updating for a while but I actually buy WiiWare games, so this update is actually useful for me, and I keep my Homebrew Channel. The Twilight Hack finally being fixed does not really matter to me.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Hell the only reason I own a Wii is to play the old retro NES, SNES, and Genesis games. I've tried some of the different Wii games and found myself just wanting to sit on my couch with a controller in my hand. Maybe I'm just getting older. Crotchety at the age of 27.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Also, you don't really need the Twilight Hack once you've installed the Homebrew Channel
Is this true? Because its the only reason I even own zelda, and would love to be able to give it to a friend to have if this is the case.
Some people don't like to have half a dozen devices connected to their TV's if one device is capable of performing most of those tasks. I fondly recall the "debates" I had with the gf over where to put the DVD player I insisted we buy after I got frustrated with our PS3's lack of IR remote-control support when I have an otherwise homogeneous system with my Logitech Harmony.
Others, still, do not have enough input sockets on their TV's to support new devices. If I somehow only have one component input, to which my DVD player is currently connected to, and later buy a Wii, it would be nice to not be forced to balance like a monkey trying to reach behind the TV to rewire each time I switch devices.
All Nintendo would need to do is create a DVD channel and pass on the cost to the people interested. At the same time Nintendo may have other priorities, so this would take a back seat.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Yes, it's true. Once you've installed the HBC you don't need the disc anymore.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
It's not going to happen. From what I've read (and I've read, and worked with, a lot), the DVD player in the Wii is not suited for the continuous reads that a movie would demand-- it does short burst reads. Playing movies on it will, over time, ruin the device.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
Right, so I should probably include relevant links for those too lazy to Google. Consider this a mini-guide to homebrew on the Wii.
Phew. That's probably the most effort I've ever spent on a Slashdot post. These links should be enough to get anyone started. Since I'm tired of typing HTML tags, I'll just list a few recommended apps: GeeXBoX is an excellent media center app, and there's also a handful of mplayer ports, then there's all the emulators, Gecko OS lets you tweak a few aspects of the System menu as well as use cheats (but don't use them online, people have been getting banned), FTPii is useful if you're too lazy to take your SD card out of your Wii, there are a few Wii Linux distros in their infancy, and of course, a plethora of games (including Quake!).
One last thing, Team Twiizers is working on something called BootMii, which is essentially a replacement of some very low level boot code on the Wii. Once this is finished, Wii homebrew will essentially have complete access to everything on the Wii. Keep an eye out for it; among other things it should make a Wii relatively brick-proof. It'll be on Hackmii of course.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Gecko OS also breaks the region lock which is pretty damn useful.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Losing an exploit, but gaining significant and long-anticipated new features. This is only a downgrade to a fraction of a percent of Wii users... and the majority of them are playing copied games, and Nintendo doesn't really need to worry too much about irritating them. They'll crack it again soon anyway; Nintendo just has to make these exploits irritating enough that normal people would have no desire to use them.
go to hackmii.com
Convert your movie files to M-JPEG and play them off an SD card through the Photo Channel.
Squirrel!
No, you can't play the game directly off the SD/SDHC card. You can save downloads and games to the card, but they still have to be loaded into system memory to run. The earliest articles about the update were clear on that. - that the big thing was the rasing of the storage limit from 2gigs to 32gigs, but that it was for storage only.
Still, upping it from 2 gigs is a good thing. Hopefully they'll upgrade the Opera browser to start using all that space.
Based on two unfortunate experiences, I would agree. For my job, I travel a fair amount and before I leave each trip, I spend some time with my 4 year old playing Mega Man. HE LOVES Mega Man.
On two trips, we paused the game for a moment and walked away to do something. A week later, I come home from my trip and find the game still paused. Whoops! This works great... until you try to use the system again. Nasty error code and a $100 fix from Nintendo to get the drive to work again.
Don't leave the disc on!
I can also try to get my firebird to tow cars. It might work, but it's gonna kill it.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
The price of the licensing isn't the only thing to consider. The Wii media and drive are very similar to DVD specs but they are not DVDs. The most notable difference is that the data is read backwards. If Nintendo is going to sanction folks using the Wii to do something its hardware was never intended to do (run backwards for hours at a time), then a significant amount of QA time would have to go into making sure the unit isn't damaged in the process.
BAD CAR ANALOGY WARNING:
I can run my car at 5000RPM but that doesn't mean I can keep on doing it day in and day out without any adverse effect.
Does running the Nintendo's laser backwards damage the unit in the long term? I don't know the answer to that but Nintendo probably doesn't either. And until they bother to spend the time and resources to find out, you're going to have to go out of your way to do it.
It's splitting hairs - the game is being launched from the card (in that you navigate to the game in the SD card's menu structure and select it for play there), but it is then (automagically) copied to the system memory for execution - behind the scenes such that to the typical user it appears to be playing from the card.
The end result, from a user point of view, is the same as if it were being played from the card except for one annoying point - the game size is still limited by the free internal memory on the Wii, meaning an 8 gig game is out, unless the Wii supports some system of virtualizing the system memory or loading the object in parts, which I suspect is possible.
So basically, you are both right, it just depends on how you look at it - from the technical perspective or from the user perspective - as well as the semantic detail - launching as opposed to executing.
Oh, was that my outside voice?