AfterDawn: News

Netflix service coming to Wii?

According to a new consumer survey sent to current users, Netflix may be expanding their service soon to add Wii support.

"Imagine that, as an added benefit to DVDs by mail, Netflix offers its members the ability to watch movies & TV episodes instantly on their TV via their Nintendo Wii, choosing from a library of over 12,000 choices," starts the survey.



The service will be enabled through a "Netflix Instant Streaming Disc" and the disc would have to remain in the Wii whenever the service is in use.

Of course, the survey does not mean Netflix support on the Wii is an absolute, but it does mean that the company is at least investing time in the possibility. We can imagine that Netflix would love to gain even some of the Wii's 22 million US users.

Picture, from the source:


Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 23 Mar 2009 1:22

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• 6 comments

• BobL

  I read a pretty convincing article a while back that said the wii did not have fast enough networking components to support streaming video. Maybe this will change with a software update, or maybe Netflix has found a workaround?
  
  This would be neat to have, although a little too late for me as I already bought a Tivo to do Netflix streaming - and then to find out that their streaming movies don't have closed captioning for the hearing impaired so the whole thing is useless to us.

  23.3.2009 03:40 #1

• nonoitall

  The transfer rates I've seen on my Wii are around 400-500 KB/s (3.2-4 Mbps), which would be adequate for decent SD content encoded with a modern codec.

  23.3.2009 05:37 #2

• keith1993

  It is just me or does this tie in well with the supposed Wii hard drive..
  A delayed start and dumping the buffer on a speedy drive would mean this was easily possible even on slow net.

  23.3.2009 14:32 #3

• ThePastor

  I have tried using Orb with the Wii and while it works ... the framerate is terrible. I've not tweaked it much so maybe it can be made to work better but all of the forums suggest that it's typical for the Wii. Granted, Orb uses Flash which is a terrible video format. Maybe Netflix would be better.

  23.3.2009 16:24 #4

• snowlock

  the machine can't play dvd's but it will be a netflix box?
  
  still, i would probably go for it.
  
  
  
  in a way i'm sad they didn't say this was for ps3,
  but my playstation needs a rest and my nintendo needs something to do!

  23.3.2009 19:22 #5

• vyze

  Originally posted by ThePastor: I have tried using Orb with the Wii and while it works ... the framerate is terrible. I've not tweaked it much so maybe it can be made to work better but all of the forums suggest that it's typical for the Wii. Granted, Orb uses Flash which is a terrible video format. Maybe Netflix would be better.I've tried streaming video via opera and other utilities and it did run poorly. If the disc itself is its own streaming media player, and actual application not a web plugin, then it wouldn't have the overhead of the web browser

  25.3.2009 11:44 #6