OSX Wii Media Conversion Tools

There is finally a good solution for OSX users to convert their video content to a format playable on the Wii. Wii Transfer converts your MP3 files and videos to Wii compatible format. It can put them on an SD card or stream them through the Opera Browser.

Additional Features:

• Show album cover artwork in the music sharing interface
• Share MP3 music and pictures to your Wii over local network.
• Convert movies for playing in Wii's Photo Channel.
• Copy movies to SD card automatically if connected.
• Browse and convert iTunes video podcasts from within Wii Transfer.
• AppleScript support for automated conversions.
• Backup saved game files to your Mac automatically.

Download Wii Transfer here

Wii Internet Music Players

WiiHear.com

Your Wii can now tune and and listen to streaming internet radio stations!
Check it out on your Wii Browser.

FineTune.com/wii

finetune is a free online music player run by survivors of the original Napster, Gigabeat, and Listen.com. They have developed a special wii player for their service, and it looks great on the tv!

Wii Media Center - Music Streaming Solutions

This post will give you an overview of the many music and systems available through the Wii Web Browser.

So you may have heard about BrowseAmp which will allow you to browse and control Winamp from a wii compatible webpage. Well there is one step up from that called AjaxAMP

You will also be happy to know that the latest version of Winamp has streaming services built right in. Ben has written an article on how to use Winamp Streaming Services on the Wii

As discussed in a previous post. Orb Streaming Audio definitely works, some people have reported problems with certain video files. Likely that the problem is the Wii can not handle a large amount of data. The WiiCR needs to split video files into pieces and then generate a playlist to work around the problem.

If you are still having problems with ORB, you can also try this tip from one of our readers, David:

ORB streaming problems can be fixed by deleting a registry key. Here are the steps: - run regedit.exe - find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Orb Networks/Orb/OrbStreamer - File | Export (make a backup of this reg folder) - delete the key HQFLASH This modifies the flash encoding to use a lesser-quality which is compatible with Opera-Wii

I suspect the same Windows iTunes streaming tricks that work for PSP will work with the Wii as well, though not confirmed

OSX users, the first solution I found was this article to control iTunes from the Wii, but then MaxConsole pointed out that DOT.TUNES is also Wii compatible and it streams.

Wii Media Center X has software for both PC and Mac, but the software is still in it's Alpha stages and not quite ready for prime-time yet.

If you want to go through the trouble of installing apache, php, mysql, etc.. try one of the web server based solutions below..

You may also take a look at Jinzora which is a web based PHP/Apache/Mysql/Flash Music System. One of the founders, Ben is working on a Wii Compatible frontend skin (not released publicly yet) . There are several actual flash players that you can use with Jinzora and all come bundled with the installation. I've also used Jinzora to stream MP3's to my phone and it has been working great! Definitely check it out if you looking for a customizable PHP based music server platform.

Please post in the comments with your experiences, good or bad with any of the above programs, along with any specific settings you needed to change to get it working on the Wii. Also let me know if there are other programs that you have found to add to this list. Thanks!

Wii Media Center - Play your videos through Opera

I came across an app called Wii Media Center. It is made by the same author that wrote Wii Video 9, an application that converts your video files to motion jpeg movies that are viewable in the photo channel.

Now he has created software that will generate nice looking webpages to browse through all of the media on your hard drive. Once the transcoding capabilities of Wii Video 9 and the website abilities of Wii Media Center are combined, we will be looking at a really solid platform for hosting video, audio and other media for the Wii.


Although there are still a few hurdles to get by, I have no doubts these issues will be solved soon.. Red Kawa, it's author, had this to say:

Now that the Wii Opera Browser has finally been released, we were finally able to test Wii Media Center X on the Wii and like a lot of you have mentioned, we've also noticed that there are major issues.

Since the Wii browser only supports Flash 7 and does not support LiveConnect, you will most likely encounter problems using the slideshow or my music features. Also there are reports of choppy video in the My Video's section.

We wanted to let you know that we are aware of these issues and are working on fixing them. Our plan of attack is to first get the Video section working well and then move onto the other sections.

So, it looks like they are making good progress, but it's just not quite there yet. For now you will want to try ORB.com which has been confirmed working on the Wii Web Browser.