Homebrew Wii DVD Viewer contains sneaky bug
Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 12:40am by Jake
Those of you that grew excited by today’s homebrew Wii DVD breakthrough might have felt that this was too good to be true. True. Before you pop in Alf: Season 2 there’s a few bugs that you might want to take note of. One major issue is audio synching with the video. When viewing some DVDs I noticed the voice, and sound effects were slightly off balance. I did not run into this problem with every movie, but nevertheless the sound issue stands. I have noticed a few minor video jitters here and there, but not enough to put you out of the movie.
Thankfully these problems aren’t plaguing every DVD viewing, but like all free stuff there will be bugs. Hopefully we can see these resolved.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:59 am
it’s not so much a bug as inefficient programming. they’ll polish the code and then it will be fine.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:47 am
I think it’s pretty cool that they have a (semi) working DVD player up and running. Shows that Nintendo could have easily added the functionality without a second thought. Too bad it doesn’t matter that much considering virtually anyone with a Wii already has a way to play DVDs.
@jrr: A bug, by definition, basically is inefficient programming.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:11 am
After polish this will be great, until then I’ll pass, I tried Spiderman 3 on it last night and it wouldn’t even get to the titles.. The fact that it runs is good enough for me to give hope into the project though.
One thing though, nintendo never said it would be too hard for them to make a Wii that plays DVD Video discs, they just said that it would be pointless to do so in a console that really doesn’t ‘need’ it. Their excuse was that everyone that wants to play DVDs already has DVD a player, most houses have multiple.
Still. I would still urge Nintendo to release a DVD Video Channel, a lot of people, me included would much rather have the official version, this does prove it’s possible to do so if people want it enough.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:31 am
. . . I still don’t get why anyone wants to use a Wii as a dvd player. DVD players are cheap and provide a much better picture . . . and you won’t burn out the motor in the Wii by overusing it.
I’m with Nintendo in this. The Wii isn’t meant to be a dvd player.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I agree with Paul 2
August 14th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Why is this a post? This should be a comment on the first post about the software.
Newsflash: Proof of Concept Software Contains Bugs
Well, duh.
I’d rather read something about the system menu hacks, or the fact that it’s now possible to re-flash your Wii into a different region.
August 14th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Isn’t that just a problem with mplayer. For what its worth I’ve seen the original xbox have sync problems also.
August 14th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Why are you watching season 2 of Alf? The first season was definitely the best.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Hell they got quake 1 to work!
August 14th, 2008 at 11:14 am
eh i don’t have a dvd player in my room so once they work the bugs out of this i’ll definitely give it a try.
August 14th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
“A bug, by definition, basically is inefficient programming.”
@neko to kuruma:
not necessarily. in this case, mplayer would probably run perfectly if the wii was just a tad more muscular. as it is, the code will simply need to be streamlined to load and display the video and audio more efficiently. a bug, on the other hand, is an explicit programming error that causes an anomaly to occur. i doubt that’s the case here.