News

Nintendo, a leading supplier of game consoles, will update its Wii game machine in 2007 so to enable playback of conventional DVD movies. While Nintendo will hardly impress anyone with DVD playback on a console in well-developed markets, the capability may be important to successfully enter the emerging markets, where the cost of a DVD player is considered as significant.

Nintendo plans to release DVD-playback enabled version of Wii in the latter half of 2007, according to Sonic Solutions, a software company that will power the DVD capability using its Sonic CinePlayer CE DVD Navigator software engine. Besides offering standard DVD functions and standards, CinePlayer CE DVD Navigator features advanced functions such as anamorphic widescreen video, motion menus, and multiple video angles.

It is unclear why Nintendo decided not to introduce DVD playback in the first version of its Wii console, which uses DVDs as video games media, as the cost of such functionality would be negligible, but would offer advantages for the console in Eastern Europe, where the game machine launches in early December.

Nintendo Wii console will feature IBM’s custom PowerPC architecture based microprocessor named Broadway clocked at 729MHz and code-named Hollywood chip with built-in graphics core, DSP and I/O features from ATI that will operate at 243MHz, earlier reports suggested. Nintendo Wii is expected to use 91MB of memory in total: 23MB of “main” 1T-SRAM, 64MB of “external” 1T-SRAM and 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. Nintendo’s Wii does not feature a hard disk drive, instead, it boasts with 512MB of flash memory, but the console will also have a card reader, which will allow installing more memory.

Discussion

Comments currently: 5
Discussion started: 11/28/06 06:10:04 PM
Latest comment: 05/29/07 06:14:54 PM
Expand all threads | Collapse all threads

[1-4]

1. 
So, the DVD playback will be enabled by a simple software/firmware upgrade? Or some new Wii units in 2007 will have hardware DVD playback capability? For some reason I thought Nintendo said they didn't include dvd capability in initial Wiis hardwarewise. Could all these people simply update their Wiis and watch DVDs?
[Posted by: B.H.  | Date: 11/28/06 06:10:05 PM]

2. 
Will the wii have online play like 360 or PS3?
[Posted by: ACE  | Date: 12/01/06 04:10:24 AM]
+ expand thread (1 answer)

3. 
what month will the be able to have a dvd playback installed
[Posted by: fergyferg  | Date: 03/16/07 03:53:54 PM]

4. 
the wii doesn't necessarily need a dvd player, but people will find it easier to just pop a dvd into the wii instead of messing with a dvd player, which may have to be hooked up by switching wires.
[Posted by: smitty  | Date: 05/29/07 06:14:54 PM]

[1-4]

You must log in to add comments.

Forgot password? Registration

remember me



Related news

Latest News

Saturday, November 7, 2009

3:28 pm | Electronic Book Industry Set to Explode in 2010 – Analysts. E-Book Industry Set to Raise – MIC

1:31 pm | Intel Plans “Fast” Transition to Next-Generation Atom Platform. Intel to Reveal More Details About Pine Trail Platform on December 21

11:27 am | Prices of SSDs Will Get Closer to Hard Drives in Three to Five Years – Chief Executive of OCZ. SSDs Set to Become Much More Affordable in the Future

Friday, November 6, 2009

11:56 am | Microsoft Windows 7 Appears to Be More Popular in Retail than Vista Back in 2007. First Week Windows 7 Sales Surpass Sales of Windows Vista in First Week – Research Firm

9:30 am | Elpida and ProMOS Sign “Technology-for-Capacity” Pact. Elpida to Outsource Production of DRAM to ProMOS