Jason Jenkins

Jason loves anything tech-related and drives his partner crazy by bringing home the latest gadgets to play with. So crazy, in fact, she has finally persuaded him to buy a new place to house all the junk -- sorry, life-changing consumer technology -- he has amassed over the years

RSS feed

Back to Jason Jenkins' Blog

Next: Remembering home phones and ologies

Friday 11 April 2008, 10:03am

iPlayer on the Wii: 10 out of 10 for effort

I love my Wii, but there's one serious downside to owning one -- it doesn't do all the fancy media-sharing things an Xbox 360 or PS3 does. Until now, that is.

The news that the BBC iPlayer has come to the Wii moved me to dance a little jig, and I rushed home to try it out. Finally, my little white box could compete with its more powerful rivals!

Or not, as it turns out. The image quality is unspeakably bad, with really pixellated video. It's doubly disappointing because when I have my laptop connected up to my TV to access the same streaming service, the picture is generally pretty reasonable.

The WiiPlayer (as I have decided to dub it) is also a total pain in the arse to use. You have to access the videos using the Wii's Internet browser, which isn't that great itself, rather than simply selecting an iPlayer channel from the main menu as you might expect. The constant scrolling around the iPlayer Web page you have to do using the Wiimote isn't that user-friendly either.

The final nail in the coffin is that the video doesn't fill my TV screen. Unlike the PC version of the player, there's no 'full screen' button. You can zoom into the video, but you still get irritating bars on either side of the screen.

Now to be fair, this is all still in beta, so hopefully all these issues will be addressed over time, but one thing will be difficult to overcome is that the Wii is the worst of all the most recent consoles when it comes to the quality of the video connection.

The Xbox 360 Elite and the PS3 both have HDMI ports -- the standard connection with a Wii is composite video, which might explain some of the fuzziness on the video I was watching.

I've now invested in a cheap component cable from Amazon, which will hopefully improve things, but I'm not expecting it to be Earth-shattering. I'll keep you updated if I notice anything significant when it arrives, and whether the BBC's update to its WiiPlayer make it any more useful.

Update: The good news is that the component cable arrived, but unfortunately the picture quality is just as crap as before. Here's hoping it will get better soon.

4 Comments | Post a comment

Back to Jason Jenkins' Blog

Next: Remembering home phones and ologies

Comments on this post

Totally agree. I forked out for the wii credits to buy the browser. Incidentally, you have to buy a minimum of 1000 wii points to get the 500 point browser; which is a rip off even at 1.69 or whatever it works out at. I should have smelt a rat then - a browser? Get it sorted beeb - it is almost unusable, and it doesn't have to be does it.

Posted by Dodge on Tue 22 April, 2008 12:05 AM

Offensive? Inappropriate? Report this comment

It's an internet stream. Do you honestly think that having HDMI could ever make it look any better than on component? I think not - you wouldnt have the resolution to make use of hdmi.

Posted by Amir on Sat 17 May, 2008 11:39 PM

Offensive? Inappropriate? Report this comment

Well i disagree because the thing with the wii is, they've tried to make it as much game orientated as possible. now if your a smart geeky person like me, youll figure out alternative players... if you look on youtube you can find a way to get your wii remote to be a speaker (yes that lil tiny speaker can pllay you music) also theyve made more music based games now such as wii music.... so i think just because its not an easy select thing makes it better cause its more fun

Posted by Anonymous on Sat 21 February, 2009 10:29 AM

Offensive? Inappropriate? Report this comment

its even worse, you pay for the browser. and then discover its years out of date. No warning in advance that it is the same version of Flash noah used and now way can you update to view half the sites in the web... Nintendo strike again.

Posted by scammedagain on Fri 22 May, 2009 3:40 PM

Offensive? Inappropriate? Report this comment