The news is a couple of weeks old now, but I just got around to testing it out last night. Over at HackMii, Erant announced the release of a ‘hidden channel’ (DVDX) which allows homebrew software to access the DVD drive. It requires the famous Twilight hack or a modchip, like all Wii homebrew so far.
What this means, is that using DVDX installer with Mplayer, you can now watch regular DVDs using your Wii, in addition to regular video files (ie DivX, Xvid, AVI, MPEG-2, WMV etc) placed on the SD-card. It’s kind of dumb that Nintendo simply didn’t include this capability from the start …. anyhow, nice to see the homebrew community has come to the rescue.
Rather than re-iterate here how to set it all up, see the WiiBrew guide and Erants post for instructions.
Well, it may be a little early for anyone to actually produce a homebrew Wii game, but news just in from the 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress (24C3) is suggesting that some dedicated hackers have managed to find the encryption and decryption keys for the Wii via full memory dumps, allowing homebrewed code to be run with full access to the Wii hardware (not just Gamecube mode) for the first time. Here’s the video to prove it:
These guys are professionals, with their reputations on the line … they don’t fake stuff, so I’d say it’s all true.
This is great news … it means that in the future developers will be able to release innovative software for the Wii without requiring the direct blessing of Nintendo, and we as players will have a wider choice of independently developed games and applications.
It is a very Merry Christmas for Wii owners after all !
This is pretty cool … by setting up an infra-red light source and some finger-mounted reflectors, the Wii Remote “IR eye” can be used for finger tracking, much like the neat interface from the film “Minority Report”.
With a bit of refinement, this looks like it could actually be usable for a real game. Nintendo or a third-party developer should really take this idea an run with it … bundle a game with an infra-red light attachment and some little reflective thimbles, and you have yet another innovative control scheme !
In fact, this gives me an idea for some alternative ways to play existing Wii games … look forward to videos of me with a helmet mounted sensor bar in the future …
The news is a couple of weeks old now, but I just got around to testing it out last night. Over at HackMii, Erant announced the release of a ‘hidden channel’ (DVDX) which allows homebrew software to access the DVD drive. It requires the famous Twilight hack or a modchip, like all Wii homebrew so far.
