The new YouTube TV interface plays a similar role to sites like moowee.tv, which has been providing a slick Internet Channel Wii-optimised frontend to YouTube (and other video sites) from essentially day one.

I really like this new offering from YouTube; it feels a bit simpler and more reliable than moowee.tv, and switching to fullscreen mode is seemless. It’s quite watchable for some of the higher quality videos. I can see YouTube TV becoming my preferred option for the odd occasion when I want to veg-out on the couch and watch some stupid viral videos.

If you want to check it out without firing up your Wii, you can install the Switch User Agent Add-on for Firefox, and add the User-Agent “Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Wii Shop Channel/1.0; en)”. Go to YouTube TV, and you will see the Wii optimized interface in all it’s glory. For the definitive experience, check it out on your Wii.

Here’s one that seems to work okay, despite being, well, about as nerdy as you can get:

Within Range challenges you to correctly file books on the library shelf, using the Dewey Decimal system (play it now!). Yeh … sounds kind of silly, but so did Cooking Mama, and that turned out to be a fun distraction. Proudly brought to you by the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries.

(and via the ubercool and totally un-nerdy dudes at The BBPS.)

WiiRSS currently tracks most of my favorite Wii news sites and blogs, and shows articles in the past 24 hours. I’ve bookmarked it in my Internet Channel Favorites so I can quickly catch up on Wii related news each day. WiiRSS is based on the Gregarius feed aggregator, but has a Wii-optimized theme. The sidebar region containing the list of feeds can be collapsed using the little “<<” arrow button, and you can also search for specific articles with the Search button. Notice, that even on a crappy small TV like mine, the text is readable.

Feel free notify me of any Wii news sites that aren’t included that you think should be there. I’m happy to take suggestions in the comments.

(Pssst … this blog is Wii-optimized too … check it out, it will look different on the Wii )

The WiiCade API also allows games to detect the X/Y coordinates of the screen cursors, the distance from television (stab, stab, stab, die dammit!), rotation angle of the on-screen cursor (twist) and auto-detection of connected remotes. Browser features like zooming and scrolling can also be selectively disabled during play of a Flash game, preventing unwanted scrolling at the critical moment. WiiCade is also providing a ’sandbox’ service preconfigured with their server code which allows Flash game developers to quickly and easily test their creations.

The main WiiCade site features a handful of Flash games written specifically for (or adapted to) the Wii. These games fill up the entire screen (almost), and most have legible fonts – they are clearly designed to be played on the Wii, unlike some other lame efforts I reviewed recently. While there are currently only a small number of games available, and some appear more proof-of-concept than fully fledged games, what they lack in quantity is made up for in quality. Many of the WiiCade games use Wii Remote API features; for instance, Bumper Car Madness allows four player to play simultaneously, and the control scheme can be chosen at the start of the game (car follows mouse pointer, or car turns based on WiiMote twist).

Through their forums, the creators of WiiCade are fostering a growing Wii Flash game developer community, so expect to see some high quality offerings in the future.

Knibble.com has been getting a little bit of buzz in the last few days for releasing “5000 Flash games for the Wii”, at wii.knibble.com. I’ve always figured that a small industry of Flash games targeted specifically to the Wii would develop over the next few years, since there a so many Wii’s happily integrated into living rooms all over the world. The market is there to be filled, it’s just a matter of someone working make a decent product. Take for example my favorite Flash application specifically designed for the Wii, moowee.tv. The interface of this social video application fills up the screen nicely on the Wii, doesn’t require any zooming in a out, allows control via Wii Remote buttons and just works.

Sadly, wii.knibble.com is not like this at all. The “5000 Flash games” are not in fact specially tweaked for the Wii, but are just recycled Flash games targeted at bored PC users (ie “softcore casual gamers”). This is evident since the font sizes used are rarely legible on a TV screen. The games are embedded into a web page with Adwords at the top (again, with font sizes not even legible on a TV) and “Normal/Widescreen”, “Reload” “Add to Favorites” and “Pick Random” buttons at the bottom. To even have a chance of playing these games properly, you need to zoom in, cutting off the extra stuff on the page around the actual Flash game. I gave up after cycling through about 10 random games, one of which gave an (illegible) dialog box asking permission to save data to my computer (not sure if this works on the Wii .. the game certainly didn’t even after I clicked ‘Yes’). About the only thing that makes this site “Wii specific” is that I presume they have selected 5000 games from their library of 10000+ that can be played only with a mouse and don’t require a keyboard.

All in all, wii.knibble.com looks like a pretty half-arsed effort to cash in on the popularity of the Wii, and very little effort has actually gone into providing a fun gaming experience. I doubt the designers have even viewed their site on a Wii. My only hope is that since the site is still in ‘beta’, it will improve over time … although I have my doubts.

Update:

21st Septemeber, 2007 — It looks like wii.knibble.com has done an update, and the new site has improved … a little. The overall interface is now better suited to viewing on the Wii, and you can now pick from a scrolling list of thumbnail games at the bottom of the screen rather than just being thrown any random game. Unfortunately my main gripe still stands; the Flash games still do not take up the whole screen when being played, and those that I tested (ie 4 or 5 I played before I quit) do not have readable fonts on my TV. Fun games like “Stackopolis” are unplayable since you need to be able to read the “blueprint” fonts to complete each level. So while it’s improved, wii.knibble.com still smells of a site jumping on the Wii bandwagon without being prepared to create something that practically works well on the Wii.

Update 2:

18th November, 2008 — Looks like wii.knibble.com is now down, with an “Under construction” sign. Either they’ve given up since they feel the wave of Wii hype has passed, or they are working on producing a decent set of Wii-friendly flash games. The second option is what I’m hoping for. We will have to wait and see if they re-launch in the future …..

According to Nintendo, no real new features here, but they claim to have fixed problems with LAN adapters that they broke in the upgrade to version 3.0, and have fixed ‘hangs’ in the Internet Channel.

I always find the Internet Channel cannot play Flash videos longer than about 10 mins .. I wonder if this update fixes it ? Or does it fix the Flash player ‘crash’ bug uncovered by Symantec, that some have speculated could be exploited for running homebrew Wii software ?

I hope this will not become a recurring pattern of “ship update, break (or worse brick) some Wii’s, ship update for the broken update”.

Enter Moowee.tv and StumbleVideo; two YouTube-powered video sites that specifically optimise their pages for viewing on the Wii.

StumbleVideo allows you to watch random videos from defined catergories (eg Animation, Dancing, Politics, Cats) and rate them with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Videos can be expanded to take up most of the screen, and while you can’t choose exactly which video clip to watch, StumbleVideo claims that it learns you preferences over time and tries to give you more of what you like. This makes it much like ‘real’ TV … just choose a channel and watch whatever is on.

Probably my favorite is Moowee.tv. On the whole it is similar to StumbleVideo, with themed channels, a fullscreen option and an “Add to Favorites” button, but the custom Flash interface has been designed to be especially Wii friendly. The Pause, Volume and clip position slider are much bigger and easier to hit with the Wiimote pointer (unlike the default YouTube buttons used by StumbleVideo). Moowee.tv also allows you to choose which clip to watch by providing a thumbnail list in the left sidebar, so you can quickly skip to something in the channel you want to see. If you don’t press anything, and the channel just runs the clips in order. And you sit on the couch munching your snacks, vegging.

One problem I’ve noticed with watching any Flash video on the Wii is that many hang and refuse to play any further after 10 – 12 mins … this can be pretty disappointing. Maybe this is some memory limitation, or maybe it is related to this reported Flash player bug on the Wii. If this bug does turn out to be an exploit for running homebrew games on the Wii, I bet Nintendo will fix it fast … which is nice for those of use watching Flash videos, but bad for Wii homebrew.

Anyhow, the best way to get an idea how these great services work is to try ‘em out ….

• Moowee.tv
• StumbleVideo

(There are probably more Wii friendly YouTube-frontends out there, but these are the best two I’ve found. Feel free to post any I’ve missed in the comments !)

1. Test your site in Opera 9. The Internet Channel on the Wii is based on Opera 9, so testing in Opera 9 is a great start to finding potential compatibility issues. Ultimately, you really need to view the page on the Wii using a TV to check that is it legible.
2. The maximum page width is 800 pixels wide, but keeping image and CSS element widths well under this is advised (the Wii shop channel looks good, and is 608×456). This should mean that the user doesn’t have to scroll sideways or zoom out to see the layout as intended.
3. JPEG, GIF, PNG (with alpha transparency), BMP, ICO, SVG 1.1 basic, and scripted canvas are supported.
4. Only Flash 7 is supported, and most Javascript is okay (no Java or other plugins are available)
5. Opera on Wii uses only two fonts: a sans-serif font “Wii NTLG PGothic” and a monospace font called “Wii NTLG Gothic”. Keeping the font size to a minimum of 14 – 16px should ensure that the fonts are legible on a TV without requiring the user to zoom in.

I was planning on customising a Wordpress template to detect if the browser has the User-Agent for the Wii Opera browser (Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Wii Shop Channel/1.0; en)), and display a custom css stylesheet accordingly. Turns out, this has already been done with the WordPress Wii Edition Plugin (WiiPress v1.3) !! I’ll probably tweak it a little in the future, but it works well enough to use “out of the box” !!

(For Firefox users who wanting to see this site using the stylesheets designed for the Wii, install the Switch User Agent Add-on and add the User-Agent “Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Wii Shop Channel/1.0; en)”, then reload this site).

Here are some links with general guidance to make pages display better on the Wii:

• Making Wii-friendly Pages (opera.com)
• WordPress Wii Edition Plugin (WiiPress v1.3)
• Web design guide for Opera Browser on Wii
• Is your site ready for Wii ?
• Wii press kit images … nice graphics for Wii-based themes (like the theme of this blog, for instance).