The wonders of the Wii never cease.

I've known for a while about the Wii's ability to show pictures off of a SD memory card, but only recently learned that you can play videos on the Wii directly as well.

Software made by Red Kawa can convert most video into the Wii format. The software is Windows only.

The Wii will play back Motion JPEG (MJPEG) video. Motion JPEG is an older video format and doesn't utilize advanced compression algorithms. As a result, if you convert from an AVI or MPEG4 video, the resulting video will likely be much larger. For example a 174 MB Xvid file converted into a 667 MB MJPEG. That's almost a 400% increase in size.

The operation of Red Kawa Wii Video Converter is very simple, literally one click. Then move the new file onto a SD memory card.

On the front of a Wii is the SD slot. Simply put the card in the slot and go to the Photo Channel. You'll see the video(s) there and can play them.

The quality is OK, but not great. It's nowhere as good as a MPEG file. Motion JPEG is inherently blocky, but does not break up at all in high motion scenes. It's certainly good enough to watch.

The Wii lets you use all the fun Photo Channel tools, so you can draw on the moving video, pixelate it, or even do the puzzle from the moving video.

There's no great reason to convert your video to Wii format, but if you download something you'd like to watch on your TV easily, this may be the answer. No media servers, DVDs, or other more complicated methods. Personally I think it's great and sent Red Kawa (the same guy behind Videora) a $10 donation.

Posted by michael at February 11, 2007 08:31 PM