Can the Wii be used as a DVD player?

Nintendo never said anything about it at E3, but yes, supposedly it will be able to play DVDs.

With a special add-on which is kind of ridiculous.

Well it does have the hardware, but licencing to legally play DVDs costs extra... my guess is that's the real cost involved. Seems kinda silly to include the extra price on each Wii since virtually everybody has a DVD player at this point.

Not to mention that they're focusing on making a machine that plays, you know, games...

You mean a stand alone game playing machine? What the heck is that?

Nothing different than what MS did with the XBOX.
This way people aren't paying for features they may not want.

MS however realized this was a mistake and changed it. Paying $30 to watch a DVD when you can buy a player for $50 was crazy.

We don't know what the price of the DVD add-on will be.
Too early to tell if this is a mistake by Nintendo. However, with the Wii being as compact as it is, it will make a very nice portable DVD player for those that are on the move.

I know this is not a popular opinion, but who cares if it plays DVDs? I'm buying a game machine here . . . not a DVD player.

I personally wish Nintendo wouldn't even offer it as an option.

Jay

I think it's a good idea, they are doing there best to keep price point down. DVD is not a necessity but certaintly nice for certain people in certain situations. The problem with the XBox version is that it was (somewhat) costly since not only did you need to pay the license cost, but you also were buying a bad remote. With the Wii, I am hoping for a very small plugin device on the back that is essentially the decryptor on a chip with a connector.

Even better would be a pure software solution that takes up 10 or 20mb of your internal memory.

Yeah, at least we don't have to purchase a separate wiimote control to operate the unit!

DVD functionality is great for kids. The only DVD player my son has these days is his 360.

I agree with you but it is a nice feature to have...But the problem with the add-on is they will charge 30-40 when a player costs that now...I say include it or scrap it all together....I wouldnt use it to play dvds anyways.

Again, we don't know how much the additional accessory will cost. As someone already pointed out, the Wii remote can pretty much mimic a real DVD player remote, so all Nintendo would sell you would be some little additional piece to snap onto the Wii and enable the playback. That may end up only costing $10-$20.

Who would buy this add-on when 80% of the nations households already own a DVD player?

The majority of U.S. housholds have three sets now. And if your game system can play DVDs it saves you having yet another box connected.

What is majority? Chances are if you can buy a Wii, you already have enough dvd players for all your tv's.

Don't know for sure, but there is a huge market for Ps2 dvd remotes. Sony and three 3rd parties all sell them. If there is a market then there are sets out there using consoles for DVD.

I cant think of one Nintendo product that is that cheap for their main console....I seen recently a progressive scan dvd player albeit not top of the line retailed for $19.99 at a local store so anything above $14.99 would be absurd.

I definitely agree. The Wii itself costs enough to buy 5 DVD players. If you've got enough money to buy 3-5 tvs for your house and then buy a Wii, you probably already have enough to have already bought a DVD player for each set.

Exactly. I have DVD players in my closet that I don't even use. They are so cheap now and consoles have never really been the best for movie playback, although of Nintendo offered it it probably would be since their hardware is solid.

I think you guys overlook the "stuff" problem. Small dorm rooms, WAF rooms, children's rooms, people with limited input TV's, etc.

There are a lot of folks out there who, for whatever reason, are willing to pay extra to have one box that does it all.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but it seems that there might be a separate drive to play dvds all together


http://next-gen.biz/index.php?option...=2841&Itemid=2

I think they mean a plug in attachment ala the XBox adapter to play DVD.

Integrated DVD player will save me a set of inputs on the TV and one less set of wires to run.

Not to drives just one but with the ability to play cube and dvds...Which boggles my mind, but I guess it would be similar to mini-dvds being able to be played on dvd players...I still dont like the idea of shoving the mini-disc into the insert w/o a tray or something to fit the remaining space of the disc...I am interested to see how this works, but I still dont trust putting a mini-dvd into my dvd drive now. So who knows, but if it is one drive man I can see this thing getting jammed by a bunch of little kids.

Nintendo knows that their systems are played by kids. If the slot loading drive could jam easily, they would never release it. They've probably tested the heck out of it to ensure such jamups won't happen.

This gen yes..Next gen, no..

The odd thing is the system doesn't have an optical out. Which would suggest that movies won't be in Dolby Digital unless they release some additional hardware to enable that.

I think it's really targeted at what a few people mentioned before, dorm rooms and kids rooms. If a kid has a small 19 inch tv with 1 composite video input it's cheaper to spend 20 bucks for a Wii add-on than it is to buy a 30 dollar DVD player and composite splitter. Not to mentioned easier for the kid to use.