One of the main limitations of the Nintendo Wii is its ability to perform media playback functions. There are quite a few solutions that allow you to set up quite a cool system for streaming content to your Wii, but the problem I have is that I live in South Africa (high broadband costs) and streaming over the Internet to my Wii is simply not an option. One such great option is Orb (http://www.orb.com/) , which has a great interface that also allows for all streamed content, to be directed over the LAN connection rather than the internet where necessary (it compares the IP addresses of the server and the Wii).

The problem, however, came in getting UpNp (Universal plug n play) to work correctly to allow for this, which I found kind of frustrating because I don’t know why you HAVE to have UpNp running to simply stream content on a local network using glorified web pages. I could write the software myself, but I don’t really have the time or the interest to spend the hours getting a nice final product…which is when I discovered Weezo, that is capable of doing the simple (creating a streaming website for local network use) as well as the more sophisticated (Internet streaming, file browsing, user management and security). If you’re looking for a flashy interface you’re not going to find it here, but if you’re looking for a piece of software that does the job, and gives you little hassle in its set up, it is definitely recommended.

I am not going to go through a step-by-step installation of Weezo because its installation is pretty straight forward with just basic configuration settings required to get the whole thing working over a LAN. Simply download the install package from http://weezo.net/content/blogcategory/16/46/lang,en/ and follow the installation instructions. Once you have installed Weezo, start the server for local network access only, create a Weezo user, assign resources to that user (remote admin, video sharing, audio sharing) with the path to any media directories. Then, on the Wii, using the internet channel, simply enter the IP address of the server on the network followed by the port that Weezo is using (8080 by default on my installation) for example 192.168.0.1:8080. [I just remembered, I had a bit of a problem with specifying a port number on the Wii, it kept giving me errors. What I did was create an index PHP page in my web server’s root that redirected to the server on port 8080, this sorted out the Wii rejection of the port number]

Now simply enter the password for the user you created and login. You should now have access to the Weezo interface to the media directories you configured beforehand. To see a demo of a Weezo installation being used by a Wii, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-suPzuR0jM. Below are some screenshots of the Weezo server application on the PC:

[update] After playing with Weezo for a while, I’m pretty disappointed with the quality of the videos as streamed over the wireless network, unless you set the resolution and screen size very low, the frame rate of the videos makes them unwatchable. I cant say if this is possibly because, due to the distance from my wireless router, the network connection to the Wii is weak (it does die pretty often) or if the streaming capabilities of my PC are poor, but at this point I’d have to say that I’d strongly suggest just using Weezo as an MP3 streaming interface to the Wii. I tested the streaming from localhost on my server machine, and the videos played perfectly in the browser, so maybe the network connection is the cause. The only way I can really test this out is to move the Wii closer to the wireless router and test the whole setup again. I did think the remote desktop functionality was pretty cool too though.

Filed under: Hardware, Media, Networking, Software, Tech, LAN, LAN media center, Media, Media center, Media streaming, Nintendo, Streaming, Weezo, Wii