PlayOn Video-Streaming App Comes to the Wii

By Sonia Zjawinski
PlayOn
Music and Video

Ever since gaming consoles decided to connect to broadband, a slew of companies have popped up offering plug-ins to expand your gaming system to do much more than play games. One of those companies is Media Mall, maker of the PlayOn plug-in.

Up until now, PlayOn has made it possible to access Netflix Watch Instantly, Amazon VOD, and Hulu from your PS3 or Xbox 360. Tomorrow they port to the Nintendo Wii.

PlayOn for Wii works much in the same way as it does for the other game systems — the $40 app streams Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and a few other online video portals from your Windows XP or Vista computer to the Wii plugged into your TV. (If you’re a Mac user check out Parallels Desktop as an easy, though moderately expensive, way around the OS wars.)

Tomorrow’s launch will be a beta, so expect a few hiccups. A 14-day free trial helps you decide whether this is the best solution for you. For other ways to get online videos to your TV check out reviews on Gadgetwise of the Apple TV, Boxee, Mac Mini and Shuttle H7 G4500.

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Brian August 25, 2009 · 1:00 pm

I’m curious how this is going to perform over the wireless connection.

I use PlayOn with my PS3 to stream Netflix over a wired connection and it works well but does stutter while a buffer is built up.

The Wii has no Ethernet port, it’s wireless only. It’s also less powerful than the PS3 (or Xbox 360). I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it can adequately stream Netflix or shared media from my connected PC.

Unrelated, PlayOn needs to get on the ball with supporting more codecs for streaming shared media (stored on connected PC’s) and limit the ubiquitous “corrupted data” error.

Jake Rich August 26, 2009 · 6:45 pm

Obviously “Brian” doesn’t know what he is talking about. Netflix streams just fine over wifi. He is extrapolating his networking blunders to the rest of the universe. If there is an issue with using the Wii it would be the limited inherit resolution of the device, which is limited at 480p.

Jim August 27, 2009 · 2:16 pm

“If there is an issue with using the Wii it would be the limited inherit resolution of the device, which is limited at 480p.”

Which would make it FASTER, since PlayOn probably streams the 480p signal.

Sebastian September 2, 2009 · 11:06 pm

Brian, they make an Ethernet-to-USB 2.0 adapter for the Wii; regardless, people stream Netflix to their laptops over 802.11g all the time. Any delay will come from the limited computing power and not from the wireless stream, although I personally think it will be fine when you consider that (a) a game console’s main design goal is to render video well (and you can consider a game to just be a series of instantly-generated pictures and sounds) and (b) it lacks the background processes that bog down comptuers.

Jake, the vast majority of Netflix and Hulu streams are limited to 480P anyway, so it hardly makes a difference (or, at least, right now; as more HD streams become available, it will matter more).

Joe September 4, 2009 · 11:20 pm

I’m sitting here right now watching hulu through my Wii console. It’s obviously not HD and the video isn’t 100% flicker free but it’s certainly watchable and is probably 95% flicker free.

I’m on DSL using an N wireless router from another room.

Seems to work fine to me!

Feerneenlissabe November 26, 2009 · 11:50 am

Sony added a second higher capacity slimline PlayStation 3 to its video game console lineup on November 3.