X-OOM allows movie playback on the Wii, but it seems really clunky to me

[Image: wii small]There are about three thousand things about the Wii that are awesome, but I’ve never understood, even for a minute, why it can’t simply play DVDs. When the Xbox came out (the first one), I was so mad that MS thought they could charge me an extra $30 just to add the “play DVD” functionality (turns out they could charge me; I bought the damn extension, twice).

X-OOM let fly a press release today that announced enthusiastically that one can now “get DVD playback on Nintendo Wii.” While some places have already re-posted the Gamespress-distributed press release, but I’ll plug the important bit below, for those who are too lazy to click or don’t have a Gamespress login:

X-OOM’s latest software, supporting the MJPEG codec, allows for perfect quality playback. Simply run the DVD on a PC and save the file using ‘Movies on Wii’ to the appropriate format; once this is complete, transfer the file to the Wii using an SD memory card.

Now it might be just me, BUYING software to pre-play a DVD and convert it, then putting in on a SD card (shouldn’t we make that “an SD card,” just because saying “a SD card” sounds odd?), then putting it in the Wii in order to watch a movie seems like an extraordinarily difficult workaround to the alternative of picking up a $30 DVD player at Target and using the remote.

The whole point of DVD playback on your console is to eliminate the need for a DVD player. Now, I understand that part of the Nintendo thing, which I really do like, is that the Wii is a console. It plays games. It doesn’t really do anything else. It’s not some take-over-your-living-room while you’re asleep media monster.

But really guys? DVD playback can’t be that hard.