Jaw dropping Wii project!

The news that Steve Jobs (Mr Reality Distortion) is currently under investigation for share jerry-mandering, and the news that Intel is going into the discrete graphics market (for goodness knows why) didn't bother me much. However, this was the bit of news that caused my jaws to drop. Unfortunately, it's currently only in the pre-alpha planning stage. But the potential... think of the potential... This project aims to turn the Wii into a MythTV console!!!

Now, a little introduction. MythTV (www.mythtv.org) is a homebrew PVR (personal video recorder) project that's been under development for almost four years and is perfectly usable now. Think of TiVo, but with more functions. Think VCR but with digital content instead of videocassettes. Now, I'll take a step back and analyse this thing a little bit. Let's assume for the moment that this project succeeds in the next year or so.

Firstly, let's look at it from a technical standpoint. The graphical and raw processing power of the Wii is certainly more than what we find in a standard TiVo box. So, it can certainly do the job of a PVR. The Wii uses SD card for storage and can be easily upgraded to a 2-4Gb card. This is about equivalent to storing about 5-12 hours worth of video content. Quite useful. What's most useful is the ability to transfer movies between the Wii and computer. This can be done via SD card or WiFi (since all Wii come with WiFi). So, there isn't any technical reason why this project shouldn't succeed.

Secondly, from a financial perspective. The most basic TiVo box costs USD 70. The Wii costs USD 250. We can assume that the software will cost nothing more than the media it's distributed upon. However, the Wii can play games and is more feature rich than the TiVo. So, if anyone is already planning to get a Wii, being able to record/watch your favourite TV shows and movies will be a great bonus. And being able to easily transfer/share/stream shows between the Wii/PC via WiFi will be a HUGE bonus. And among the next gen consoles, the Wii is by far the cheapest one. So, cost isn't so much of an issue.

Thirdly, from a competition perspective. Both the Xbox360 and PS3 are also capable consoles. Although both have harddisk options, they're more expensive and not very hacker friendly. So, it is unlikely that there will be independent support for these consoles unless Sony and Microsoft themselves choose to support this functionality in their consoles. IIRC, the Wii firmware is based on Linux anyway. So, it'll make it all easier to add functionality to it.

Fourthly, from a market perspective. The whole idea of the Wii was to make game consoles as easy to use as the VCR so that even your grannie can play games on it. Now, with this project, your grannie can REALLY use the Wii as a VCR. This will open up the Wii to a whole market of 3rd party developers that build functionality for the console that Nintendo didn't think about. It'll definitely help them sell more consoles if there are multiple uses for it besides playing games.

In conclusion, I can't wait for this project to get off the ground. I wonder what other homebrew hacks other people will come up with for the Wii. It will be interesting if Nintendo actively supports a whole homebrew industry around it's core console. New tagline: "Wii - the little console that could!"