Hardware Is the Wii capable of playing full-HD movies?

[Lucif3r]

Hai.

Just had a thought here. I know there are media players available for the Wii.
What I wonder is if the Wii hardware is powerful enough to play a full-HD movie without stutter etc? Obviously the media player needs to downscale the image.

Reason I wonder is because the Wii is sooo easy to carry with you. Would be nice to bring it over to friends and use a media player. The issue is I have a lot of HD movies, which would be a shame to miss out on.


So, have anyone tried to play a full-HD (or 720p) movie on the Wii?

 

[Necron]

I have played some on my PS2, so I think the Wii is capable of doing it.

 

[nano351]

wii is only capable of outputting 480p 4:3 resolution. Anything more gets downscaled so there is no point.

 

[kylster]

Hai.

Just had a thought here. I know there are media players available for the Wii.
What I wonder is if the Wii hardware is powerful enough to play a full-HD movie without stutter etc? Obviously the media player needs to downscale the image.

Reason I wonder is because the Wii is sooo easy to carry with you. Would be nice to bring it over to friends and use a media player. The issue is I have a lot of HD movies, which would be a shame to miss out on.


So, have anyone tried to play a full-HD (or 720p) movie on the Wii?

Yes and no; if you check out the site the it will tell you which formats/containers etc support which video resolution so your typical 720p 1280x720 is only playing using certain formats/containers like your see including but not limited to .AVI, .MKV., .MP4.

I also believe this would mostly rely on the profile set (x264 encoding with mkv and mp4 formats) since these are all hardware based. It may increase the size of the video by a couple of MiB if you lower the profile but it will be more likely to play better. I would even say as far as to go down to 1.1-3.1 Profile should be able to play fine on a Wii. Have not tried it I just know some things the Wii plays fine that the PS3 wont and the PS3 plays fine some things that the Wii wont; but the one thing I am sure about is the Profile you set.

 

[Lacius]

I've had success with very few HD video files. Usually you will get a stutter or something. This is with WiiMC.

 

[carlitos92jose]

I tried with a few 720p videos with wiimc and the video lags, is not to enjoyable. but give it a try, maybe yo have more luck.

 

[Lucif3r]

wii is only capable of outputting 480p 4:3 resolution. Anything more gets downscaled so there is no point.

You obviously didnt read the reason I wanted to know this.


@ others (esp. kylster)
Thanks for the responses. It seems like theres a trial and error with HD movies then. Guess Ill just give it a try when the time comes

 

[tueidj]

The wii's CPU runs at less than 800MHz and has no useful SIMD instructions. It doesn't have a hope of playing 720p H264 videos, it can barely handle 1080i MPEG2.