Homebrew Wii DVD Support - from Disc Channel

[Aheago]

Movie player homebrew could read DVD discs from the drive, but the Wii Disc channel hasn't been modified as of yet... And I'm not entirely sure why not. Seems like it would be the easiest way to enable DVD movie playback and disable disc checks.

Thats the thing. I recall replacing quite a few files years ago(Maybe IOS files? I was young) and had them reading from the disc channel. I think I did it when I made the wii also read backup discs from the disc channel as well without a modchip

Unless maybe I am thinking of something else? Just trying to learn ha

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

I dunno, it's just cool to have the option. I too use USB sticks on my Wii and Wii U for game storage. It blows my mind how much misinformation there is out there. USB sticks don't suffer from the sleep problems that SATA to USB drives do, nor the power draw issues of HDD caddies and mechanical drives. Hell, I'm tempted to gut the laser assembly out of one of my Wii systems, and put a SATA SSD (Via USB) inside, stealthed by soldering directly to the internal usb headers. It'd be a complete sleeper system filled with only the best Wii games, and none of that NKIT bullshit that's circulating out there. (WBFS files on NTFS FTW!)

How would you add/remove roms though?
(also how the fuck do you get wbfs on ntfs and have roms that arent nkit by default)

 

[KleinesSinchen]

The initial idea of this thread – DVD-Video from Disc Channel – can only work on the oldest Wii consoles. The same is true for backup loading.
@NewGBAXL Please forgive me for going more or less off-topic… I put everything in a spoiler for hiding my lengthy reply in order to keep the thread more readable.
Good luck with your project!

Spoiler

Well.. Would it even be possible to burn a DVD in a way that the drive will think it's a wii disc so that homebrew could use it to play a movie from it or something?

First Wii drives were designed to additionally read standard DVDs and homebrew can enable the scrapped function with some kind of debug commands. This allows games on DVD-R and DVD+R (booktype set to DVD-ROM) to be used for loading games at reduced speed: 3x instead of the 6x for legit games (some modchips support full speed on backups, DVD+R without bitsetting as well as region free). The debug commands also allow WiiMC-SS to play DVD-Video – works okay.

For newer Wii consoles (including all non-white, all RVL-101, all RVL-201) and the Wii U: The drives won't read standard DVDs. Burning a DVD±R is a standard DVD, even if you burn a GC/Wii backup. Those DVD backups work in Dolphin inside a normal PC drive while legit discs don't. When you want a selfmade disc to be accepted on unmodified Wii(U), including newer drives, you will face a ton of problems – to my knowledge not solved. Take your time reading…
I think it it safe to say the following: "A normal, unmodified consumer DVD writer will not produce a disc which gets read in newer Wii and Wii U."

I'd just be happy to launch burned disc games from the Disc channel without a modchip.

If your Wii drive is old enough (plays backups with NeoGamma) there are two ways:

• Set Priiloader to force all disc games to use IOS249. Older games will boot from disc channel. Newer games with an additional check will throw Error 002 (not the fatal 003). The 002 will happen from legit discs as well
• DarkCorp modification replacing virtually all IOS with cIOS. I wouldn't recommend it and don't trust it. Should in theory run most games from disc channel. Please try only on a Wii with BootMii@boot2 for easy restore

In practice DVD-R loading is best done with NeoGamma

I dunno, it's just cool to have the option. I too use USB sticks on my Wii and Wii U for game storage. It blows my mind how much misinformation there is out there. USB sticks don't suffer from the sleep problems that SATA to USB drives do, nor the power draw issues of HDD caddies and mechanical drives. Hell, I'm tempted to gut the laser assembly out of one of my Wii systems, and put a SATA SSD (Via USB) inside, stealthed by soldering directly to the internal usb headers. It'd be a complete sleeper system filled with only the best Wii games, and none of that NKIT bullshit that's circulating out there. (WBFS files on NTFS FTW!)

It is not complete misinformation. I don't get the hate for flash drives. Some work perfectly (I'm also flash drive user with a mini device sticking out only 2 millimeters from the USB port), some work good when reading only and fail when trying to dump discs, some don't work at all. Can be a bit trial and error. An external 3.5" (older USB 2.0) HDD with own power supply is almost guaranteed to work on Wii(U).

[…] Just curious: Why in 2021 would anyone want to load burned discs instead of using ISOs/WBFS files on USB media? Then again, as someone who moved from DVD to AVI/MP4/MKV 15 years ago, I don't understand the desire to play DVDs on a Wii either.

This is a question of preference. The year date isn't important here. What do we need a Game Boy for when there are newer alternatives? Some people, including myself, prefer having something physical for the shelf and for touching. While I don't use the drive in the Wii 99% of the time, the option to play games and movies from disc is just a "nice to have".

 

[Jayro]

How would you add/remove roms though?
(also how the fuck do you get wbfs on ntfs and have roms that arent nkit by default)

I've had my ROM collection for many years. I already have a set of "best Wii games" on a 250GB drive as wbfs files on an NTFS-formatted SSD, so I have no need to add any of that shovelware garbage. It uses CFGLoader as the launcher (superior to USBLoaderGX in my opinion). And now I can't seem to download any new Wii ROMs without them being in this troublesome NKIT bullshit format that everyone is obsessed with. My Wii Game Manager doesn't support them, and CFGLoader doesn't support them either, so NKIT can fuck right off.

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

I've had my ROM collection for many years. I already have a set of "best Wii games" on a 250GB drive as wbfs files on an NTFS-formatted SSD, so I have no need to add any of that shovelware garbage. It uses CFGLoader as the launcher (superior to USBLoaderGX in my opinion). And now I can't seem to download any new Wii ROMs without them being in this troublesome NKIT bullshit format that everyone is obsessed with. My Wii Game Manager doesn't support them, and CFGLoader doesn't support them either, so NKIT can fuck right off.

Huh. Well, do you know how to get WBFSManager to just load WBFS format roms to my USB stick so I don't have to fuck with nkit? It for whatever reason doesn't want to accept anything but isos.

 

[NewGBAXL]

Huh. Well, do you know how to get WBFSManager to just load WBFS format roms to my USB stick so I don't have to fuck with nkit? It for whatever reason doesn't want to accept anything but isos.

(@jeffyTheHomebrewer , @Jayro please keep on topic)
.wbfs is for Wii, .nkit.iso / .iso is for GameCube. What you do is rename *.nkit.iso to *.iso. magic.
Any other file format won't load.
I personally only use WBFS Manager for split wbfs (over 4.1~GB)

(oh, yeah. Just remembering that project where I was forcing the Wii to run the GCN BIOS without Nintendont.
Maybe I'll get that to work sometime)

 

[tswntk]

I sat out the mod-chip era and was very happy when I was able to softmod and use USB flash drives (yes, USB flash drives: I used three successfully since 2012 and all three work flawlessly in spite of the misinformation here about them) to load up all my games. Just curious: Why in 2021 would anyone want to load burned discs instead of using ISOs/WBFS files on USB media? Then again, as someone who moved from DVD to AVI/MP4/MKV 15 years ago, I don't understand the desire to play DVDs on a Wii either.

I dunno, it's just cool to have the option. I too use USB sticks on my Wii and Wii U for game storage. It blows my mind how much misinformation there is out there. USB sticks don't suffer from the sleep problems that SATA to USB drives do, nor the power draw issues of HDD caddies and mechanical drives. Hell, I'm tempted to gut the laser assembly out of one of my Wii systems, and put a SATA SSD (Via USB) inside, stealthed by soldering directly to the internal usb headers. It'd be a complete sleeper system filled with only the best Wii games, and none of that NKIT bullshit that's circulating out there. (WBFS files on NTFS FTW!)

I am sincerely inviting you two to wipe out this "misinformation" by actually contribute to help all those users with problem using flash drives.
It is not fair for those who has actually helped users fixed their problems and you just call them spreading "misinformation"

 

[AleronIves]

they'd need to pay loyalties to Sony (for Blu-Ray) and Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and Philips for DVD.

It isn't just royalties for DVD movie playback, which involves royalties to Dolby for Dolby Digital, Moving Picture Experts Group for MPEG-2, and the decryption method for AACS. It's royalties for DVD itself.

People call GC/Wii games "DVD" and game dumps "ISO", but they are not DVDs, and they don't use ISO9660 as the filesystem. Nintendo Optical Discs use the same laser wavelength as DVD, but the structure of the disc is different, mainly to avoid having to pay royalties to the DVD Forum. The locations of user data and error detection and correction codes are not the same, which is why a regular PC DVD drive can't read your GC/Wii games. Similarly, Wii drives can't read DVD +/- R, since they don't obey the disc structure of NODs.

It is possible to read GC/Wii games on a PC using Rawdump/Friidump, but this is only possible via abuse of debug features. As I understand it, the drive will try to read a sector, but it finds EDC at offsets where it expects user data and user data at offsets where it expects EDC, so it gets completely confused and throws an error. Raw/Friidump step in and issue a special debugging command found in the drive firmware that says, "Hey, I'd like to debug this error. Would you please show me the contents of your drive cache so I can inspect it to see what went wrong?"

The drive presents a copy of the cache, which Raw/Friidump are able to parse correctly to extract the user data from the unique offsets found in a NOD. Raw/Friidump then say, "OK, I corrected the error. Let's try reading the next sector," at which point the drive throws the exact same error as it did on the last sector. This process repeats until you have errored and dumped the drive cache on every sector on the disc, which is why dumping discs this way takes forever. It also only works on specific drives whose firmware supports the debugging command Raw/Friidump abuse to dump the drive cache, which is why you can't use Raw/Friidump on any old DVD drive.

If you want to play normal DVDs on Wii, you're probably always going to need a modchip, since there's no way to flash the drive's firmware to support both DVD and NOD. The differences between DVD and NOD are fundamental down to the physical structures of the disc, so it's not something you can easily correct for in homebrew software. You need to teach the optical drive how to read a different kind of disc, and that would require a firmware update, at the very least. Even if it were possible, there's little incentive to develop such a hack when the Wii has both USB and SD support. You'd need a very talented and passionate developer to tackle such a difficult task.

 

[tech3475]

If you want to play normal DVDs on Wii, you're probably always going to need a modchip, since there's no way to flash the drive's firmware to support both DVD and NOD. The differences between DVD and NOD are fundamental down to the physical structures of the disc, so it's not something you can easily correct for in homebrew software. You need to teach the optical drive how to read a different kind of disc, and that would require a firmware update, at the very least. Even if it were possible, there's little incentive to develop such a hack when the Wii has both USB and SD support. You'd need a very talented and passionate developer to tackle such a difficult task.

Going by the reply chain, do you mean the Wii U? Because at least earlier Wii drives can read ‘standard’ DVDs.

 

[AleronIves]

Going by the reply chain, do you mean the Wii U? Because at least earlier Wii drives can read ‘standard’ DVDs.

My understanding is that DVD support was officially planned but scrapped. The launch Wii still has some alpha DVD features left over that make enabling DVD support possible, but Nintendo removed this in later models, including the Wii U. Can modchips only enable DVD support on launch systems?

 

[KleinesSinchen]

My understanding is that DVD support was officially planned but scrapped. The launch Wii still has some alpha DVD features left over that make enabling DVD support possible, but Nintendo removed this in later models, including the Wii U. Can modchips only enable DVD support on launch systems?

The earliest drives can be convinced in reading DVD-ROM, DVD-R and DVD+R (booktype set to DVD-ROM) with software-only methods. Same is true for GameCube (8cm DVD only of course).
This thread is about re-enabling the scrapped idea of having a DVD-Video player in Disc Channel or as a separate "official" channel. Much like the PlayStation 2.

Playing DVD-Video, including commercial CSS encrypted, already works okay with WiiMC-SS.

 

[AleronIves]

Playing DVD on later models is not being discussed, because you have no way to restore the DVD support that Nintendo stripped out of them, right?

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

(@jeffyTheHomebrewer , @Jayro please keep on topic)
.wbfs is for Wii, .nkit.iso / .iso is for GameCube. What you do is rename *.nkit.iso to *.iso. magic.
Any other file format won't load.
I personally only use WBFS Manager for split wbfs (over 4.1~GB)

(oh, yeah. Just remembering that project where I was forcing the Wii to run the GCN BIOS without Nintendont.
Maybe I'll get that to work sometime)

I CAN JUST RENAME THEM?!
anyway yeah last off topic post sorry

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

I am sincerely inviting you two to wipe out this "misinformation" by actually contribute to help all those users with problem using flash drives.
It is not fair for those who has actually helped users fixed their problems and you just call them spreading "misinformation"

Oh, shut up. Sure, I USED to have issues, but it was because PNY drives actually suck compared to sandisk. Let's get back to the main topic, shall we?
Would it be possible to flash a new firmware to the NOD drive from the Wii itself?

 

[NewGBAXL]

I am not entirely sure if the og Wii needs a new firmware on the disk drive or whatever. Once I can get it to work on mine, or at least somewhat, I will easily be able to tell what needs to be modified for the other variants.

 

[AleronIves]

No, as @KleinesSinchen said above, the launch Wii already supports DVD, which I was mistaken about. My post applies to the other Wii models and Wii U, since Nintendo removed the DVD support after the launch Wii, and there's no known way to restore it.

 

[NewGBAXL]

No, as @KleinesSinchen said above, the launch Wii already supports DVD, which I was mistaken about. My post applies to the other Wii models and Wii U, since Nintendo removed the DVD support after the launch Wii, and there's no known way to restore it.

I hear that it was the drive chip that was changed, and me and a friend will be disassembling a spare broken Wii for parts to sell this weekend, and I will definitely take a look at the chip and any differences I find in the drives

 

[tswntk]

Oh, shut up. Sure, I USED to have issues, but it was because PNY drives actually suck compared to sandisk. Let's get back to the main topic, shall we?

who go off topic first?
Will you join them to wipe out the "misinformation"? Tell those who have problem with flash drive to use sandisk and see how many users can you save? How long can they last?
3 is simply statistically non-representative and before you start really help others to fix the issues, you are not seeing the whole picture. (Of cause, there are drives that works better than others and the "misinformation" is not about every single flash drive out there are not compatible, it is just not worth the effort because of the low compatibility.)

 

[N7Kopper]

who go off topic first?
Will you join them to wipe out the "misinformation"? Tell those who have problem with flash drive to use sandisk and see how many users can you save? How long can they last?
3 is simply statistically non-representative and before you start really help others to fix the issues, you are not seeing the whole picture. (Of cause, there are drives that works better than others and the "misinformation" is not about every single flash drive out there are not compatible, it is just not worth the effort because of the low compatibility.)

Just because my personal experience is that flash drives worked and hard drives didn't, doesn't mean the community consensus is automatically "misinformation"

It's more likely that I am an outlier. An anomaly.

The singular of anecdote is not data, the plural is.

 

[ijustwannaplaywii]

I am making this thread so that we might be able to get DVDs back on the Disc Channel, as well as for educational purposes.

Here is the download link to the project!

The Wii could originally read DVDs from the Disc Channel, it just needed a few things.

(1) patched .brlyt to show and center DVD .tpl
I have implemented it in my theme, tested and ready to be downloaded!

View attachment 262694

(2) patched boot cycle to accept DVDs.
This would be implemented in Priiloader (unless Nintendo was lazy, see bottom of post).

(3) DVDbann.ash present in System Menu
Just like how GameCube games have a banner when you insert them, so did DVDs. I'm guessing the file was named DVDbann.ash (the GameCube one was called GCbann.ash).
A quick fix is copy/paste GCbann.ash and rename it to DVDbann.ash
4/29/21: I went thru 00000098.app, where SysMenu 4.3U reads the .ash files. There was no mention of DVDbann.ash, meaning I need to find perhaps an older version of the Wii System Menu, or perhaps the banner is included with CinePlayer.


(4) DVD Channel
The software was officially known as 'Sonic CinePlayer CE DVD Navigator'
WiiMC may work as a temporary program to boot, but I am working really hard to find the unreleased software. I am still awaiting a response from an ex-developer at Sonic Solutions.

I am assuming the DVD Channel software is in the form of a hidden channel, much like the End User License Agreement, Region Select, and Set Personal Data channels. This is a .wad which is lost to the ages until we get lucky with another Wii prelaunch leak.

Where do we go from here?
We take the WiiMC forwarder, change it to hidden, and rename it to an unknown Title ID.

If Nintendo wanted to make this process way too easy, they could have just programmed the Wii to search to a hidden channel with a certain Title ID, if it is there, DVDs work.
Maybe this "hidden ID" is somewhere in the boot cycle and Priiloader isn't required?

If anyone knows this hidden ID, please share!

4/28/21: The setting in Wii System Menu 4.3U (DVDLowEnableDvdVideo)
I don't know which versions its in or what it does (00000098.app)
Source:

Spoiler

(DVDLowInit) Error: IOS_Open failed - pathname '/dev/di' does not exist
(DVDLowInit) Error: IOS_Open failed - calling thread lacks permission
(DVDLowInit) Error: IOS_Open failed - connection limit has been reached
(DVDLowInit) IOS_Open failed, errorcode = %d
(newContext) ERROR: freeDvdContext.inUse (#%d) is true
(newContext) Now spinning in infinite loop
(newContext) Something overwrote the context magic - spinning
@@@@@@ WARNING - Calling DVDLowReadDiskId with NULL ptr
@@@ (DVDLowReadDiskID) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
(DVDLowOpenPartition) eTicket memory is unaligned
(DVDLowOpenPartition) certificates memory is unaligned
@@@ (DVDLowOpenPartition) IOS_IoctlvAsync returned error: %d
DVDLowOpenPartitionWithTmdAndTicket (%s) eTicket memory is unaligned
(%s) tmd parameter cannot be NULL
(%s) tmd memory is unaligned
(%s) eTicket parameter cannot be NULL
DVDLowOpenPartitionWithTmdAndTicketView (%s) eTicketView parameter cannot be NULL
(%s) eTicketView memory is unaligned
DVDLowGetNoDiscBufferSizes (%s) Error: NULL pointer argument
(%s) numTmdBytes memory is unaligned
(%s) certificates memory is unaligned
@@@ (%s) IOS_IoctlvAsync returned error: %d
DVDLowGetNoDiscOpenPartitionParams (%s) pointer argument is unaligned
DVDLowNoDiscOpenPartition @@@ (DVDLowClosePartition) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowUnencryptedRead) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowStopMotor) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowWaitForCoverClose) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowInquiry) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowRequestError) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
(DVDLowSetSpinupFlag): Synch functions can't be called in callbacks
@@@ (DVDLowNotifyReset) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReset) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowAudioBufferConfig) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
(DVDLowGetCoverStatus): Synch functions can't be called in callbacks
@@@ (DVDLowGetCoverStatus) IOS_Ioctl returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReadDVD) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReadDVDConfig) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReadDvdCopyright) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReadDvdPhysical) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReadDvdDiscKey) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReportKey) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowOffset) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowStopLaser) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowReadDiskBca) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowSerMeasControl) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowRequestDiscStatus) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowRequestRetryNumber) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowSetMaxRotation) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
(DVDLowRead): ERROR - destAddr buffer is not 32 byte aligned
@@@ (DVDLowRead) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowSeek) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
(DVDLowGetCoverReg): Synch functions can't be called in callbacks
@@@ (DVDLowGetCoverReg) IOS_Ioctl returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowPrepareCoverRegsiter) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowPrepareStatusRegsiter) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowClearCoverInterrupt) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d
@@@ (DVDLowEnableDvdVideo) IOS_IoctlAsync returned error: %d

how the frick do i get the second step