Homebrew app WiiFin, a Jellyfin client for the Wii, has been released.

[Mixtape]

Developer Fabien MILLET has built a Jellyfin client for the Wii using devkitPro, GRRLIB, and MPlayer CE. The project, including source, is available here:

https://github.com/fabienmillet/WiiFin

https://wiifin.zipna.me/

A precompiled DOL and installer WAD are available on the releases page. The binaries aren't yet available on the OSC, as far as I can tell. As always, install at your own peril, etc.

The dev included a disclaimer in the README that the project is still under active development and considered experimental. Still, it's "good enough" to warrant a versioned release, and testimonies that I've read elsewhere appear to indicate that it works. I haven't had a chance to test it myself, but it's on my radar to try sometime soon.

Additional discussion available here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin/c..._v010_a_jellyfin_client_for_the_nintendo_wii/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47759341

I'm a big fan of these sorts of projects. The Wii itself being underpowered makes it a prime candidate for leaning on LAN resources. Seeing it integrated with a homelab staple - and an open source one at that - makes me happy.

That being said, even if I find this to be working the way I'd like, I'm still probably going to favor transcoding my media and playing it back in WiiMC-SS. I've watched enough content through my Wii (mostly 4:3 stuff) to know that a good software encode of your video file is really necessary. I've experimented with hardware encoding to speed things up, but the quality really falls off at the sort of bitrates that the Wii can handle. In my particular case, the transcode that this software will force will get piped through my Jellyfin host's hardware encoder, so the end result will probably be about the same.

Still, for the odd case where I want to throw something on my CRT on a whim, this will definitely save some time. It at least beats spinning up Windows Media Center for my 360 or something.

 

[Disorarara]

That being said, even if I find this to be working the way I'd like, I'm still probably going to favor transcoding my media and playing it back in WiiMC-SS. I've watched enough content through my Wii (mostly 4:3 stuff) to know that a good software encode of your video file is really necessary. I've experimented with hardware encoding to speed things up, but the quality really falls off at the sort of bitrates that the Wii can handle. In my particular case, the transcode that this software will force will get piped through my Jellyfin host's hardware encoder, so the end result will probably be about the same.

Still, for the odd case where I want to throw something on my CRT on a whim, this will definitely save some time. It at least beats spinning up Windows Media Center for my 360 or something.

While I agree with the idea that you want to encode every single video specifically for the Wii to get the absolute best visuals possible per video, most people won't have the time or the hard drive/SD card space to store all of that content on their Wii, and if you're going to be encoding videos to pipe over a network just for viewing on the Wii you might as well go the extra step and run a jellyfin instance. Most CPUs and GPUs I think have mpeg2 encoding built into the silicon so it's basically free on the PC side too.