Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have surmounted the IPTV barrier, only Nintendo's Wii is left without an IPTV offering. Given that Nintendo's focus remains solely on games, this isn't much of a surprise, but one crafty developer has managed to get IPTV up and running on his Wii unit.
Drawing on his experience working for "ANT Galio and ESPIAL EVO IPTV middleware systems running on dedicated / stand-alone / single-function Set-Top Boxes (STB) such as Amino, Motorola, Kraetel" and more, Vui Huang Tea has created an IPTV portal that is accessible through the Wii Internet Browser and manages to leverage the unique capabilities of the Wii remote. His current working demo is modeled after Microsoft Mediaroom. Tea explained the system to Ars:
The additional feature it has over the Xbox and typical IPTV offerings is that the program listing on the TV Guide can be 'flipped' by just instinctively twisting the Wii remote instead of hunting for small and not-easy-to-locate buttons to press on a typical IPTV remote control ('Page Up/Down').
The first part shows the selection of the TV Guide time slots by tilting the Wii remote sideways to the left or right (or clockwise and anticlockwise). The second part shows the scrolling of the TV Guide time slots by tilting and holding the Wii remote to the left/right. Hence taking advantage of the uniquely intuitive input device of the Wii.
Tea also sent in
a video of the service up and running. He hopes that the demo could spur real support for IPTV on the Wii. He reasons that "with Wii being so dominant and broadband providers starting to bundle (or even give it away) with their services," IPTV through the console could take off. Here's hoping it's not named Wiiptv.
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