There are 48.5 million Wii's out there, and Blockbuster may be positioning itself to deliver video on demand to them thanks to a newly-announced partnership with Sonic Solutions.

Sonic is the force behind the CinemaNow service, which is available on LG networked blu-ray players and other devices - like Nintendo's wildly popular gaming console.

With the "Everybody's Theatre" streaming anime service set to go live on WiiWare in Japan January 25th, the stage is certainly set for the Wii to gain some additional functionality.

As WiiBrew users already know, the two USB ports at the back work just fine for attaching external hard drives. The Wii has plenty of room for expansion, and it would certainly make sense for Nintendo to offer a service to compete with Netflix on the Xbox 360.

Personally, I'd love to be able to watch video on demand with my Wii. Since I'm in Canada, though, I won't hold my breath.

[ via BetaNews ]

That picture of Fluffy is never quite the same once you blow it up on your big, HD monitor. Fluffy looks less cute and much more pixilated than in real life. In fact, a lot of pictures and wallpapers just don't look the same.

The folks over at NerdBusiness have just the solution. They have assembled 218 HD wallpapers for your viewing pleasure. Everything from mint leaves to scenic photos to otherworldly Photoshop environs and Mario Party 8 shots. Our favorite? Digg-er from mandolux.com

Check it out and see what looks good on your big screen.

Kevin Kowalewski of Seneca College wanted to build something for the summer. Instead of the usual tree house or go kart he decided to build a BitTorrent client, in a browser.

Torrent Relay's interface is pretty easy to figure out and works with all the mainstream browsers including those found on the PS3, Wii or iPhone. Either upload or paste the url of the torrent file and let the site do its thing. After a bit, you're taken to another page to initiate the download.

Keep in mind that this is a summer project so don't be surprise if you get a lot of "server busy" messages and are asked to donate or click an ad. Currently downloads over 400MB are not permitted, so no Kubuntu downloads for you.

We can see the value of a service like this once cloud computing really takes off and everything lives in the clouds. This way we're still able to get our weekly fix of Bleach.

Running Linux on video game consoles is old hat. Not only can you cram various Linux distros onto an original Xbox or a Sony PS3, but they can even play Doom. You know, and other video games too.

But the Nintendo Wii has been a bit tougher to crack than hacker-friendly hardware like the PS3, which even has a Sony-approved Linux distro. But now the Wii hacking community has figured out how to run homebrew applications on Nintendo's latest console, and that includes a rather unpolished "proof of concept" version of Linux that can run on the Wii.

Now, keep in mind, the hacking process is not simple. You need an SD card, SD card adapter for the Wii, a copy of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the ability to follow complex instructions, infinite patience, and the willingness to completely muck up your video game console if things go wrong. But hey, if you're lucky when it's all done you'll be able to boot up your Wii and stare at a command prompt while wondering how to get back to the video game menu.

[via Slashdot]

Hacking game consoles to run homebrew code is all the rage these days, but until recently, Wii owners were only able to join the fun with software that ran in Gamecube mode, which was a serious limitation.

No longer! At the 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress, a homebrew developer presented a hacked Wii running native code in Wii mode. By analyzing memory dumps from a modified Wii, they managed to decode the Wii's encryption keys. Programs run in this fashion have full access to the Wii's hardware, which means the sky is now the limit for homebrew Wii developers.

For those unfamiliar with the term, homebrew applications are programs that hobbyists make for specialized computer platforms, like game consoles and phones. They range from games to utilities to full operating systems, and allow the device to be used much in the same way as a proper desktop computer.

Reverse engineering of this type is probably kinda almost certainly very illegal, but we can't help but applaud these efforts. In an age when more and more hardware manufactures restrict what the user can do with their console, it's hard not to cheer for the underdog. It's not known when this crack will become publicly available, but we will be sure to keep you up to date.

[Via wiinintendo.net]

It turns out one of the most popular things to do with a Nintendo Wii isn't playing video games. It's creating little avatars that you can use in various games that are designed to look like you. They're called Miis, and the fun isn't confined to the Wii anymore.

Mii Editor is a website that mirrors the experience of creating a Mii on the console. You can choose your face shape, eye and hair color and styles, the size of your eyebrows, pretty much everything you need to customize your Mii to your hearts content. In other words, if you thought you could stop playing with your Wii when you left home and went to work, you are no longer safe.

You can use a program like Mii Transfer to download Mii data from your Wiimote in order to upload it to Mii Editor for further editing and sharing with the world.

[via WebWare]

There have been a number of things you can do with the Wii browser (tabbed browsing, watch videos) and here's another one to add to the list: TV listings. Sure it seems like a simple enough idea, but the trick is having a TV listing web site that is simple, easy to search, and is legible on a TV itself: enter Couchville.

Fire up your Wii and launch the Internet Channel. Once it's up, click on 'Enter a Web Address', punch in www.couchville.com, and hit OK. While the page loads, you might notice the progress bar hang, and if you do just hit stop (I think this might be the browser getting hung up in processing the JavaScript). Then, enter your zip code, television source, provider, and hit the Enter button on-screen.

Once the guide has loaded up, it's (almost) like viewing Couchville in a desktop browser: You can drag the listings around by holding the A button the Wiimote, and if you've got good aim you can click on the title of a show to see its details listed. If the text is too small and illegible, you can zoom in by pressing the + button on the Wiimote. While this hack isn't terribly original or perfect, it's a quick and fun trick for the Wii browser.

So you've got a blog and you want gamers to be able to read it easily on their Wii, PSP, or DS? Well, if your blog is built on WordPress, you're in luck! WordPress Ultimate Gamer's Pack is a set of WordPress plugins from David Harper that make your WP blog play nice with game consoles. There's one for the Nintendo Wii, one for the Nintendo DS, and one for the Sony PSP. They aim to eliminate or reduce zooming, scrolling, and changing modes, and they kick in automatically when a gamer logs on--no configuration necessary. The plugins are free, natch, and Harper is even promising an iPhone-optimized plugin within the week!

It's a busy week for the folks over at Opera. Not only did version 9.10 of the browser come out, but it turns out that Opera for the Nintendo Wii will be available for download on Friday, and we now have confirmation that Opera runs on the OLPC. Although Nicholas Negroponte and friends apparently don't want to include Opera standard on the OLPC because it's not open-source (although it does use open standards). Opera developer Håkon Wium Lie says he was able to easily pull up a terminal, download the statically linked rpm package of Opera 9.10 and install it on the computer. The only major bug seems to be that the machine freezes when visiting websites that make liberal use of JavaScript.

So to recap, Opera is or will be available for Windows, Linux, Mac, and other operating systems including BeOS and FreeBSD. It runs on mobile phones and Windows Mobile PDAs. And now it will run on the OLPC (which odds are you'll never get your hands on), and the Nintendo Wii (which you'll probably have a hard time getting your hands on until after the holidays).

[Via Slashdot]