How to turn the Wii into an all-in-one media centre

The Wii isn’t just an arm-waving fun machine, it can entertain you by streaming music, photos and video around your home too.

Follow our simple steps, and we’ll show you how to turn Nintendo’s little white knight into an entertainment warrior ready to take on even the most hardened media centres.

Step 1: Dish up on-demand TV
If you’ve connected your Wii to a Wi-Fi network, it can grab TV shows on demand using the BBC’s iPlayer. If you’ve installed the Internet Channel on your console, tap into it and head to www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer. Here you’ll be able to watch the last seven days’ TV and listen to a week’s worth of radio.

If you haven’t installed the Internet Channel on your Wii, you’ll need to nab it from the built in Wii Shop channel for 500 Wii points, or around £3.50.

Step 2: Stream your media
Streaming media stored on your PC to the Wii is simple. Head to www.orb.com and download Orb for your PC. It’s free, and will send all your music, videos and photos to the console using your home network.

Follow the instructions to set it up on your computer, then head to your Wii, fire up the Internet Channel and head to mycast.orb.com. Within seconds you’ll see all the media stored on your PC, but be able to tap into it using the Wii remote and watch it on the big screen.

Step 3: Don’t forget the SD!
If you don’t have a PC, or don’t want to connect your Wii to the Internet, you can still watch movie files and view pictures stored on an SD card. Just save them to a card that’s 2GB or smaller, slot it into the Wii and head to the Photo Channel.

For movies to play, they’ll have to be in MOV or AVI format and encoded using Motion JPEG. You don’t need to worry about those details though. Just download Wii Video 9 here, and it’ll convert your movies to the right format automatically.

You’ll fit around an hour of DVD quality video onto a 2GB SD card, but don’t be tempted to try a larger card, as the Wii won’t accept it.

Must have accessories
Wi-Fi router – To stream movies, music and photos to your Wii you’ll need to use Wi-Fi, or splash out on Nintendo’s pricey ethernet adapter. We’d recommend Wi-Fi, as it’s more useful in the long run, and less hassle than trailing cables around.

SD cards - If you’re planning to show off movies and photos without a network, you’re going to need lots of SD cards. It’s no use buying one big one either, since Nintendo’s console can’t understand anything larger than 2GB.

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