Unimpressed by the BBC iPlayer on the Wii

Nintendo and the BBC last week sent out press releases and made a big deal in their respective news items out of the fact you can now view the BBC iPlayer on the Wii. Am I the only person who was left distinctly unimpressed?

The nice thing about using the Wii is that it has Wii Channels that allow you to read current news, see the weather, shop for downloadable games and browse the internet in nicely skinned custom channels, optimised to work as best they can on your TV.

The new iPlayer access talked about is not a custom channel. The new exciting access just means you can browse to the BBC iPlayer web page and play the content through the Wii Opera powered web browser. This is exactly the same as you can when using a PC or Mac online but on a browser that doesn't give you the resolution of a monitor - not what I would call an exciting development. To view a show, you have to type in the URL using point and click for each letter with the Wiimote, drag the window around to get the actual player in the centre of your screen and then try to zoom in and out to get the player to fill the viewable area.

It's a very long way from a simple solution. According to Mr Huggers, the group controller at the BBC’s future media and technology division, both Xbox and Playstation won't be getting the iPlayer as they wanted to skin it to fit within their custom look, which is why only the Wii has it. A publicly funded company can't have its player commercialised. It's also the reason the implementation is so weak. If the news stories and press releases hadn't been so generally over hyped, I might have thought being able to watch the last 7 days of BBC TV on my Wii was okay, but there in lies the problem. Nobody likes a show off, especially when it's the equivalent of a 15 year old showing how well he can juggle to his peers. No matter how good you are, your skills won't be appreciated and you are rightly going to get bundled.

One skill that Nintendo are justifiably boasting about, however, is the release of a fantastic new game. If you own a Wii, you should get your coat on and head to the nearest game shop and buy Mario Kart for the Wii as soon as you can.

I have previously expressed my concern that the new Mario Kart would be another weaker offering in the series, as the Gamecube version was. How wrong I was. There are now motorbikes which I think may well be my favourite vehicle as well as the option of racing against 11 other people online.

The online racing really brings the game into its own. If you have ever played any of the previous Mario Kart games with friends you will be aware of the technique of getting a red shell (the homing missile) and waiting until the last moments of the last lap before taking out the lead kart to win the race. when you have 11 other people doing this, being in first place on the last lap will mean you are hammered with 15 or so of the red menaces.

This makes the multiplayer game both frustrating and loads of fun. You can finish 2nd in one race and 12th in the next. It really does makes the game. For all of you UK folk, we unusually got Mario Kart before the US. Time for us to hone our skills and bring on the shells when our US cousins finally get their release in a couple of weeks. And because there is no microphone option on the Wii, it also means you won't regularly be called a mother f***** by the 12 year olds online too. Which is nice.

Comments

[Darren Foster]

Hi,

Firstly yes i was left a little bummed to think that i couldnt get full screen and the resolution wasnt all that great either. But in BBC's defence they did say that this was in the beta stages and that it would be improved over time. Have you not thought about plugging in a regular USB keyboard into your Wii to enable normal typing as i find it soo much easier to type than point and click.

Darren Waters on the dot.life blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/ has just reported about the ps3iplayer.com iPlayer and a few peeps that i have spoken with have said it works quite well on the PS3.

[Mark Browell]

I really don't think there's a lot of typing involved. Once you've added www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer to the Wii's favourites, you're straight on to the graphical landing page. How hard is that?
Yes, it's still work in progress - no full screen, codec optimisation) but I like it overall.

Have to agree on Mariokart though. Best Wii game so far.

[Matt]

You can get full screen resolution simply by "zooming in" on the iPlayer window with the plus key.

Unfortunately, despite being able to render 3D graphics, the Wii can't handle this and drop to roughly 15 FPS, rendering TV unwatchable.

I would so kill for a properly done iPlayer chanel...

[Einstein's Pet Cat]

Mario Kart is great but the wheel is such a kid gimmic. Plug in the nunchuck for full control or even a gamecube controller if you really wanna be old school. By the time the US finally enter the racing, us UK folk will be highly trained in the art of online Karting with a cup of tea beside us to celebrate our victory. Bring on the shells! Tally ho.

[Fxn]

Not being impressed by the other Mario Kart games I have to say they really have got it right for the Wii.

The game controls work fantasticly and the entire online system where you can keep racing online with minimal wait time is excellent work from Nintendo.

Also I was very pleased to find the Ranking in the matches that lets your know how well you are doing (or not) without being depressive like rankings in lets say Xbox 360 where it tells you you are currently 56956th in the world.

Not a fan of the blue shell...

[Matt Lucas]

I am loving the Wii Wheel for Mario Kart and playing 4 player on a projector is the bomb! (excuse the Americanised expression but it was the first thing that came to mind) The banter, heavily blue is the air, is brilliant and I can't wait to play 12 people I know - don't forget 2 people per Wii!

The first to twelfth and vice versa works so well to convince people to play!