Netflix has finally come to the Wii (at least officially; PlayOn has offered a way to view Netflix movies on the Wii for a while now). Netflix subscribers with a Wii can get a disk from Netflix that allows them to stream movies directly through their console. I’ve had the opportunity to try out Netflix on the Wii, and while the interface is rather minimal, it works very well indeed.
How It Works: Choose a Movie and Press Play
Put the Netflix disk in your Wii and start it up. The first time you will have to go to the Netflix website to register your Wii by inputting a code (that part of the website isn’t working yet, so customer service had to do it for me). Once this is done, you will find whatever movies you have added to your “instant queue” listed on the Wii. Watching a movie is as simple as choosing it and clicking play. Movies start playing within a few seconds. You can pause the movie, stop it or skip forward or back in one minute increments. I would prefer a DVD-style playback in which you can skip forward by as little as a second and can select scenes, but that’s just not how it works. While people have said that the Wii is inferior to the Xbox 360 or PS3 for watching movies because there is no high-definition support, the movies I saw looked as good as most of what I see on my HD TV (although I admit I’ve never been all that picky in terms of the high-def thing). While I did have one movie choke in the middle - I had to go back to the movie screen and click on “resume” - for the most part everything worked beautifully.
Interface: You'll Still Want to Use Your PC for Movie Selection
While Netflix offers a way to browse through its movies on the Wii, this is extremely limited, so you’ll want to use your PC to choose your. On the Wii, you have a handful of categories you can choose from that will give you a partial selection of all of Netflix’s streamable movies for that category. Rather than a simple list, you are presented with the poster for each movie, and since the title is not always readable on your TV, you have to mouse over each poster to see what it’s called. There is no recommendation list, although I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult for Netflix to add one. You also cannot reorder movies in your queue, although you can at least rate movies you’ve seen. It is much easier to choose movies on your PC. The Netflix site is laid out much better, showing you their complete selection of films, user reviews and a “movies you’ll love” section that tries to calculate what movies you would enjoy. (I’m a little suspicious of Netflix recommendations, because it makes no sense to me when they recommend a British nature documentary and say the reason is because I like several Japanese cartoons. I would also like to know why, no matter how many sci-fi movies I rank, Netflix says I haven’t rated enough of them to suggest movies I would enjoy.)
Movie Selection: Only Part of the Netflix Library
Unfortunately, Netflix won’t let me choose to only have streamable movies recommended to me. A lot of Netflix titles can be instantly viewed through the Wii or other devices, but the majority must be mailed to you as a disk. I don’t like bothering with disks, so I want to see only movies that I can watch through my Wii. There is a section on the site that only shows streamable movies, but it doesn’t offer recommendations. My girlfriend and I spent a lot of time going through the site looking for movies to watch, and were constantly thwarted by Netflix’s limited number of streaming movies. With perserverance we did find some, including Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (a really funny movie with an inexplicably downbeat ending) and Wall-E (a surprisingly dark Pixar cartoon with a predictably upbeat ending). I also found a musical version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland I remember seeing as was a kid and the famous art-film short Un Chien Andalou (but not, for some reason, the equally famous art-film short Meshes of the Afternoon). In fact, in spite of all the Netflix movies I can’t stream through my Wii, I managed in an hour to add about 20 movies to my queue. I could easily find more movies I would like to watch than I would ever have time for. But I’m still annoyed that Ponyo isn’t available for my Wii.
Conclusion: A Good but not Perfect Way to Watch Movies Through Your TV
The subscription service PlayOn has allowed Netflix users to stream Netflix movies through their Wii for a while now, but it doesn’t always work well, and anyone with Netflix will certainly forego PlayOn for Netflix’s own software.
For those with a Wii, a Netflix subscription and an aversion to watching movies on their computer (such as me; my desk chair is not nearly as comfy as my couch), this is a great way to watch movies.
