Team Twiizers: Wii did support DVD playback, but was disabled

Thanks to the efforts of the Wiibrew community, DVD playback is now possible on the Wii (albeit it has to be modded), which brings us back to the question, why wasn’t it already possible in the first place? Well, it was. Nintendo just disabled it.

Thanks to the efforts of the Wiibrew community, DVD playback is now possible on the Wii (albeit it has to be modded), which brings us back to the question, why wasn’t it already possible in the first place?

Well, it was. Nintendo just disabled it. A discussion among the members of Team Twiizers touches briefly on the issue.

They relate how they found that the Wii did have DVD playback functionality – only, it was disabled. Thinking it was an unintentional oversight on Nintendo’s part, they tried to warn them of the issue. Nintendo, however, “didn’t respond kindly to their attempts at communication.”

Not that it’s any surprise to find that the Wii had DVD playback all along, but it does bring to the surface a question that you probably asked yourself at one point or another: why did Nintendo keep going on about releasing a “DVD Wii” model (this was a long time ago), if the Wii was already capable of DVD in the first place?

• Wiibrew News: Team Twiizers to release DVD Access Library
• Bushing discovers exploit that allows ISOs to run on unmodified Wiis, writes Nintendo
• Open-Source Apploader: load Wiibrew from DVD

Via Nintendo World Report