Play Hulu or Netflix Videos on Your Wii

Posted by Mitch on Sep 19, 2009 under Gaming, Hardware Tips | No Comment

I was excited to see that the Opera browser was free for the Nintendo Wii. I thought I might be able to watch Netflix or Hulu videos. Since Flash 9 is not supported by the Wii at the time of this writing, neither site works for watching videos.

I discovered a handy little utility called PlayOn that allows a PC to send video from Hulu or Netflix to your Wii. Before you take these steps, you must know that PlayOn is free for 14 days, and costs $39.99 to use it afterwards. Here are the steps you can take.

1. On your PC, visit http://www.themediamall.com/playon/

2. Download and install PlayOn.

3. Launch PlayOn Settings from Start > Programs.

4. Click the User Accounts tab.

5. Fill in your Hulu and Netflix account info. Click Apply.

6. On the Wii, fire up the Internet browser.

7. Go to the Settings page and set the Zoom Type to Automatic and the Toolbar Display to Auto-Hide Toolbar.

8. Now go to playon.tv in the Wii browser.

9. The PC that you installed PlayOn on should be displayed. Select it.

10. Select the service you wish to use.

11. The movies will be in different folders. Browse the folder and play the video you want to watch.

Now just leave PlayOn running on the PC and you can use the service on the Wii whenever you like. I should let you know it takes up enormous resources on your PC. I couldn’t even type in a NotePad document when I first started downloading movies. Like many Internet videos, I had to pause it at the beginning for a bit before I could watch it without it being choppy. Hulu took a bit, but Netflix took forever to buffer the video. Still the service was worth it if you don’t have a way to connect your PC directly to your television.