Topic: Wii Photo Channel....upgrade?

[idolminds]

This is puzzling.

Check out these enhancements to the Photo Channel, which will be available in December, 2007.

   Personalize your Wii Menu by making one of your favorite digital images from an SD memory card as the Photo Channel icon.
   The Wii console will replace MP3 compatibility with the ability to play AAC files, which provide a greater sound quality than an MP3 of the same size. This new compatibility will work with MP4 audio files in the .m4a format. Additionally, you can now choose to have the songs play back in a random order.

*Wii consoles sold in retail stores starting in December 2007 should include AAC file support.

*For Wii Console owners without the AAC file compatibility, you can download the updated version of the Photo Channel from the Wii Shop Channel starting in early December 2007. Please note that once you download the updated Photo Channel (ver 1.1), you will no longer be able to play MP3 format music files.

Additionally, consumers who purchase a Wii console with the updated Photo Channel (ver. 1.1) already installed will not be able to install the previous version to support MP3 playback.

Ok, so you get AAC support, but they removed MP3 support. Huh? Remove support for the most popular music format?

[Cobra951]

*Sits back and waits for firestorm*

[gpw11]

Is AAC open source?

Maybe they had to pay some sort of fee for MP3 decoding?  I don't know about these kind of things.

Oh, and maybe they should upgrade the 'games' channel to support good games that don't feature Mario, Zelda, or Samus. 

[idolminds]

Well, from what I've been able to dig up, AAC is cheaper to license than MP3.

MP3 being $0.75 per unit or a $50-60,000 one time fee for a decoder. I wonder how the one time fee thing actually works. If it was per unit, Nintendo would have to shell out $7.5 million just for the current 10 million install base of Wii.

AAC is cheaper. $0.12 per unit (when buying in bulk over 10 mil, heh).

[Cobra951]

I tried out the 360's MP3 support when I first got it.  Yep, works, isn't that neat . . . oh  look, games!

Whatever the reason, I'm sure it's self-serving, whether it be a deal with the music industry to curb piracy, or some other obscure shenanigans.  I.e., it's bullshit.  But it would not affect me in the least.  I don't use game consoles to hold my music collection.  If I want a particular set of tracks on it for some special reason, I can rip or transcode to AAC.

[gpw11]

I actually found the feature somewhat useful on the the original x box.  Somewhat.

[scottws]

This is puzzling.
 Ok, so you get AAC support, but they removed MP3 support. Huh? Remove support for the most popular music format?

Yeah, that's stupid. The comment about AAC providing better sound quality at the same bitrate isn't really correct either.  It's definitely true at lower bitrates.  But around 160kbps and higher, AAC and MP3 are actually pretty comparable.

[Cobra951]

I actually found the feature somewhat useful on the the original x box.  Somewhat.

What did you do?  All I did with MP3s was try some out on an SD card reader, listen to them for a while.  I'm talking a few audio CDs worth at best.  I also ripped a CD on the 360, which is the only way to get your music into the box.  I'm sure that went to WMA.

It's not that I think it doesn't matter.  They're pulling the rug out from under their customers' feet, and that's never a good thing.  The tone of the article seems to imply that it's each user's choice to update the channel or not.  New Wii buyers won't have that choice after December.

[gpw11]

I had about 10-12 CDs ripped to the xbox hdd.  It's was kind of a stupid process as it takes forever to re-encode them, but it was pretty handy in two situations:

1.) When playing a game that allowed you to use your own soundtrack.  Most of these games have shitty pop-punk music anyways and it's key to be able to listen to what you want.

2.) My xbox was hooked up to my stereo and it just ended up being a lot easier to cycle through the music on it rather than change out CDs all the time in the CD player. 

Obviously, neither is a huge deal, but one certainly increased my enjoyment of specific games, and the other was a lot more convineient than any alternative available to me at the time.

[Cobra951]

Oh yeah, same here, for the same reason, after the geeky novelty of just playing around with the functionality wore off.  But if you rip the CDs on the console, to a proprietary HDD space where you can't copy anything out of (or into) for your own use, then it doesn't matter if it's MP3, WMA or AAC (as long as the implementation is decent).  The 360 has the added advantage of letting you use your external USB music storage to replace game soundtracks.  This works exactly as it should.  You can hook up USB card readers and even an external USB HDD, but only if it's formatted with FAT32 (a bit retarded, given that NTFS has been Microsoft's baby since, well, NT).

[gpw11]

Interesting.  You know, when I take my xbox out of storage I plan on turning it into a media player.  I'll let you guys know how that goes.