Nintendo-Scene

A homebrew set of Wii Remote Drivers for the PC has popped up called BlueTunes. BlueTunes lets you use your Wii Remote with your BlueTooth capable Windows PC to control various media player applications from WinAmp to iTunes to Windows Media Player and others. The benefit of course is that it works from great distances and even through walls.

This means that you could easily run a long VGA cable from your desktop PC to your HDTV in another room and control the PC through walls. Either that or just use the Wii Remote as a slick interface to the Media Center PC already in your Home Theater room.

While the application is free, it’s not open source. It’s too bad too because with Linux drivers this could work well for a MythTV setup or maybe even hacked to work with Gamecube Linux.

Download: BlueTunes v1.2

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tenshu wrote in to tell us:

A new site has just opened up : http://openmii.com
As its name just suggest it it let you share your Wii code to your friend.

You just have to enter your MSN informations into the website, your Wii code and ZAP your Wii code will be transmitted to your contact list.

Last but not least, a bot is added to your contacts in your Wii address book allowing you to receive your friends code directly on your Wii and on your email.

Now tell your friends to open their Mii too!

This certainly seems like a decent solution to the Wii’s clumsy friend system.

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A tipster who wishes to remain anonymous has informed us that they’ve made some advancements on hacking the D2C drive chip found in some Wii consoles. According to our informant the serial port “Backdoor” that was thought to have been removed in the D2C still exists. This contradicts statements made previously by Team Cyclops which implied that it had been removed altogether.

Our informant went on to tell us that the “password” had been changed and that they’re actively brute force attacking the system while they investigate alternative avenues as well.

While not a member of any of the current Wii modchip teams he is a respected hacker from another console “scene” and has been right about these things in the past.

For those who have not been following this issue, “D2C” refers to the model number of a chip on the Wii’s DVD drive that modchips use to control the device. The D2C chips found in some newer Wii consoles effectivly block the use of all current Wii modchips.

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mat_dizzy from dcemu.co.uk forums, has released Wii Earth 1.0 - Webcam Portal For The Wii. You need to access the internet from your WIi, using something such as the Opera Internet Channel. There is more info in the readme… (more…)

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abraxas from the gbadev.org forums has created a proof of concept program, to get mpeg-4 files running on the DS (English post). As of right now it is only video with no audio, but it shows that it is definitely possible, through the use of homebrew software.

I use xvidcore (my fix version) building mpeg4 decoder lib.

put m4vtst1.sc.nds (at m4vtst1.rar) into card root dir
rename sample1(2).m4v to s.m4v into card root dir

run m4vtst1.sc.nds and play s.m4v mpeg4 file.

It’s still not optimization (slow…).

I found some arm asm & arm dsp asm optimization code in mplayer sources libavcodec lib.

maybe i will change lib for decoding (xvidcore seem slow).

PS. I think it possible to decode mpeg4 simple 256×192 24fps
when best optimization idct & yuv->rgb and others.
(some paper talksabout optimization arm decoding mpeg4)

Download Here: m4vtst1.rar

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The popular NDS and GBA Emulator NO$GBA has been updated to version 2.4d. This version appears to be mainly a Wifi bugfix version. Check out the change log for more information…
(more…)

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Our resident tutorial and guide writer Twistedsymphony has overhauled our Wii Modchip Comparison Chart. Since many modchips now support multiple firmwares it has been split into two separate charts one that compares the various modchip hardware and hardware features and one that compares the various firmware and firmware features. Unreleased and clone chips have also been removed from the chart for ease of comparison. New features have also been added so you can now compare which firmwares offer hot new features such as Dual Layer DVD support as well as Game ID Overwriting.

If you haven’t yet explored into our Wiki¬† I implore you to do so. The Nintendo-Scene Index has a nice organized list of all the important tutorials and guides including a Wii Disassembly Guide,¬† a DS Cart Comparison Chart, Guides range from being as simple as a Beginners guide to modding Gamecube to the Technical Data aspects of the DVD interface protocol.

I’ve also taken the liberty of re-organizing the links on the main news page.

You now have quick links to the major console forums as well as links to all of the Official support forums we host here on Nintendo-Scene. Hopefully this will help everyone find their way around the site easier and hopefully this notice brought to your attention a feature or two you didn’t know about before.

-CapN

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Daniel Gump from hullbreachonline wrote in with a status update on his powerful Wii Opera SDK. This Wii Opera SDK is arguably the most powerful development kit for making Wii Browser homebrew games. There are other options but none receive updates as frequently and regular as this one.

After the most recent update rather than release a simple change long a completely rundown off all of the features currently included was released.

From the Press Release:

 The Wii Opera SDK has been gaining much popularity over the past few months for
its ability to greatly aid programmers in creating high-quality, advanced games
for the Nintendo Wii’s Internet Channel. As of 21 Aug 2007, these are the
functionalities the Wii Opera SDK allows developers of Internet Channel
Javascript games to have in their projects:

Wii Remote and Nunchuk Detection
- A, B, +, -, <, >, ^, v, 2, for all Wii Remotes
- 1, C, Z, for all Wii Remotes except the primary
- Cursor coordinates for all Wii Remotes
- Z tilt for all Wii Remotes
- Z position for all Wii Remotes

General Graphics
- Geometric primitive drawing and filling
- Image rotation and scaling
- Clipping and masking

Texture-Mapping
- Z-corrected wall texturing
- Z-corrected floor texturing
- Sphere texturing (too slow for games at the moment)

3D Math
- Triangle and rectangle polygon manipulation
- Fast Z-sorting
- 3D to 2D projection
- Auto-clipping
- Hidden surface removal
- Scene or object rotation, scaling, and moving

Multiuser Environments
- Virtually unlimited online players in a game
- Database access for each game
- User-definited variable length arrays for communication

There are currently no other development kits in existence for creating
Internet Channel games of the caliber possible with the Wii Opera SDK. Those
interested in taking part in the project or creating a project of their own
using the SDK can contact the development team at
http://hullbreachonline.com/wii/sdk.html.  Demonstrations are available on the
official homepage as well.

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VGChartz is claiming that as of their latest sales data the Wii has surpassed the Xbox 360 in worldwide home consoles sales for this generation. While the Xbox 360 still holds a solid lead in the North American and European markets it would seem that the Wii’s strong Japanese sales over the Xbox 360’s almost non-existent sales in that region has allowed the Wii to eek by the 360 as the overall world wide leader.

The Press Release:

Vgchartz.com, the most comprehensive Videogame charts in the world has announced that lifetime sales of Nintendo’s Wii have passed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 on a worldwide basis as of August 23rd. (*)

Two years ago, very few analysts would have predicted the Nintendo Wii would be market leader this generation against the established Playstation and Xbox brands. But analysts can be in error: Vgchartz.com data, which is based on sample data from retailers all over the world indicates that the week ending August 23^rd Nintendo’s Wii (which was released one year after the Xbox 360 in November 2006), currently standing at 10.57 million consoles sold, passed Xbox 360 lifetime sales of 10.51 million units, making Nintendo the new market leader in both the home and handheld videogame console businesses.

As weekly data from vgchartz.com shows(**), the console outsold Microsoft‚Äôs Xbox 360 by a margin of 2.3 : 1 worldwide on average each week since its release, selling at an even faster rate than the most successful console ever created, Sony’s Playstation 2, despite still being sold out in most major markets.

This is the first time that a company has been market leader in the home console and the handheld market since 1994 when Nintendo’s Super NES and Gameboy dominated worldwide.

Vgchartz.com is proud to be first to announce this major sales cross over as an independent tracker of sales and expect this to be a milestone for the current generation. In just two years, home console sales for the three major manufacturers have effectively reversed. This will have a large impact on third party publishers and will undoubtedly influence the decisions they make in the future.

One factor that has no doubt helped Nintendo’s Wii to gain so quickly is the console’s broad appeal across all age groups, demographics and countries. Current sales are pretty evenly split between the three major markets ‚Äì 3.46 million have been sold in Japan, the American market (including Canada and South America) accounts for 4.24million and Other markets (including Europe and Australia and a few niche markets) for 2.87 million units sold, respectively.

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In an update to our article “Media Cart Stealing GPL Code?“, it seems that the developers have been listening. Upon a brief visit to http://www.mediacart.cc/, their homepage, the following can be seen.

Announcement
1. MediaCart was designed by an outsourcing RD team, and Vendor is asking design partner now to make sure all their codes meet the open source spirit.
2. Vendor totally agrees that all original workers shall be given their due credits.
3. Vendor will STOP all the promotion and sales activity before confirming the product meets all the open source spirit.
4. Vendor is actively contacting the open source code owners that Vendor knows to sincerely cooperate with them under GPL regulation. And this Vendor will do to all other owners once Vendor’s outsourcing team reports their identity to Vendor.

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