X-OOM Media Centre for Wii XE
The Media Centre for Wii brings a great media player and organizer to your console from your PC by way of a LAN or wireless LAN connection.
Ease of Use, Performance: 17/25, Look & Feel: 21/25,
Features 18/25, How much I enjoy 19/25
Total: 75/100
The Wii system now gets even with the other consoles with the Media Centre for Wii from X-OOM bringing all the media streaming directly from your PC. Simply install the X-OOM Media Centre on your PC and stream media to your television from your Wii console system.
The Wii has been the lowest priced console so they have kind of skimped here and there trying to keep the price down but this opens doors for other companies as well. The Wii now has streaming capabilities with the Media Centre for Wii from X-OOM in a very easy to install and use system.
The interface on your television is very similar to a PS3 system with a few minor differences, not to say they copied it directly but it is a nice setup. You can simply install the software that only takes a few minutes to set up and be streaming videos, audio and other content from your PC to the TV over the Wii.
There are still things that don’t work out exactly well and there of course is content that is not quite optimized for the system yet and ones that are still being brought to the system. The streaming video content from the WEB TV is not exactly up or optimized but they are there when the companies get things working.
All the other features for streaming content from your PC worked well and it only takes a few minutes to get things setup from the install CD. When you load the program it install the same thing on your PC as you will see on your TV through the Wii so you can get yourself familiar by playing around from your PC.
The main pages that open on the PC are the Media Centre, Browse Library, Media File Wizard, Library Settings and Program Settings. Each area is basically what they sound like with an easy way to set things up from your PC where you don’t have to mess with the Wii remote. I found it much easier to navigate and setup things like a folder with all the songs I enjoy instead of trying to add them to a queue while in the Wii console system.
You can add a lot of songs and other media by folders and setup your library some before starting up your Wii but there is still some work to using the system on your console. They have added some nice helpful things like a queue and favorites but adding them while in the console and getting things organized was not exactly simple or easy.
Installation is fast and getting your computer end setup was fairly simple and as long as you have your network setup and working fine getting the Wii to start streaming from your PC is simple. The program allows for two ways to stream from your PC, through their network address or straight through your LAN using an IP address.
For a more secure way to go straight from your LAN or wireless network you just add in the address shown on the settings page to the Internet page on the console. You can also go through their server and connect to your PC that does have a PIN number for security. Once you have the Media Centre open it is a simple cross menu of main title areas along the horizontal axis and the areas under that vertically. Each area such as Videos or Music has sections like folders, albums, artists’, titles and you can select any way to locate the files you want.