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Nintendo Wii Review | X-OOM Media Centre for Wii

on 04.08.2008 at 13:56 User Icon

Posted by James Temperton (Mr. T)
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Tags: Wii, X-oom media centre, review

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X-OOM Media Centre for Wii

James Temperton :: 4th August 2008

In a multimedia world, the Wii is, seemingly, something of an outcast. A while back we all gasped in amazement and mild joy as the BBC and Nintendo signed a deal to bring the rather lovely iPlayer to the Nintendo Wii Browser. Allowing us to watch episodes of Top Gear, on demand through the Wii and onto our lovely big telly-boxes at no cost was pretty sexual. Fast forward a few months and X-oom are trying to jump on whatever bandwagon there may be with the release of the rather memorably titled X-oom Media Centre for Wii. A bit like the woodstain, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

So, as a needless summary at this point, a company called X-oom have made some sort of media centre for the Wii and given it a very boring name that becomes MCFW if you try to make an acronym for it. Aside from our dislike of the name though, what other comments do we have to make about this product? Well, it is certainly a cunning idea and one that if executed well would provide a great link between your Windows PC and your Wii. Seeing as this is one of our very few PC reviews (first...maybe?) we’ll go and do the whole system requirements thang:

Wii Console
 Nintendo Wii Opera Web Browser
 Windows PC (2000/XP/Vista) 
CPU 700 MHz 
256MB RAM 
1024/768 resolution or higher 
140MB free disk space 
Network compatibility

And that’s it. Frankly, if your PC can’t do that you don’t really deserve to have a PC. So, onto the product. Well, it is a great idea. It lets you browse ALL the media files from your PC on your Wii, which means you can look at all the pictures on your PC on your Wii, listen to your MP3s on your Wii and even watch any movies you have on your PC in full downloaded raw file format (entirely legally we’re quite sure). Add to that the ability to stream web TV and radio to your Wii and you have a package that promises some fairly irresistible options.

Whilst the idea of this clever little piece of tech is great, the problem is all in the execution, which is quite often terrible. This piece of software is one of the buggiest we’ve ever had the displeasure to use. Going through the set-up process is simple enough and if you’re lucky you’ll be listening to music and browsing photos on your Wii within fifteen minutes of shoving the disk into your PC. That’s if it works. It took us five attempts to get the software to work - and we consider ourselves to be pretty good with technology. It seems simple to install on paper, but with so many bugs seemingly hiding in the software and its tendency to crash every two minutes, you’ll soon be infuriated. Getting media files onto the browser is quite often a nightmare, and that’s if you manage to get the software to work at all, which is a little tricky.

If you can actually get it to work, it is pretty good. The interface on the Wii is simple to use and is accessed by tapping in an address to the Wii Opera Browser and entering your password to access your media directory. The look of the browser is very smart and allows you to browse through all your media with ease. For the brief periods of time in which it decided it wanted to work it did it really well, playing songs, displaying album artwork and letting us browse through pictures and watch videos. Then it crashes and refuses to work for a while.

Adding media to the browser is also a bit of a nightmare. If like us you lead a very digital lifestyle and have a whole shed-load of music and photos not to mention some rather sizable movie files then you’re in trouble. It would seem that the media centre software can’t handle you adding large amounts of data at a time. It crashes, freezes up your computer and doesn’t get the job done. It would seem we’re not the only ones having these problems either. A quick look at the games listing on Amazon UK highlights a plethora of negative customer feedback.

What started out looking like quite a promising piece of software that offered some pretty nifty functionality turns into a bit of a nightmare. What it sets out to do it doesn’t achieve. It seems to crash when you try to do anything, the Wii crashes when you try to open files that are too large or move through lots of media files too quickly. Put simply, doing anything seems to make it break.

Score: 3/10

We were really excited about getting our hands on this product and ultimately all it did was disappoint and crash. We’ve used basic shareware or even freeware that is better written than this allegedly ‘finished’ and ‘easy to use piece of software’. Whilst what it promises to do is really exciting, in failing to do it in any way shape or form makes it a total waste of money. A bit more time in development and some proper testing would make this pretty decent, but as it is this is impossible to recommend.

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fmorel90 Reply Quote Edit Delete #1

L1 New Born

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fmorel90

Too bad. My dad is looking into upgrading our living room. Guess we'll stick with Windows Media Center or AppleTV.

on 04.08.2008 at 14:42 Games | Blog | Wii Codes | Message Me

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jb Reply Quote Edit Delete #2

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Brawl. Music. Orgasmic!

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Pff - you can get free alternatives, and it's not exactly doing anything amazing anyway. Just streaming stuff from your PC to your Wii.

jb(at)cubed3.com

on 04.08.2008 at 15:03 Games | Blog | Wii Codes | Message Me

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James2t3 Reply Quote Edit Delete #3

L100 Eternal Master

Sex is bad. Sex is a Sin. Sins are forgiven so stick it in!

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James2t3

Some of the homebrew applcations are starting to get pretty good, if your up for it you shold give Geexbox a look.
Plays movie files off SD cards really well, theres support for flash drives but the video is a bit choppy. It's still alpha so hopfully if they improve the USB side of things it could be used with external HDDs to play movies.

( Edited 04.08.2008 15:09 by Blade2t3 )