As promised, a "trial version" of the Internet Channel was made available as a free download to Wii owners overnight.
The Internet Channel is a version of the Opera for Devices browser tailored specifically for Wii, and comes with Adobe Flash support. The Remote's A button is used to click links and system buttons (such as a Home button for going to the start page, which you'll need to go to to enter an arbitrary site to visit) and the B button is used for scrolling. The 1 button is used as a shortcut to your Favorites (bookmarks) page, and 2 reflows the page text full-screen for easier reading. Interestingly, the directional pad does absolutely nothing, but perhaps we'll see it be used for scrolling in a future version of the browser.
According to my play-time log on my Wii Message Board, I spent four minutes in the Wii Shop Channel obtaining the Internet Channel, and it takes 230 blocks on the main system, or about one-eighth of the Wii's on-board storage. Browser performance was good and the few sites I tried rendered as expected. Flash performance seems to suffer a little in the framerate department, and although it could have been the fault of my connection or perhaps the site itself, videos on Wii.com seemed to need to buffer a lot, which could indicate low RAM availability.
Nintendo says they will make the full version of the Internet Channel available at the end of March 2007, and it will be free for Wii owners to download through the end of June 2007. After that time, the Internet Channel will sell for 500 Wii Points, or about US$5.
The Internet Channel is a version of the Opera for Devices browser tailored specifically for Wii, and comes with Adobe Flash support. The Remote's A button is used to click links and system buttons (such as a Home button for going to the start page, which you'll need to go to to enter an arbitrary site to visit) and the B button is used for scrolling. The 1 button is used as a shortcut to your Favorites (bookmarks) page, and 2 reflows the page text full-screen for easier reading. Interestingly, the directional pad does absolutely nothing, but perhaps we'll see it be used for scrolling in a future version of the browser.
According to my play-time log on my Wii Message Board, I spent four minutes in the Wii Shop Channel obtaining the Internet Channel, and it takes 230 blocks on the main system, or about one-eighth of the Wii's on-board storage. Browser performance was good and the few sites I tried rendered as expected. Flash performance seems to suffer a little in the framerate department, and although it could have been the fault of my connection or perhaps the site itself, videos on Wii.com seemed to need to buffer a lot, which could indicate low RAM availability.
Nintendo says they will make the full version of the Internet Channel available at the end of March 2007, and it will be free for Wii owners to download through the end of June 2007. After that time, the Internet Channel will sell for 500 Wii Points, or about US$5.