Topic: can you play normal dvds on a wii u

Sure it can. All you need to do is buy said movie, download handbrake and get all of the "special features" working. Rip that sucker to a network share as an H.264 mp4 rip and point your Wii U browser to it. With the power of most people's machines these days the biggest speed limit will be the speed of your optical drive. So just like ripping a CD which doesn't require any "special features" because when CDs were developed in the late 80s the idea of people copying them wasn't a thing so they didn't bother restricting fair use. On DVDs they did.

Alternatively you could pick up your disk and move it about 20cm to the right and put it in your DVD player. If you don't have a DVD player go out to the shops, don't buy a game this month and spend that money getting a Blu-Ray player. Or just find any laptop or computer that's less than ten years old and throw the disk in that. Seriously, it's 2014 now, DVDs had well and truly hit mainstream in 2002 or so. Why do you need DVD playback on the Wii U?

Hence, why I said speak for yourself...

My only blu-ray player is my PS3, I use it constantly for that purpose (as well as gaming) and it still works beautifully (as does my fat PS2 which I've watched plenty of DVDs on in the past). Just because you wouldn't personally use the blu-ray functionality, doesn't mean that adding it onto the Wii U wouldn't benefit anyone. It may not do you any good, but I would personally greatly appreciate it. Please don't attempt to speak for me or suggest that I'm wasting my life because I use Netflix.

I'm also a game collector, a game collector who enjoys using his modern consoles as multimedia hubs. Sue me.

Yeah, he asked why so many of us are against the very idea. How you could perceive me as talking for you when you claim to covet such a functionality is a puzzle to me. If you don't agree with me that using a console for multimedia is a frivolous concept completely irrelevant to a gaming device, then I don't see how I could speak for you on the matter. I was merely characterizing the basic discomfort and repulsion some of us have at the way videogame consoles are expected to evolve.

Look, I'm just some idiot. Don't value what I say. Sorry if it offends, but these are just my disgruntled opinions forged in this loopy, overstimulated multimedia world. If I happen to think Netflix is a waste of all life (not yours, specifically--I seriously couldn't give two dumps if you waste yours), so be it. I'm not going to stop anyone from thinking watching TV in the most inefficient way possible is the future. And either way, Netflix has won. The popular opinion seems to anoint it as a fundamental convenience for modern life.

Could be. What harm is there in me forcefully disagreeing?

EDIT: And I have to ask, when quality Sony BluRay players that outdo the one in the PS3 are available for around $50, easy... Why bother relying on a much more expensive device, which will be a pain to replace?

It was your usage of "As gamers," and "we" in your initial post that irritated me. Puzzle solved. I understand your point about preserving disc drives, I just find it odd that you took it upon yourself to represent the gaming populous.

To answer your edit: Have you ever perused the blu-ray.com forums? There are many who swear by their PS3's as their sole film viewing devices. Personally, I continue to use mine because I've never experienced any trouble doing so. Same reason I don't mind playing the occasional burned Dreamcast title on that console. I live on the edge, man.

I think we can both agree our tiff was trivial, just thought I'd answer your question.

Understood. I actually just meant "as (predominantly) gamers" to emphasize those of his against the idea are instead interested in preserving our core hobby without interference. That sort of thing, I think.

No hard feelings, I really don't want to do a disservice to you or anyone else. But I won't compromise in expressing my truth. I wouldn't expect any less from you. Even if I stumble over myself every once in awhile.

That's quite an extraordinarily narrow world view.

You know that DVDs still outsell BD and physical media is in no way endangered, right?

In the United States alone, there are about 75 million people with no internet access in their home. That's 20% of the population in one of the world's wealthiest nations.

World average 34.3%. That's a little off of your 99% statistic.

Heh, well I guess I should admit that, to me, BluRays and DVDs are primarily means to keep the little ones occupied while I play some Metal Slug. When you reach a point where watching an entire movie is an uncomfortable pipe-dream...

I have been known to watch a Looney Toon or two, though. Those aren't even PC these days. I'm tiptoeing on a razor, right?

I don't get the whole "waah! why doesn't platform A that I use for running B not support format C" thing. Stuffs that can play back everything and anything you throw at it is pretty commonplace and cheap these days. Odds are that that same device also supports all sorts of streaming services. More than any of the console manufacturers will ever bother to support. Odds are that you have something fairly decent built into your TV if it's less than around 5yrs old.

That said I don't buy the whole "disk are dead" thing people are going for here. For games? Maybe eventually because there's little value in a disk on that media at least IMO. For media including movies and music? I don't see why. Now for music right now I have spotify and I love spotify. However when something comes out that I love I'll still buy the CD. Why not iTunes? Well because usually the CD isn't any less expensive and I can rip it in the format I like. Plus more often than not there's an option to download the 320kbps mp3 for "free" when you buy a CD from the label's website.

Movies even moreso. The only way to buy movies here AFAIK is to download if off iTunes. However the problem with that is that you are forced into again paying about the same as a retail blu-ray anyways and you have to put up with Apple's DRM. There are ways around it but those are technically as "illegal" as ripping anyways. If netflix was here in Australia then maybe I would look at that but then there's the fact that I don't think there's an offline option. Either way I wouldn't know because it's not here and won't be for a while given bandwidth limitations. In the medium term though even if the bandwidth problem is "solved" there's 4K down the road. I don't see 4K video streaming being as good a quality as it will be on a disk.

tl;dr

• wanting a particular device to support a particular format is stupid when there are cheap multi-format boxes
• disks for games might be dead eventually, disks for media especially movies is definitely not

Haha, you'd think some people on this site would be happy with a cardboard box hooked up to their TV.

if it played good games with no problems I'd be happy with it.
_{but having extra stuff would be cool too, I'm in no way against having more features as long as the gaming part isn't affected}

You misunderstood me. I find (and most of the world's population) blu ray to have been obsolete from day 1 too.

Disks for media especially movies died a long time ago. And of course for music. Most shops dealing with selling discs have gone bankrupt. It's dead. People watch movies from their cable providers and from the internet. Usually the internet. And usually for free. It's what at least 90% of the movie watching world is doing. DVD's are completely dead. Most people pirate but on the legal front, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon etc completely obliterated the idea of movies ala blockbuster (random recent link - http://flavorwire.com/421952/netflix-streaming-is-killing-off... and obviously for music - most people will just listen for free online (like Youtube) or download off amazon/i tunes for a buck a song - and just the song they want. It's like 5-10 years ago dead.

And again exactly the opposite - Discs for games are the last thing to die, and will take a while, because the consoles are more closed, not open and free like the internet.

Blu-rays are generally of a higher standard audio/video-wise and less compressed than what illegal downloads and streaming services currently provide, and often contain many exclusive featurettes, commentaries, and unique packaging, etc. The standard dual-layered blu-ray disc provides up to 50gb of information storage. Higher capacity discs are also available. I find it necessary to purchase blu-rays for films where I feel the ultimate experience is necessary. It's the same reason many people still insist on buying music on either vinyl or cd rather than via .mp3 format - they want that lossless quality.

The format is far from obsolete, but I understand that generally only cinephiles care about such things.

@dumedum
I know my views on music are apparently out of step with the general wisdom around this but let me point to some stats to back my argument. The US by far has the biggest proportion of music revenue being made in digital sales. Even then though it's about 58% of the revenue made in the US vs 34% in physical sales. In other western countries the split between the two is basically 50:50 with Germany and Japan being strongly the other way and preferring physical media by a large margin. It's not like there isn't the infrastructure for digital sales in music so for something "dead" it's doing alright.

As I mentioned for movies its an even harder sell. A random article I googled had UK movie sales at 94:6 digital to physical rather than the closer to 50:50 it was for music. Another one for the US has DVD and Blu-Ray sales in the US at $7.8bn and $3.9bn for physical rental services vs $1.2bn for digital sales and $5.3bn for digital rental/streaming. Whatever way you slice it it's not DOA as you claim.

And that rights restrictions thing you mentioned is correct but I think you have it backwards. When you buy a game you expect to only be playing it on that particular platform. We've been used to that for ages. The idea of even backwards compatibility isn't something everyone does. So when someone offers a digital sale with DRM that limits you to that one system it's not that big a deal. However if you're sold a movie that you must play on an Apple device or a box that supports that particular service it's a harder sell. Everyone is used to being able to play back a movie on everything. Plus with movies in particular the quality you see on a Blu-Ray is significantly better than what you'll get on a streaming service. That's going to become even more apparent with 4K. That's not at all the case with gaming, if anything the experience is potentially better with a digital game because it's stored on a faster disk.

Plus again, the cost is about the same for digital and physical. You're always going to lean towards the one that's a better experience. With movies and even music physical media is more versatile. With games digital media is just as versatile but more convenient. That's why I said what I did and I stand by it. Why do you believe what you believe? Where's your evidence?

I'll tell you right now blue ray and DVDs are not obsolete. If this was the case, red box would be out of business and box stores wouldn't sell them. I'll give you this, digital format is getting bigger BUT unless you have a high enough bandwidth to support HD download speeds your picture will suffer. With this very fact, blue ray will be around for a long while. If anything, the next step in movie entertainment will be like what you see with music today. Movies stored on flashdrives.

Actually looking at a quick selection of movies on iTunes and the local brick-and-mortar for HD movies and pricings:

New release:
Red 2: $33AU retail, $30AU digital
R.I.P.D: $33AU retail, $25AU digital
Smurfs 2: $30AU retail, $25AU digital

Classics:
Toy Story: $20AU retail, $20AU digital
Blade Runner: $19AU retail, $15AU digital
Alien: $19AU retail, $18AU digital
Pulp Fiction: $16AU retail, $18AU digital

read into that however you wish

You're geniuses guys! I wanted the WiiU playing Blu-rays but I've read the whole thread and now I prefer to spend more money buying a BR player and having more and more cables and stuff in the living room!

The way I look at it if you really want it to play Blu-Rays you probably have a collection of Blu-Rays to play. It only makes sense. If you have a collection of Blu-Rays which you likely have if you care about this feature then why don't you have a Blu-Ray player already? What, you've been collecting them for their nice boxes?

Oh and diddums, you don't want to run an extra single HDMI cable to your TV and single power cable to your wall? Wow, how hard that must be. You should have tried using AV gear about ten years ago. You'd need a VCR to record stuffs because DVD recording was ridiculous but maybe you had a Digital set-top box for digital TV but not recording from. Then you would want a DVD player to play DVDs. Then you'd plug in your console. Oh and all of those things would use three to five analogue cables rather than a single HDMI cable. THAT'S cable spaghetti. These days you can do all of that with a TV, All in one and Console. Two HDMI cables, that's it. And not that pricey either especially compared to what was around ten years ago.

And don't get me started on surround sound. They even make wireless rear speakers now, whoda thunk ey?

You should apply for a job in Nintendo!