Apparently. http://goo.gl/QPPNa

Must say, I like how the Wii U is looking more competitive in the entertainment/media circle of consoles, what with Nintendo TVii, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube, LOVEFiLM, the browser and all. And now this.

Would love it if they can hook it into itunes in a similar way to the Apple TV (although I doubt Apple is open minded enough to allow this).

I pointed the browser to my NAS and was able to stream 1080p Apple trailers and such. It works fairly well although I'm not sure whether I'd use it over the other options I have. The Wii U's fan is not silent and my TV can do this natively.. but it's nice for that it works.

Strangely I pointed it to some mp3s in my music folder and it didn't play them which I thought was very strange.

Nice, I would use my TV for this, but still, this is a nice feature.
When I get a Wii U I might use it, because of the Web Browser and stuff right on my TV.

Depends how they look at it, it would compete with Apple TV so initially look stupid on that front, but on the other hand encourage more people to use the iTunes store for film/tv/music purchases (especially since it's all cloud based now - one account any device), so stupid not to do it from that side of things.

Given Apple rakes in far more revenue from iTunes than Apple TV I think they'd be more stupid not to be more open with hooking up to iTunes accounts on other devices (it's not like Nintendo are competing with them on the media store front). But that's their stance at the moment.

Last I checked, Apple had bigger competition than Nintendo and went ahead and released ITunes for that competitors platform..

A Bit More OT: While neat, it would be even more cool if the console itself could read video files from a harddrive/SD card and play them natively. Hopefully someone will find a way around this server-only problem.

Exactly, in that case they saw there was more money to be made getting the ipod and itunes stores on Windows PCs than trying to tempt people into buying Macs as it was the only place those features could be used. They saw sense then, but I think Apple today is a lot different from how it was back then as it's got a much greater market share.

If they implemented an XBMC client (this is open source I believe despite originating from Microsoft) then that would be possible. My TV has the same feature built into it and can do exactly that.

Umm, how would they not benefit from it... sales of media via iTunes store, this would create another sales avenue for them... that's where they make the majority of their money in this area. Plus if they wanted to move into games consoles later (unlikely given they've been burnt before) it won't stop/hinder them.

I'm aware of that, I even stated it earlier in the thread saying this wasn't their stance. I just feel it could be a profitable strategy for them to be more open with the platform (as it is a good product in my opinion). And I would never say never, if Apple's fortunes turned I'm sure they would change this stance.

I could say the same thing about you, but here we both are doing it. That's the beauty of a forum it allows us to voice our opinions without the need to be 'qualified' in people's eyes.

Yes you are, I indicated that I thought an alternate strategy from Apple would be good (mainly because I'd like to see a product on the Wii U). You said Apple would be stupid to consider it. You judged their current strategy as superior to an alternate one I proposed (perhaps you feel their current strategy is the optimal one). Perhaps your right, perhaps not, I don't thinks are as clear cut as you initially stated and we'll never know if you're right unless Apple does in fact change their stance on iTunes.

Apple is using iTunes in the same way that Nintendo uses Zelda. They have a popular product and have people locked into it in some form or another. People like it and they don't want to change it. If they opened up their store so that you could suddenly download content from iTunes for other devices... why would you ever buy an Apple product again?

It would be like if Nintendo announced that they were going to release the next Zelda on both Wii U and PC. It might work but it'd more likely backfire. People would wonder what the point of buying a Wii U would be if you don't need it to play Zelda.