Stream Movies and TV Shows on Your Wii Using Netflix

Starting this week, the Wii is no longer just for playing videogames. Thanks to Nintendo’s partnership with Netflix, you can now stream movies and television shows through your Wii. Therefore, this week’s blog will explain what you will need to do if you would like to take advantage of this new service.

Thankfully, it’s a surprisingly simple and painless process. First, as you probably could have guessed, in order to stream content over the Internet, your Wii will have to be connected to a high-speed connection. Every Wii is capable of connecting to the Internet, and for more information about that, you can read these entries of the Wii Blog For You: Connecting Wirelessly or Connecting Using a Wired Connection.

Next, you have to be a Netflix subscriber. The Netflix plans start at $8.99 per month, and the subscription allows you to stream as much content as you want. Additionally, the subscription allows you to have movies delivered to you through the mail. You can keep individual movies as long as you want (which means no late fees!), but the movie must be mailed back before you can have other movies sent to you. However, since you can stream unlimited content through your Wii, you may not ever even want to receive movies through the mail. If you would like to “try before you buy,” Netflix offers a free one month trial, which you can sign up for here.

The last thing you will need to do is order a free “streaming disc.” The streaming disc must be inserted into your Wii when you want to stream a movie or a television show. You can order that from Netflix by clicking here, and they will send it to you in the mail.

To start browsing for movies and television shows, all you do is:

1. Turn on your Wii

2. Insert the streaming disc into the Wii just as you would a game.

3. Click the Netflix logo that will appear in the upper left corner of the Wii menu whenever the streaming disc is inserted.

If you are a movie buff or like to watch several movies per month, Netflix on your Wii is a great feature. The $8.99 monthly fee is far less than you would pay to rent those movies from a store. Plus, you never have to worry about a movie you want to see being out of stock, and the hassle of driving back and forth from the movie store is completely eliminated. If you would like to read more about Netflix on Wii, here is what CNET had to say about it.