I've been told from someone from Nintendo, that they've already tried a multimedia channel. You are able to play DVDs and play DivX files (huh?) from an SD card. (Why no usb pendrive? To prevent piracy or so he says; but why keep SD?) Naturally, I asked why it hasn't been out yet? He didn't know either, but he suggest it might be due to some proprietary rights.

When I heard him say this, I was gobsmack... they already have it but haven't released it yet? 

Maybe we should do a petition for it to see the light of day

Petitions don't work and nintendo already said it would take more than an update to play dvds.

I have my doubts about the "friends at company X" -sources. But in general that kind of channel could be possible. Recent update on the media playback and the rumors about practically anything considering media Wii could play (even Iwata said sometime that DVD playback is in the works, but pulled the statement back afterwards). Anyway, the channel would propably be downloadable from Shop Channel at a cost (although not necessarily).

I stil want the "Everybody's nintendo channel"!!!
I thought it would be out in january!!

I'm curious why it would take more?

Essentially look at your computer's ability to play DVD's. A DVD-ROM and decoding software... that's all you need.

With a Wii you have the DVD-ROM, so just add the decoding software. Perhaps internal memory is lacking to keep the rate of viewing ideal for a human being. Maybe one spends more time buffering and loading than actually viewing? I can't imagine a DVD encoded video stream needs as much memory as say a videogame....

Could be still the pipeline. We all know how fast Nintendo puts new channels out...

 That's what they said when they confirmed a new wii with dvd playback.

 About the memory part? Interesting. I thought maybe a hardware cache was the reason behind a new version, though I imagined the existing one was sufficent considering it's used for video games. Maybe it is insufficent?

 No they said that they are un able to update the current wii for playback that is why they were going to make a dvd version for japan only I think but then they never did. 

The reason Nintendo wants to bring out a new model to play DVDs is that the Wii's current drive wasn't made for the constant motion required to play movie DVDs. If users started playing movies on their current Wii hardware, the drive may fail a lot sooner than normal. Otherwise, hackers have proven that with the right software the system can play movies.