Did I answer it at all? Or was I totally off?

I don't understand the question, what do you mean by ''local media''?

Yes, your repsonse indicated that TVii will only pick up local cable TV, not locally stored media.

cant you just plug your harddrive into your cable box or TV or whatever? Should work  I mean if your WiIU can access the cable box to switch channels etc it could be able to access the harddrive too.

My appologies for being too vaugue. By local media I mean media files store locally on a harddrive. Preferable a wireless harddrive, but I could live with hardwireing the drive as well.

Well, I wasn't totally sure what you were talking about so... I searched up the wrong thing.

Yes, I currently connect to my wireless NAS through the excellent Media Centre application XBMC, however if the WiiU could replace this set up I would have all my gaming and tv and movie watching moved to one single device. A concept that would delight me greatly.

Damn you were to fast  I figured my reply would make you think that  I ment without a WiIU  so I edited it ;)  I ment  if the WiiU can access your cable box  to change tv channels why would it not be able to access the harddrive?

I am assuming that the WiiU will be able to access the harddrive, multiple sources point to Nintendo encouraging people to connect extarnel storage devices to the WiiU. I do however wonder if the WiiU will be able to play media files of this harddrive. It is my understanding that just connecting a harddrive to a device is not enough to start playing video and audio files in various formats. There needs to be something, hard to pin down, but something that recognizes these files as delicious video clips and music stubs and then (probably by the use of Chi manipulation) presents these files on my television. It's this near magical middle component I am wondering about.

Well but then again your WiiU can use the dvr/cable box  so I see no reason why you cant just use the cable box interface that pops up on your WiiU gamepad or whatever and then click on SDcard/usb drive/harddrive So the cable box/DVR accesses the content that is on the harddrive and then sends the image to the WiiU.

The only problem here is  I HAVE NO IDEA AT ALL how this "WiiU can control other devises" works. I mean I get that my Panasonic TV remote can control my Sony BDplayer its simple communication via the HDMI cable but the WiiU is far more complicated and streams the image and sound etc.  How can a third device be used to control a cable box/dvr and let that box send the video to the TV.  I have no idea lol.