Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Stream movies from your Mac to your Wii

…without using VLC or any media apps--paid or otherwise--on your Mac.

I've searched for months and have yet to find a comprehensive guide for streaming video from the Mac to the Wii. After wading through dozens of forums, I've finally cobbled together a way to wirelessly stream movies -- and it's much easier than I expected. And completely free, which is even better.

(This method has only been tested on my Mac running 10.5.8. Your mileage may vary.)

To begin, you'll need:
  • The Homebrew Channel installed on an SD card for your Wii.
  • an SD card reader for your Mac.
  • a wireless router of some sort.

Step 1 - Share the stuff on your Mac.

  • Open your System Preferences and click "Accounts". Click "Guest Account" and make sure "Allow guests to connect to shared folders" is selected.
  • Go back the the preferences menu and click "Sharing". Turn on File Sharing and add the folder containing your media that you'd like to share. Or you can just share your entire hard drive, if you like. Make sure guests are allowed to read & write. (I'm not too worried about security, as my machines are protected by my router's firewall, but if you're concerned about such things you may want to experiment with password settings.)
  • Click "Options..." and make sure that "Share files and folders using SMB" is checked.
  • Back to the preferences menu again. Click "Network" and look for the internal IP of your Mac--in my case, it was 10.0.1.4. Remember this for later...but first, fire up that Wii...

2. Install MPlayer CE via the Homebrew Channel on your Wii.
  • The nice thing about this method is that you can use a relatively small SD card, as you won't have to copy over any movie files. Mine was an old 128MB card, and everything loaded just fine.
  • When you're finished, you'll have a nice, fresh copy of the program on your SD card. Take it to your Mac.

3. Edit a file or two.
  • Here's where it gets a little tricky. I don't think you can do much severe damage here, but make sure you backup these two files (smb.conf and menu.conf) before you make any changes to them. Just in case.
  • Open the smb.conf file located in "/Apps/mplayer_ce/" on the SD card. Edit the following information:
#Samba share1 (smb1:/)
ip1=10.0.1.4 (internal IP of your mac)
share1="name of your shared directory"
user1=0
pass1=0
  • If you have other folders or hard drives you've set up to share, enter those settings into their placeholders now.
  • If you have multiple shares you'd like to be able to distinguish in the MPlayer menu on the Wii, open up the menu.conf file (also in "/Apps/mplayer_ce" on the SD card) and search for the following:
cmdlist name="open_smb"
  • Look a couple of lines below and edit the menu items (i.e. "SMB Share 1...") to reflect the shared folders you configured in smb.conf.
  • save your edited files, eject the card, and take it back (for the last time) to the Wii...

Step 4 - Watch a movie!

(I've only tried this with AVIs and mp4s...I assume other media types will work here, but I haven't been able to test them yet.)
  • Fire up The Homebrew Channel and launch MPlayer CE. Select "Open" then "File" then "SMB". If you edited your menu options, you should see them now. If you didn't edit your menu, go ahead and select "SMB Share 1..."
And there's your moment of truth. If it all worked, you should see a file listing of your shared folder. All that's left is to select a movie and watch it. Huzzah!

Success? Failure? Better ideas? Let us know in the comments.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I try for days and I can not ..

send the line to the Wii via airport on imac, everything works, but I can not see the shared folder on mac ..

"Error connecting to smb1"

In network (Ethernet) IP Address: **.***.**.** is a 9 digit.
I put the folder in SMB / active (enter password) Account: user name

I enter everything in the smb.conf file

# Samba share1 (smb1: /)
IP1 =**.***.**.**
share1 = test
user1 = user name
pass1 = 12345

nothing! not work! and I'm trying for days on various forums!

Help me?

jonceramic said...

Ok, I got it finally to work on my Mac.

IP address: It should be the one displayed when you go to "Network" and see what IP you have.

Share: I tried "Users" and "Public" and all kinds of stuff. It's literally what shows up on the network file sharing window. In my case, my user name is actually "user", and it's "User's Public Folder". (I also have "Jon's Public Folder". Yours might be "Buio's Public Folder".

Since read only file sharing for guests is enabled, that means I didn't need a username or password.

ip1=192.168.1.2
share1="User's Public Folder"
user1=
pass1=

You have to go in and enable separate sharing for folders if you want to map directly to them.

---

Finally, I got fancy, and figured out how to edit the menus. Since I was always going to go straight to the file share (i.e. never pull my SD card), I added this line:


To here:



jonceramic said...

Blogger doesn't like html...

At the end, I meant to say...
In this section of menu.conf...

{cmdlist name="open" title="Open" ptr="<>" }

I added...

{e name="SMB Folder ..." ok="set_menu open_smb1"/}

(Replace the {'s with < and >.)

jonceramic said...

Oh, even better.... I added the direct menu item in this sectionat the end of menu.conf...

{cmdlist name="main" title="MPlayer CE" ptr="<>" }
{e name="Stop" ok="stop"/}
{e name="Mac Files ..." ok="set_menu open_smb1"/}
...

Rhod Lawrence said...

I managed to get it working after a few tries.
These were my settings:

ip1=192.168.x.x
share1=Movies
user1=guest
pass1=

I used the IP that is given when you go to system preferences -> sharing.

the share1 relates to the shared movies folder which is the default Movies folder on my mac (in my user folder). I did not need to put in my username/Movies

As i set up the guest account to allow it to access the shared folders (in the accounts part of system preferences) the user1 was set to guest which also meant that no password was needed.

I figured out the settings by looking at what the names of the folders where when i accessed my shared folders on a pc (via vmware fusion) so if you are unsure of the name of your shared folder then if you can use a pc to see the names of the folders that show up.

Unknown said...

couldnt get this to work no matter what tweaking i did to anything: quotes around folder name, typing guest or not, 0's or no 0's, 192.168.0.*** nor 192.168.*, using the default Movies folder or the Public Share folder.

any tips? right now im just using an external HD (which might be better anyways, since streaming can get bogged down).

p@ said...

so this is a bit of an old post but meh.
i was able to figure it out on Snow Leopard but not on Lion for some reason, maybe the sharing permissions are different.
After I got it figured out on Snow Leopard I found http://www.wiimc.org/ and it was quite a bit easier to figure out.