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.