So I’m mostly just doing a test here to see if I can post through my Wii. If you’re reading this, I totally can!
Proofreading from here is going to be a bitch though. The Wii’s tiny little text input window was totally not meant for this kind of work. So if you notice lots of little typos of the “jsut” and “anythign” variety, assume it’s a post written from the comfort of my bed. Which might make this worth it. Now unless I need to post an image, I have one less major reason to turn on my computer. Poor, neglected compy.
In related news, I’m on my third Wii console now. Not because I’m Nintendo’s bitch and keep buying each new colour or anything, but because Netflix is a horrible Wii murderer. Well, maybe it’s not Netflix, but all the evidence points to that conclusion. Let me start from the start.
Once upon a time, little Ryan was super excited that he got a message from Nintendo (via WiiConnect24, which is otherwise useless) that said he could now download a Netflix channel for his Wii. Little Ryan downloaded that channel with all the gusto, and immediately dove in. The first movie that queued up, completely by chance, was Confessions of a Nymphomaniac. Little Ryan felt a different kind of excitement and watched it. His love for Netflix bloomed instantly. Life would be wonderful from now on.
After watching more movies on the Netflix channel for hours, Ryan turned the Wii off and left to do other things for a while. He came back even later on, but when he turned on his Wii, it showed a horrible message:
“System memory has been corrupted.”
Little Ryan was devastated. His best friend had suffered from an apparent brain aneurysm, and he didn’t know what do to. The next day he turned on the Wii, just to see, and to his delight it worked! Little Ryan jumped for joy! For a while, everything seemed perfect, but then the Wii stopped working for real. It did not recover from the memory corruption, and had to be sent away to be replaced with a new console.
Little Ryan was depressed for the two long weeks his Wii was gone, but he was ecstatic when it returned, still loaded with all his Virtual Console and WiiWare purchases. Only while the license to download them was retained, they refused to play on the new console. Little Ryan set about re-downloading them all, painful a task though it was. At the end, he downloaded the Netflix channel again, and set about to watch him some River Monsters. Man, Little Ryan loved him some River Monsters.
Days and weeks went by uneventfully. Little Ryan and the Netflix channel were living happily together until one morning Ryan woke up and his Wii said
“System memory has been corrupted”
Little Ryan was devastated. Again. His Wii was dead again! But it pulled through the crisis, and Little Ryan continued to Netflix. Over the next few months the error came up again. At first it seemed to happen randomly, but as the fall set in, it started to happen every time Little Ryan tried to turn on his console. He eventually gave up and sent it in for repairs.
When Little Ryan received the second replacement Wii, he vowed to never download the Netflix channel again, because it was the devil. Four years, Little Ryan and his original console had spent together, and never had a problem. Now Little Ryan and his third Wii get along just fine, and there is no Netflix to be seen.
The End
So yeah. That’s what happened in a nutshell. The really sad part is that I loved the Netflix channel. Yes, Canadian Netflix lacks most of the AAA movies, but who cares? There’s so much on there to watch anyway! I felt like a kid in a candy store every single time I booted that channel up. I always found something to watch, and ended up watching tons of stuff that I’d have never even heard of without it. I owe Netflix a great deal, and I’m sad that I can no longer use it through my TV.
I do still subscribe to Netflix, and occasionally use it through my iPhone (mostly during workout time), though I’m a little skeptical about loading it up on my 3DS. Who knows what it’ll do? I’m certainly not signing up for Xbox Live Gold just for Netflix. One monthly fee is enough. I intend to find a cable that can make my iPhone do TV-out soon so that I can watch stuff on my TV, but it’s still not the same. The Netflix Wii interface was a little clunky, but it was nice. Better than the iPhone interface anyway. Oh well, those days have passed, and for now I live with Netflix being more a fond memory than anything else.