Insider Secrets: Turn your Wii into a media center

[ Music ] ^M00:00:11 >> The Nintendo Wii is great for Wii sports but doesn't sport any of the streaming media features of Microsoft's Xbox 360. Want to stream photos, movies and videos straight from your desktop to your Wii, then we've got you covered. I'm Randall Bennett for CNET.com. And today we'll show you how to turn your Wii into a media center. [ Music ] Getting your media from the desktop to the living room is a lot easier than you think. We're going to use Orb streaming software and the Wii's web browser to get video and media off your PC right on to your TV. First, open up your web browser and head to MyCast dot Orb dot com and download the Orb streaming software. Run the installer and you'll be prompted to create an account. Click next and you're off to the races. While the software is installing, Orb will make sure that your PC is fast enough to handle real time media streaming. The installer will ask you a few questions about your home network configuration. After that the installer will finish and prompt you to log on to MyCast dot Orb dot com for the first time. Orb will automatically add your My Videos, your My Pictures and My Music folders to your library. But if you've got media in other places, you'll need to add them manually. Head down to the bottom right corner and look for the Orb icon in your system tray. Right click on it, select configuration and then you'll see a tab where you can specify where your TV shows are saved and a media tab where you can more folders to your library. After you add a folder, you should be able to go back to MyCast dot Orb dot com and see the files show up in your library. We've only got one more thing to do to make sure our media center PC is ready to play nicely with our Wii. Head to the settings page in the corner of the MyCast site. Now under the general list from the drop down menu, you'll see an entry for streaming formats. Make sure you set this to Flash so that all your videos will be able to play in any web browser, including your Wii. Let's head on to our Wii and start watching some videos on our PC. We've already set up our Wii to work with our WIFI network, so we'll just log on to Orb from the Wii. We'll go to MyCast dot Orb dot com, enter in our user name and password and wa la! A streamlined interfaced access to your media. Now in order for you to use the Internet channel, you'll have to go to the Wii shop channel and pony up 500 extra Wii points if you haven't already done it. The process is pretty simple from start to finish, but there's one issue that seems to be creeping up on forums every where and that's firewalls. If you're using a firewall, you've got to make sure to unblock the ports that Orb needs to get through your firewall. Also remember that this solution works for more than just your Wii. You can use Orb to play shift to other devices like laptops, PDAs or cell phones or any other device with an integrated media player or Flash. Now if you're using a Mac or a Linux box as your media server, there are other options too like Wii Media X for Mac or Mix TV for Linux that let's you get your stream on if you're not afraid of a little Google searching. You should be off and running now with your wonderful white Wii. I'm going to go back to watching some TV shows I've been waiting for. I'm Randall Bennett for CNET.com. See you later. ^M00:02:59 [ Music ]