Can Wii U play Blu-ray or DVDs?
"Hey everyone, currently debating between Wii U and PS3. If Wii U could play Blu-rays, it would be a definite buy, since it would be nice to have one. I read Wii U uses a 'new type of disc format' but wasn't sure if that meant Blu-Ray. Thanks!"
Planning to replace your aging Blu-ray player with a Wii U? The disappointed news from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says the gaming console won't play DVD or Blu-ray discs, due to patent licensing fees.
"Wii U does not have DVD or Blu-ray playback capabilities. The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies."
How to Play Blu-ray/DVD on Wii U?
Although Wii U does not support the direct playback of Blu-ray/DVD disc, however, you still have the chance to access Blu-ray/DVD movies on Wii U via USB drive or external hard drive by making a digital copy of your disc movies to Wii U compatible media formats.
It would be time consuming for you to search on the Internet for what file formats can be played on Wii U and test the file formats one on your Wii U. Pavtube BDMagic for Windows (top 5 Blu-ray Rippers review)/Mac (support Mac OS X El Capitan) can do you a great favor to directly rip/convert copy & region protected Blu-ray/DVD movies to Wii U preset profile formats.
Besides Wii U, the program also enables you to output Blu-ray/DVD to other game consoles such as PS3/PS4, Xbox 360/Xbox One specially optimized file formats for better playback.
How to Rip Blu-ray/DVD for Playing on Wii U via USB or External Hard Drive?
Step 1. Load Blu-ray/DVD disc.
Launch this Blu-ray/DVD to Wii U converter on PC, and click "File" and "Load from disc" to import Blu-ray/DVD movie. For Blu-ray disc collectors, an external or internal Blu-ray drive is required to recognize your Blu-ray disc.
Step 2: Output Wii U preset profile format.
Since Wii U has the same format compatibility with Wii, here, you can output Wii preset profile format "Wii" > "Wii MOV Video(*.mov)" or "Wii AVI(*avi)" from "Format" drop-down list.
Tips： If you want to convert Blu-ray/DVD to Wii U with multiple audio tracks/subtitles and chapter markers preserved, Pavtube ByteCopy for Windows/Mac will be a good choice. Run Pavtube ByteCopy and click the format bar to follow "Multi-track". There are 4 kinds of multi-track output for you, choose the suitable one for your device.
Step 3: Start Blu-ray/DVD to Wii U conversion process.
Clicking the Convert button on main interface,a Conversion window will pop out with the detailed conversion information such as Time elapsed, Time left, Generated size, and Estimated size.
After the conversion, you can click Open output folder to pop out the output directory with the converted files.
To watch local video on Wii U, the best way is using Plex Media Server, just add converted movies to Plex, then stream movies to Wii U via Plex Media Server.
