While the Wii U doesn’t appear to officially support the streaming of videos from your local network, one owner discovered that the functionality is there Thursday and is accessibly through the new Nintendo console’s web browser.

YouTube user “Willy Gunz” shared his discover in a video where he was able to use the Wii U web browser to connect to his computer and stream videos. Unfortunately, only mp4 videos are supported and not other popular variants such as avi or mkv.

The process for streaming videos is not as simple as just firing up the Wii U web browser. First you’ll need to set up a local web server on your PC. This can be done with Windows 7 by taking the following steps.

1. Go to Control Panel, and then click on Programs. You’ll see a link for “Turn Windows features on or off”. Click that.
2. Scroll down until you see Internet Information Service and expand that.
3. Click the boxes next to Web Management Tools and World Wide Services to enable both and then click OK.
4. Now go to Control Panel and then Administrative Tools. You should see Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager listed. Open that.
5. You should see your PC listed in the left panel. Expand that until you see Sites -> Default Web Site.
6. Right-click on Default Web Site to bring up a menu and go to Manage Web Sites -> Advance Settings.
7. Change the Physical Path in the Advanced Settings to the folder that is holding your mp4 video files and click OK.
8. Now double-click on the MIME Types icon on the IIS Manager screen. If mp4 is not listed, click Add in the right panel.
9. Enter “.mp4” for the File Type Extension and “Video/mp4” for the Mime Type and then click OK.
10. Go back to the IIS Manager screen and double-click on Directory Browsing.
11. In right panel of the Directory Browsing screen, click Enable.

With that done, you can now use the Wii U web browser to directly browse to your PC’s IP address and play mp4 videos. If you don’t know your PC’s ip address follow these directions.

1. Click the Start menu and enter “cmd” into the “Search programs and files” text box.
2. Type “ipconfig” in the command prompt and hit enter.
3. Your PC’s IP address will be displayed.
4. Enter that IP address in your Wii U web browser

Mac and Linux directions on setting up a local web server can be found by searching Google or Bing for “Mac web server setup” or “Linux web server setup”.

original from:examiner.com