In an interview with Curt Marvis, president of digital media for Lionsgate Entertainment on Variety magazine's website, he singled out the Wii as a platform with huge potential for digital film distribution.  Lionsgate is the studio behind the Saw franchise as well as Tyler Perry's Medea films and some Marvel properties.  Until 2004, their focus seemed to have been on smaller, independent films.  Marvis believes that the Wii will be streaming movies by the end of the year.

"The thing that is clearly a force in digital are the game devices. I think when we see Wii come into the market with the ability to stream movies, which I think is maybe going to happen as soon as this year, I think that’s going to be a big marketplace for digital distribution."

Prior to his current post at Lionsgate, Marvis was CEO of CinemaNow, a digial video distributor of studio and independent films.  The company was purchased by Blockbuster in 2007.  His current responsibilities require him to coordinate Lionsgate properties with online distributors like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.   

It's no secret that the Wii is the most successful of the current generation console.  With 16 million units in American homes, its totals nearly equal the other two consoles combined.  The untapped potential of these Wii households would be highly attractive to film and television content creators.  Of course, there are a couple of hurdles to be crossed to make the Wii a more viable platform for digital distribution.  The Wii doesn't have a hard drive which limits it to video streaming.  The quality of streaming video is variable and pricing would have to reflect that. Secondly, an easy to navigate onscreen interface would need to be developed for users to search and manage their video queues.  Numerically speaking, Wii owners are perceived as less tech savvy than those who own PS3s or 360s.  Any interface would have to be simple to operate to avoid confusion and encourage revisitation.  Finally, there is the issue of high definition.  Under its current hardware model, the Wii is unable to deliver HD video.  Presently, that shouldn't be a concern as there is no way to store HD movies anyway, however, down the road, its something that would have to be addressed if Nintendo wants to be relevant in this emerging market.

http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/2009/03/movies-and-tv-coming-to-the-wii.html
http://weblogs.variety.com/technotainment/2009/03/lionsgates-curt-marvis-interview-part-2.html#more

Nintendo is planning a TV Channel for the Wii Menu in Japan, so this is just the next step in that plan.

Is HD video that big an issue?

I think movies on Wii will never be big for technical reasons.  Wii doesn't have the storage, movies could still stream but quality won't be up to peoples' standards.  Nintendo doesn't have the networking infrastructure to make high bandwidth stuff work yet.  Heck, MS has had their video service out for quite a while (biggest online video service on the net BTW), Sony has theirs set up, and Nintendo is still playing catchup.

the wii is a toy, not a multimedia machine.

I would love to be able to stream films on my Wii and I can maybe see it happening, but I would be a bit worried incase it kept stopping to load. Sometimes I get pauses when I stream the videos on the Nintendo Channel.

Personally, that would spoil the film experience for me.

if nintendo make a new system to properly compete with PS3/Xbox360, then it can happen, but not with something that doesnt even have 1gb hard drive.

Huh? Nintendo channel videos work fine even on my crappy 1Mbit connection. I don't know about the quality though, my Wii is on a crappy 14" TV until I can connect it to my PC monitor.

I wouldn't mind streaming something like cartoon network stuff on it, you hardly watch those for the picture clarity.

I don't think this will catch on in the USA but it could in other countries where HD isn't as widespread. Ie, all channels where I live still broadcast in SD except one.

As for not having memory, that's not an issue in the least. Streaming is where it's at even for the HD consoles, they want this type of service to be immediatelly accessible, just like TV, for the average end user. Requiring downloads of any sort isn't their plan.

I don't think this guy has ever seen a Wii before.