For months, edging on years, now there's been speculation, comment and complaint about how the otherwise beauteous Nintendo Wii can't play (film) DVDs even though quite clearly it has a DVD drive. It's hardly the biggest issue ever, DVD drives are 10 a penny now, but it would have been nice for those broken DVD-player emergencies. Plus Nintendo themselves, so it was said, claimed it was coming in a version 2 Wii which was later shelved/massively delayed.

No need to wait for mythical version 2 mind! Clever Wii-hackers have worked out how to get the lovely white beast that you already own - if you have any sort of good console taste - to play DVDs . Whoo! For free (if you also own/can borrow Zelda and a SD card), and without hardware modification too. It uses the classic Twilight hack, which has been round for plenty of time enabling all sorts of home-made shenanigans to go, in conjunction with mPlayer to let you spin those silver Hollywood discs.

The Poorhouse doesn't really have the time or inclination to fiddle around with this whilst he still has a fully functioning actual DVD player. But it's kinda clever that people have done it and made it so easy, so if you fancy it - obviously invalidating warranties all round - here's the instructions.

(Accompanying picture nicked from Gizmodo, along with a cheap laugh at reebs82's exasperated solution to the no-longer-existent problem: "just duct tape a 30 dollar dvd player to the wii and call it good")