Japanese Broadcasters Fear Wii TV
One senior executive at Fuji Television, the largest commercial broadcaster in Japan, called the planned Wii streaming video service "the stuff of television producers' nightmares."
Nintendo announced last week its intention to launch a Wii streaming channel in Japan. The company has partnered with top Japan advertising firm Dentsu, and intends to launch the service sometime this year.
The Fuji executive noted that if Nintendo did push for the Wii to become "the centerpiece of the living room," it would come at a particularly bad time for Japanese broadcasters, which are currently being criticized for "relying too heavily on repeats and celebrity formats."
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edgewise
replySeems kind of ironic that a country where so much HDTV technology is developed and where such insane internet bandwith is available to consumers that the 480p capped Wii will be the living room entertainment device.
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I"m no expert on Japanese television but I did spend a week in Tokyo two years ago and honestly there's not much on Japanese television that really demands high def. From what I saw the average budget of a Japanese television show is about the same as local morning news shows spend in the USA (which is to say as little as possible).
Nearly everything I saw was either the famous gameshows, talk shows that looked similar in spirit to Regis and Kelly, Travel Channel-style stuff and some Anime . The only time I saw any fiction programming was when I was up at 3am because of jet lag and there was some soap opera (which from looking online I figured out was something like 7 years old)
Maybe there are big budget shows that cost the equivalent of a million dollars and episode but I didn't see it. With such low budget programming you probably aren't missing much by watching it in high def.
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Not everyone has a hi-def TV over there.
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