Wii U’s TVii video service to launch in US, Canada on December 20

Posted By: Michael Lacerna In: Console News, Gaming News, Wii U On: 19 Dec

One of the neatest features of the Wii U was supposed to be its ambitious TVii service, a specialized app that grouped your cable TV service, DVR, and streaming video on demand services into one convenient hub. TVii missed the Wii U’s launch last month, but today Nintendo announced that the service would finally be going live tomorrow for North American users.

TVii syncs up all the programs available on various streaming services, like Hulu, Amazon Video etc., along with any videos saved to your home DVR, as well as whatever is on live TV at the moment, and gives you access to them all from a single app. The TVii app also gives you live updates on sports scores and a listing of what’s currently showing on traditional TV channels. It’s an ambitious undertaking for the previously online-phobic Nintendo, and it’ll be interesting to see if Nintendo can group all these disparate services into one cohesive network.

It’s already been announced that Netflix and TiVo services will be integrated into TVii at some point, but as of right now, their services are missing from the service. Netflix can still be viewed from the Wii U via its own separate app.