Watching the TV show “Heroes” on my Wii. Yes, I got a Nintendo Wii, yes, it is fairly cool, but one shortcoming has been that the Flash player embedded in the Opera browser isn’t current enough to work with the ABC and NBC “view shows online” features of their web sites.

 
Searching for workarounds today, I discovered a number of web sites that will stream TV shows using an earlier version of Flash. I haven’t watched “Heroes”, because a) the previews reminded me too much of X-Men (which I lie, but don’t want to watch a rip-off), and b) I expected it to be cancelled before it got off the ground. I figured this would be a good candidate to try out streaming video to my big screen on the Wii.

 
It’s far from perfect, but still intriguing. The sites that are out there aren’t in the right resolution to fill the screen, and the Wii’s zoom settings don’t fit either. The resolution is garbage compared to an HD feed. The opera browser has a massive toolbar at the bottom (the white blur in the picture). With things like this, the new Apple TV product, and my new Treo’s ability to stream video over the wireless network, it’s clear that the internet is beginning to make its way into the living room.

 
Orb and Slingbox are coming at this from the other direction, bringing your TV to wherever you are, but this requires planning in advance WHAT you’ll want to watch. For a show like “Heroes” that I dismissed out of hand, these solutions don’t help. I fully expect these sites to be shut down in whack-a-mole fashion. I wouldn’t object to watching the ad-supported versions on the network sites, but until that’s possible, this approach isn’t so bad either.