All Wii consoles are cabable of wii dvd player and playback viewing, only a few steps are required, This site covers what you will need to play DVDs on a Wii Nintendo console. Switching your wii console for playback is possible and it does have DVD player capability. Until recently I wasn't aware we could unlock wii for DVD playback - This site explains how and what your options are. As a bonus to this you don't need to stop there anyone can jailbreak or unlock a Wii and play thousands of free games with the homebrew channel. The benifit is that it's more fun and opens wii to a new level of entertainment.