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Note: this is not a backup loader, in any way, shape, or form. If you’re looking for a backup loader, please move along.

While Nintendo did reply to bushing’s open letter, he has not succeeded in establishing a conversation with an engineer about the issue. Furthermore, we have learned that they received and read at least two of the original three e-mails that were sent prior to the open letter, and decided not to reply (in fact, one of their replies was to one of the original e-mails, but only after the open letter was posted). Therefore, we can only conclude that they are not very interested in the issue.

As many of you may already know or have deduced, the bug in our open letter referred to a way of reading DVD-Rs (and Video DVDs) without the use of a modchip. Several people have investigated the bug independently, and they’ve gotten pretty close. However, we did discover an easier way of enabling this mode from homebrew, which, among other things, does not require any changes to IOS at all. This method is also relatively difficult to transform into some sort of backup loader.

Erant has been developing a library that uses this trick to enable DVD access for homebrew. We hope to release it this coming week, after a few details have been polished. svpe and dhewg have been working on a native mplayer port that uses this library to play back DVDs, which we hope to release as a proof-of-concept together with the library. We also have DVD-loading versions of snes9x and Genplus.

Non-modchip users will not need a custom IOS. Ironically, this method doesn’t work for users of some modchips. Therefore, these users will require a patched IOS using the well-known UnencryptedRead patch (the library will automatically use it if needed). We’ll try to release a somewhat more user-friendly version of patchmii dedicated to this task together with the library.

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New Features:
-Album art support is now available and is compatible with the Sony PS3 as well as with the HTML interface (PSP, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) and flash interface (Wii). Album art relies on JPEG files conforming to certain naming conventions that are present in the same folder as music tracks. These files can be created by either Windows Media Player or WinAmp and TVersity will pick them up, or users can add them manually.
-Individual YouTube videos can now be added by pointing the browser to a specific video on YouTube and dragging and dropping the address bar icon to TVersity (or copying and pasting the URL).

Bug Fixes:
-MShare now refreshes as fast as it was in 0.9.11.4.
-No files are periodically added to the Temporary Internet Files folder while the GUI is running (browser caching was turned off).
-Fix crashes when adding/refreshing some FLAC and some MP3 files.
-Flash interface is now more reliable when switching from one live stream to another and then going back to first one.
-TVersity service was failing to start on machines that had a non ASCII character in their hostname.

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Dear Nintendo, 

As part of our efforts to understand how the Wii works, we believe we
have found a security issue that could allow pirated Wii games to be
played on an unmodified Wii console.

I would like to speak to an engineer about this — please have one contact me at bushing (at) gmail.com.

Sincerely,
bushing

P.S. Sorry for posting this publicly — I tried emailing you three times
and never received a response. I am trying to follow the model set forth
in http://www.wiretrip.net/rfp/policy.html, so your timely response
would be appreciated.

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What's the point?

XLink Kai(info) 7.4 began a few months ago to address the following issues:
1. Internationalization – the existing Kai UI does not support many languages and character encodings.
2. Platform Independence – Linux and OS X client software is no longer feature compatible with the Windows client
3. Unified Development – numerous versions and variants of the engine and client exist creating compatibility issues and fragmented development/support.

Team XLink prides itself as a 'Global Community' of gamers. To us, this means people who speak different languages, who use different Operating Systems, and who live all over the globe should be able to connect with one another and make Team XLink their home. Our year to year userbase growth and concurrent player statistics tells us we've been making excellent strides towards our global ambitions. Still, to truly move forward with the project, we need to address infrastructure and compatibility issues so that we have a solid platform that encourages further growth. Kai 7.4 addresses these issues and provides a solid foundation for future plan that simply would not be possible with the previous versions of Kai.

So what's new?

The biggest change to Kai is somewhat invisible–the code. Kai was designed primarily as a Windows-based system with compatibility for Linux/OS X (and other *nix systems) added later through the Kaid project and numerous third-party clients. This created a rift in development where any features added to the Windows Engine and Client needed to be added to Kaid and the third-party clients needed to be updated. A small change in the Windows client required all the other clients to be updated. Updates to the Windows engine (ex: new PSP MAC addresses) required Kaid be updated. As developer interest in Kaid and the many clients waned, it has become increasingly difficult to add any new features without breaking existing compatibility for those not using Windows. To address this, Kai 7.4 uses a single codebase and non-proprietary libraries so that the same code that compiles the Windows binary also compiles under Linux, OS X, BSD, etc. This required removing all the MFC code from Kai and replacing it with platform-independent alternatives like the Boost and wxWidgets libraries. With this unified codebase, future updates and changes will be made available on all supported Operating Systems at the same time.

The most visible change found in Kai 7.4 is the Client Web UI. Instead of designing multiple User Interfaces for every supported OS and every language we decided to drawn on the strength of existing cross-platform technology: the web browser. The Kai 7.4 engine contains a small web server which serves the client to your web browser (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer(info), etc.) and communication between the web browser and the Engine is achieved using Ajax programming. Aside from the obvious elimination of platform compatibility issues, switching to a browser-based client has some wonderful side effects:
1. Updates and additions to the client are served immediately without the need to restart the Engine.
2. The client is 'skinable' allowing users to develop and share their own customizations.
3. Kai can integrate other web technologies such as streaming audio and video.
4. Kai can be controlled using embedded systems with compatible web browsers (ex: iPhone).
5. The Kai engine can be accessed and controlled remotely via the web browser ( chat from work/school )

Another notable improvement found in Kai 7.4 is the support for uPnP routers. Most modern routers support uPnP allowing on-the-fly port mapping. When started behind a uPnP router, Kai just works–no port forwarding or router configuration required.

Lastly, all language has been stripped out of both the Engine and the Web UI Client and replaced with language templates. Currently, English and Japanese translations are available; however, support for Korean, Spanish, and many other languages are being added as translation becomes available through the community.