I am looking to play some import titles on my Wii, specifically PAL imports and thought I would softmod my Wii to do so. After spending some time researching, I am still a little confused about playing imports on a Wii. It seems that not all imports will work on a hardmodded wii but I can't seem to find any sort or estimate for softmodded. I understand the dvd drive has a lot to do with it and newer models will not allow the playing of imports and backups. I may just end up buying a pal Wii but if anyone can give me a little clarification on the playing of imports with a softmodded Wii, that would be great. I would rather save the cash and not have to buy a pal wii. BTW, my Wii is currently 4.3u. I am not opposed to ripping then loading off SD/USB to play them. Also, I have looked into mod chips and my system only supports a few, wiifusion, sundriver, flatmii, and I think wode jukebox.
Imports wont work on a (hardmodded) Wii updated past 4.1 - which means it must be softmodded (so you can install updated IOS's without updating the system menu). Softmodding should be fine, even with your current drive. New drives will not play DVD-R, but you can replace the logic board with an older one. This will give you DVDR ability. Softmodding and HDD loading will run around 98% of out of region without issue. There are only a few titles that have some hardcoded weird check - and nothing I can name (obviously not that mainstream). You could also go with an emulated nand and actually have your Wii running from SD card as a PAL wii and internally as your NTSC - this gives you best of both. I deal with a lot of Wii work - repairs/spares etc, so know a lot about them
Awesome, thanks for the info. I am gonna look into a few things you mentioned. This helps me out a lot.
Ok, so this is my understanding of what I need to do. Smashstack>hackmii>trucha bug hack> install cIOS> priiloader(brick protection). After all that, I need to find a good backup loader. Does this sound right?
sounds about right. Personally I wouldnt bother with trucha... just install bootmii and get MMM and cboot2. with that SD card in the Wii load bootmii from homebrew channel and it will reboot into MMM that will let you install cios from wads. Once you have a cios installed, other apps can use that do it what they want (other cios installers, loaders, what ever). theres a pretty good guide here that uses the same method I would use: http://www.hacksden.com/showthread.php/144-Softmod-Wii-Hack-any-Wii-Guide
If you want to play import games (original game discs of course), you can use GeckoOS. Link: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Gecko_os bootmii for the brick protection and you should be good to go. I think you don't even need any custom IOS for that, this keeps things more simple. (and legal)
Bootmii won't protect him if its a post 2008 console. If you take a NAND backup someone like me can lift the tsop and reflash it manually, but thats not "protection".
