If you can somehow manage to pry yourself away from the recent release of Mario Kart Wii, you might notice that today Nintendo launched its personal, appropriately-named channel, the Nintendo Channel. Now, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but after a brief 30 minute self-introduction, I’ve discovered that this is a channel you might actually use.

Once the channel has been downloaded from the Wii Shop channel, you can then run it like any other channel from your Wii main menu. When you first load the Nintendo Channel, you will be greeted with a few introductory messages about sending data, what the channel is about and so forth. After those are done, you see the channel’s real start-up page, which is a video featuring all of the latest updates at the time.

The main menu of the channel mostly shows videos of games, with some commercials mixed in. However, If you dig a little bit, you will find something that almost every Wii owner has wanted since the release of the system - a DS Download Station. Woot! Nintendo is now offering demos that you can stream straight from your Wii into your DS. This morning, I played Brain Age 2 and Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword - both of which I’m probably going to buy now. Thanks for finding another way to siphon my money, Nintendo.

DS Download List (5/7/08):

• Brain Age 2
• Flash Focus
• Crossword DS
• Jam Sessions
• Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
• Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends
• Disney Friends
• Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword

In a quick follow up to our recent post on the Photo Channel update we have found that you can downgrade if you think that it is totally lame that there is no more MP3 support. Here is a quick guide on downgrading the photo channel from Nintendo. Word on the streets is that this only works on Wiis purchased before Decemeber 2007.

As I am sure you have probably noticed in the past 24 hours, your Wii has probably started glowing. That means there’s an update available, of course. In case you haven’t read it or heard it anywhere else, the update this time is somewhat negligible but will nonetheless be appreciated by some. Yesterday the Photo Channel 1.1 went live over our series of tubes and is now ready for user consumption.

The main points of interest in this channel update are:

• Personalize your Wii Menu by making one of your favorite digital images from an SD memory card as the Photo Channel icon.
• While dropping MP3 support, the new channel update will allow users to use AAC files, which are generally higher quality.
• Random song playback is now available

To get the updated photo channel, you must first update your Wii Shop channel. Anyone buying new Wii consoles should reportedly have the Photo Channel 1.1 already loaded when they open the box.