Wii Shop and Photo Channel Updates

My Wii started glowing at some un-Godly hour this morning, so when I got up I turned it on to find out what it was. I presumed it was a new Check Mii Out/Mii Competition Channel competition, however it was a Wii Update. In this update the Wii shop would be updates, allowing you the further update the Photo Channel.

Wii Shop
Apart from the obvious change of Channel icon, the Wii shop now supports "gifting" Basically, you browse to a VC title of your choice, then when you select it, you have the choice to either download it, or send it to one of your contacts. Although I wasn't able to try this, as I have no Wii Points, this sounds like an excellent feature and I will be trying it out when one of my friends next has a birthday. I originally thought that it would be possible to send your games that you have downloaded, however it would appear that is is only possible with new games. This is unfortunate, as it would mean if you didn't like the game, you could send it to a friend, or even swap it. However, this is presumably impossible because it might make piracy possible, with people copying games on to SDs cards, gifting and then playing the SD card. When you do gift something, you are allowed to send a message and attach a Mii. Sadly no option of cheesy animated Christmas cards.

Photo Channel
The photo channel has two changes. The first is mainly technical, the channel no longer supports MP3, but now ACC. ACC, as Nintendo correctly states, is higher quality for the same file size as MP3. However, MP3 is much more wildly supported, the only thing I know to use ACC is iTunes. I am surprised they just stopped supporting MP3, I thought they would just add support. The other update allows you to choose one of your pictures and set that as the channel icon. While this is quite neat, it is a bit irrelevant, particularly as the message implied you would be able to put images in separate channel slots.