Wii Shop Channel Switching

I hope this is the right place to ask my question.

I have a JPN Wii, currently at 3.3J. Recently I picked up RockBand 2 and I want to download some music tracks for the game. Now, I have some channels and stuff from the JPN Shop, and I heard that using AnyRegion Changer to switch Shops wipes clean the records of your purchases and downloads.

Now, I would like to keep the records of stuff bought and downloaded on both shops, and preferably not have to jump through too many hoops to switch shops.

Is there a good way of doing this? I researched different hacks, but nothing seems to stand out. I though I read somewhere that I could do a FS Dump of the Wii. Would that keep records of the Shop Channel downloads and purchases? Would there be a way to write the Dump/backup back to the Wii safely.

I should mention that even though I have used the Homebrew hacks on my wii, I prefer to only use stable hacks that are unlikely to brick the Wii. I really do not feel comfortable using the AnyRegion Changer with my current lack of knowledge.

Any help, advice, or knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

The problem is: Nintendo stores the shop your Wii is attached too.
Your Wii is attached to the Japanese shop. If you want to change that, you have to hit the "delete button" (I don't know it's real name right know :) in the shop channel. That removes everything you have ever downloaded and the rights to download them again!

In theory you could:
1 - make a backup (NAND) of your wii,
2 - delete your old shop,
3 - change wii's and the shop's region,
4 - connect to the new shop,
5 - restopre the backup,
6 - AGAIN change wii's and the shop's region.

But that involves restoriung a back-up, which is risky, and the best software for taht is still considered BETA.

And you would have to do all those steps everytime you want to change your shop's region


Any thoughts on that theory.

Or he could make two backups: one for each region and then he would only have to use BootMii each time. But yes, this is risky.

what I know is:
- you must delete your current jpn shop account (which deletes your downloaded games)
- nand backups won't work because you would lose the things you got in between the backup and restoring
- there is an app (not supported here..) that lets you take your downloaded games and backs them up in WAD form which would most likely let you delete your account and then install them again, but as I said it is not supported here



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2009 07:22AM by bg4545.

Quote
bg4545
- nand backups won't work because you would lose the things you got in between the backup and restoring

If my theory works, he won't download anything between backup and restore

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daniel_c_w
If my theory works, he won't download anything between backup and restore

oh whoops, i read too fast haha
that could work

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MattMan
Or he could make two backups: one for each region and then he would only have to use BootMii each time. But yes, this is risky.

Thats a really good idea.....

Shishouro, do you have bootmii installed?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2009 07:41PM by WaxyPumpkin72.

Bootmii, the one that came bundled with the latest HBC download and DVDx by Team Twiizers? Yeah, I think I installed it to the Wii HD.

@daniel_c_w: So if I understand correctly, I would make a backup of the Wii NAND to my SD, probably copy to my PC for extra caution. When I switch back to that shop, I load the backup. And my downloads will be back.

Someone mentioned this was risky, could you elaborate? If the Nintendo keeps records server side(which makes sense) then I guess by switching shops, any unspent Wii Points and download records will be wiped when I return. However, the backups would allow me to keep what ever I had downloaded, just no future updates. Is this correct?

I guess, it just doesn't seem like common sense to have to delete Shop Channel Accounts with Nintendo when I change regions. Would it make sense to have the JPN Shop talk to the US Shop to check for duplicate Wii Serials? I assume that a user's shop account is tied to a Wii-specific Serial No.

Yes, if you download any new content from the Wii Shop Channel, you'll have to make another NAND backup to keep it. Then you would delete your account and restore the other backup to switch to the other region. If you wanted to download something from that region's Shop Channel, you would have to set up a new account and then make a new backup after downloading. You could keep switching back and forth like this ad infinitum to make use of both region's Shop Channels.

Your Wii Points and Redownload Privileges would be deleted, but you would still have the content that you already downloaded; you are correct.

This is risky because if something goes wrong (a power outage, you unplug the Wii, etc.) when you are restoring a backup, it could brick your Wii.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2009 03:42AM by MattMan.

It is risky because:
-restoring a NAND backup should always be considered risky
-BootMii (AFAIK the best software for NAND backups) is still BETA - and outside of the web2.0 hype that means: risk
-Any Region Chnager can be missused and lead to abrick
-it is just a theory I jsut came up with. Actually your "Would that keep records of the Shop Channel downloads and purchases?"
inspired me

Quote
Shishouro
If the Nintendo keeps records server side(which makes sense) then I guess by switching shops, any unspent Wii Points and download records will be wiped when I return.

I am not sure about your Wii points. I heard people saying, they use foreign Wii shops, to get cheaper points.
But I never tried it myself!

As far as I know, nobody in the "scene" (behold, LOL) knows exactly what Nintendo stores on their servers and how they use it.
But as of now, only the tickets on your wii determine your download rights.
So you should have all your download rights intact.

Thanks for the answers.

Regarding the Wii Points, I do have some information.

Quote
daniel_c_w
I am not sure about your Wii points. I heard people saying, they use foreign Wii shops, to get cheaper points.
But I never tried it myself!

I received a US Wii Points Card, a gift. I was not able to use it to obtain points on my JPN Shop account. I assume that if I opened the US Shop, I would be able to activate the points and use them. As far as I know, the Wii Points card are restricted to the shop for the region they were purchased in.

I am not to thrilled to be risking a bricked Wii, since I really don't know how to fix one(I remember seeing some Wiibrew that claimed to fix certain bricks.) I may just have to bite the bullet and default to the US shop. If it were possible, it would be nice to add a duplicate Wii Shop Channel for the US Region and just have to worry about switching the Region Settings at the system level and not worry about backups at all.

Well, I followed the steps outlined by daniel_c_w, unfortunately it seems that the channels I had dl'd(Internet Channel for example) from the JPN shop were not restored with my backup. Perhaps I should have installed the channels to the SD card, and then when I deleted the shop, maybe the channels would still be with me?

Quote
Shishouro
Well, I followed the steps outlined by daniel_c_w, unfortunately it seems that the channels I had dl'd(Internet Channel for example) from the JPN shop were not restored with my backup.

You mean, that all the channels you had, when you made the back up are now gone and were not restopred by the back up?

I do not realy see, how that could have happenend



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2009 09:17PM by daniel_c_w.

Check if you can redownload them from your original wii shop

Alright, I see what happened know. After I restored the backup, I went straight to the HBC and switched the region of the shop. What I didn't see, was that restoremii, worked perfectly, completely restoring the channels I had dl'd prior to the backup. Unfortunately, by simply changing the Shop Region in AnyRegion Changer, all of the JPN Channels vanished, the moment I confirmed the switch to the US Shop and entered. I am assuming that if I use the ARC to switch back to JPN, I will see the channels and be able to use them. Since the dl tickets should still be on the wii.

This is why I suggested making a second backup and switching back and forth. I know, it would require a lot of work to restore backups every time you want play your downloaded content from a certain Shop Channel, but it should work.

Is thee any way to make system menu 3.3 or 4.0 region free?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2009 11:57PM by daniel_c_w.

Preloader, but I don't see how that would help. And to get it to work on the newer System Menus requires even more risk.

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MattMan
Preloader, but I don't see how that would help.

He said his sytem menu won't show the channels, if they are from the wrong region.

@MattMan:

I am afraid I do not see how the 2nd backup would help in this situation. When I restore the back-up to the JPN the channels were there and only disappeared when I used the ARC to change the Shop Region. I assume(haven't tried yet) to find the channels if I changed the region back. I don't expect the channels to be deleted simply because I loaded a different region Shop. I did expect them to be deleted when I removed the shop in order to change my access records on the servers. I suppose if I change back to JPN, I would want to create a 2nd back up for the US purchases so I can still have those.

I will try to change the shop region a little later to see if the channels reappear. I suspect they are tied to the Shop Region setting.