Second generation Wii to offer DVD playback

An interesting tidbit from AVZombie says that the 2nd gen Wii will offer DVD playback

It won’t play them when it launches in the UK, but a second generation version of the Nintendo Wii games console will offer DVD playback, when it goes on sale in Japan late 2007.
The feature is unlikely to stay a Japanese exclusive for long. It looks likely that the second wave of machines will offer the feature when they are released worldwide. The move would be one way of maintaining dealer margins, when first generation equipment prices inevitably slide.

This is rather interesting because the previous "line" from Nintendo was that they were sticking the basics, their core, gaming. Not even the well established standard DVD format would be playable from the Wii. I wondered if this was a smart move, since the PS2 had DVD playback support built-in, and while it is a pretty poor player overall, it gave every college kid who owned a PS2 and free DVD player and lots of students use(d) it as such.