Topic: Wii U resolution question

So I have a brand new Wii U and have it all hooked up to my TV. Interestingly, although the TV's resolution is 1366x768, it accepts either 720p or 1080p signals from the Wii U.

Am I right in thinking that, in Wii mode, the internal resolution is 640x480, but then the Wii U upscales that to either 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080p), and then my TV is scaling it again, either up or down to 1366x768?

It seemed to me from the Wii mode menu that it was looking a little bit 'off' (I think the Wii U was set to 1080p at that point), and I was wondering if that was why? Is there anything I can do to avoid the image being scaled twice (first by my Wii U, second by my TV)?

And if not, in terms of input lag etc am I best setting my Wii U to 720p or 1080p?

The Wii mode resolution is more like 720x480 (non-square pixels), but if you've set your resolution at 720p or 1080p instead of 480p in the Wii U settings, then it will rescale it to whatever you specified.

If your TV has an option to use the actual resolution of the image rather than scaling it, it might be better to just go with 720p and have the image be a bit smaller than your TV so that it doesn't waste time rescaling the image.

"If your TV has an option to use the actual resolution of the image rather than scaling it, it might be better to just go with 720p"

I'm not aware of such an option, but I will have a play tonight and see.

(Incidentally I'm curious that the Wii resolution is 720x480, as that's neither 4:3 (640x480) nor 16:9 (853x480) ratio...)

Yeah, the only reason I know that is because my monitor is 16:10, and can only display at the native resolution, the aspect ratio of the resolution, or fill the screen to 16:10, so for the Wii I was never able to display my games at a proper aspect ratio. If I set the Wii to 4:3 or 16:9 it would output a 720x480 image either way, so I had to choose between setting it at 4:3 and having my monitor display it according to the 3:2 aspect ratio of the resolution or setting it at 16:9 and filling it to my 16:10 screen. The one thing I love about the Wii U is that the 720p and 1080p options finally allow me to play my Wii games at an actual 16:9 aspect ratio on my monitor.

Yeah the Wii doesn't output in full 16:9 (well although 853x480 and 854x480 aren't 16:9 exactly)
720x480 is 3:2, BUT, it does not output square pixels I'm pretty sure. The pixel aspect ratio is like 1.19 or something (too lazy to do the math right now)

But basically, the top image here is 3:2, and is stretched out to be 16:9 (bottom image), using the same number of pixels. The middle image is 3:2 conformed to 4:3

Regarding your monitor, I doubt it takes a 1080p signal and scales it down to 1366x768 if that's the native resolution. Maybe newer monitors can do that but I haven't heard of that before. However, it would make sense that it takes 1280x720 and upscales to 1366x768...but I'm pretty sure it would just display the source resolution (720p). The easiest way to tell would be by hooking it up to a PC and seeing what resolutions are available!

@iphys and @PloXyZeRO - thanks for the explanations. I knew that the Wii didn't output 16:9, but I thought it was natively 4:3. But in fact it seems you never got square pixels regardless of whether the Wii was in 4:3 or 16:9 mode!

Still, it seems that there is no way to avoid the Wii U upscaling Wii mode from 480p, if the Wii U itself is set to 720p. On the TV side, if I switch off overscan when in Wii mode, I do get black borders around the image. Would that be a 1280x720 image centred on my 1366x768 panel (so the TV hasn't scaled the image as well)? Or is overscan something different again?

"Regarding your monitor, I doubt it takes a 1080p signal and scales it down to 1366x768 if that's the native resolution."

Slightly off-topic, but it absolutely does - the model is a Toshiba 32" EL933 if you're interested. In fact it's a bit annoying - if I plug my laptop in via HDMI, the laptop insists that the external screen has a native resolution of 1920x1080 (it doesn't) and if you force it to use 1366x768 there are weird scaling artifacts. VGA connection recognises the actual native res of 1366x768 though.

It's actually the norm for SDTV that they used non-square pixels for some reason that I never understood, so it's a throwback to that. Even if I hook up my NES or an antenna TV signal to my monitor, I get the same issue of 4:3 showing up as 3:2.

The Wii signal partially consists of a small black border on all sides that you will definitely see if you're on the Wii menu and you have overscan off on your TV, but you'll see that even if your TV is rescaling the image to fill the screen, so the fact that you see a black border doesn't prove that you've got the 720p signal displaying at true 720p. If you have a setting on your TV that allows you to display at the actual input resolution, then you should notice an even greater black region when you switch back and forth between it.

Overscan is just when your TV zooms in on the image a little bit (I forgot why some TVs do this but it's somewhat common)

It's especially noticible with computers because the tops of windows usually get cut off and the taskbar only becomes partially visible.

If there are black borders on ALL sides of the image, then it probably is just displaying 720p without upscaling. If it's only on the left and rights sides, then that's normal because that's just how the Wii is.