So I have a 42" Vizio HDTV and I just went to gamestop and purchased a set of component cables for my Wii as to have a little bit better visuals with Monster Hunter Tri and Xenoblade Chronicles. I have my Wii set to display at 16:9 resolution and at 480p, my TV is set to widescreen as well. Everything still looks quite a bit jagged. It's improved, but not by a whole lot. I was wondering if it could be caused by bad cables, or by poor upscaling on my TVs end. The menus (Wii menu and some in game menus) look fine, just in game (both of them) things look pretty meh. I've messed with my sharpness but lowering it just adds a sort of blur over everything (which is still better looking than raising it IMHO). If anyone has any information it'd be greatly appreciated.

Here's some pics I took of Xenoblade running on my TV:

http://i46.tinypic.com/2vvrih5.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/34h7zh2.jpg

Thanks,
Z

that's exactly what component cables do. really. the jagged edges are because the graphics are better defined, but they're still low resolution. If you want to make a nigh and day comparision, put a NES virtual console game. It will be in full pixelated glory and no more blurry.

Well that's a bit of a bummer. So would those games look better on a CRT television then just using the composite cables/480i/4:3?

But the colors look much better in 480p, and text is easier to read.

Ah. Well then I guess I'll just stick to using the Vizio then. It's not TOO bad sitting ~10' away. I just got to the Bionis Leg valley kind of area and if it wasn't for the bit of jaggedness it would be absolutely amazing looking (though it still is from an aesthetics perspective).

I'm on repeat once again. Try setting your Wii to 4:3 along with your TV to 4:3(God I'm tired of saying this but....ya, Wii games are actually 640x480 which is a full screen resolution. By selecting 16:9 you're just hampering the graphics and you'll notice how much better the image will look when displaying wii titles in their proper full screen res' I can't be bothered playing Wii games in 16:9, it's pretty nasty imo at least on sets larger than 37". Jaggies can also be the result of having those horrible gimmicky 'edge enhancement' modes on OR your sharpness may be cranked up too high. The Wii U on the other hand supports 'real' widescreen since wii titles will obviously be 1280x720p.

You can either make due with the Wii's lousy soft looking anamorphic widescreen or you can stick it in it's real full screen resolution and get a crisper/clearer image. I've noticed that motion handeling 'slightly' alters a bit when in 16:9 obviously for the worse as well. Plasma's on the other hand don't have that night and day difference when switching between 4:3 and 16:9 for wii games but it's still there. the difference isn't as noticable considering plasma's have inherent video noise where as LCD's produce a cleaner image. Widescreen regardless is more astheticly pleasing, but for me the graphical hit that it takes for wii games completely turns me off. Different strokes!

Anyways blah blah blah! Wii games look amazing on my LCD(motion blur aside...ugh) when using component cables, set to 4:3/Fullscreen and using the proper settings. I find expert mode(if your LCD/LED has it) works better at setting sharpness levels, gives off a cleaner and clearer apperance.

And just a tip for reducing lag. ya, everybody knows that game mode is usually ideal. But there are other things that may work to lower it even more. Based on my experiences basic composite cables introduce more lag on HDTV's in comparison to component which automatically reduces it. Plus, Try setting your component input in your TV settings to 'PC' and make sure you plug your component cables directly into your TV and not your receiver, since the receiver could add additional input lag.

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My component cables are plugged directly into the back of my TV. Don't think I've had any problems with lag.

So I set my TV aspect ratio to normal (my options are normal, wide, zoom, panoramic), and the Wii to 4:3 and left it at 480p. Quality is still the same (if not a little worse), just a smaller picture now. My sharpness is set pretty low. How small should it be? I have the dark "not usable" black bars on the sides of it, but the top and bottom has lighter "not in use" black bars that fill up when i stretch the picture vertically.

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What's normal mode? Ya it 'must' be full screen, i think... And how could it be worse? Man, i'm not too keen on these Vizio's. as for input alg, ALL HDTV's have this problem, but some are obviously a lot better than others, yet the ones that 'are' are actually and are few and far between, typically the cheaper end models because they do less picture processing. Try setting the Wii temp to cool also if you want to get even brighter whites, that's at least what i do.
Turn off the edge enhancement and turn off the dynamic contrast ratio. Gamma should be set in the middle too.

I'll give you an example of my picture settings in a bright room.

Backlight: 100/100
Contrast: 98
Color: depends
Hue: 0/Middle
Sharpness: Again, depends on the set.

Color Temp: Cool
Gamma: 2.2
Dynamic Contrast: OFF
Edge enhancement: OFF

What game do you have in btw? HDTV's still suffer from image doubling with games that run at 30 framers per second. with LCD/LED's it's less noticable because the motion smearing basically hides it.lol but since plasma's boast much better motion handeling it's easily more noticable.....Games that run in 60fps don't have this problem at all obviously. What's the size of your LCD btw?

wii games in widescreen shouldn't look any better, that just doesn't make any sense. They should look softer/blurrier. Your sharpness should be at least in the 60 range, 50 is too low. Also, keep in mind that even though wii gamers are 640x480/Full screen some of them are designed to play with widescreen in mind Like Kirby's Epic yarn, NSMBWii, DKCR ect ect. If you want to can those top and bottom screen bars in 4:3 mode, you basically leave your wii in widescreen and switch your tv to fullscreen, works like a charm. And the picture should barely look it's being squished, at least it seems that way with my 2 sets.

Right now I have Xenoblade Chronicles in.

My settings are at:
Backlight 100/100
Brightness 70/100
Contrast 70/100
Color 70/100
Tint 0 (centered)
Sharpness 0 (out of 16)

Color Temp Cool

But I don't have dynamic contrast and edgeenhancement. Don't see anything about gama either. When I go into advanced picture settings all I see is Noise reduction (off) Color enhancement (normal) adaptive luma (off) film mode (auto) bacvklight control (off) ambient light sensor (off). My TV is 42".

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You definitly need to crank down the brightness dude. Typically it's ideal to have it set to 50. Gradually go higher until the black levels take a hit by going lighter. Test this with black bars on the top and bottom of the screen with a movie. 50-55 seems be norm, but 70? That's pretty high man. but again every set is different but normally you're basically washing the picture out, destroying the black levels and making everything less sculpted and looking flat.
And is your sharpness out of 100? 0 is a no no. Set it to at least 50 where it should be. I have mine in game mode set to 63, but i prefer to use my expert setttings but those measure h & V sharpness so you have more control.

raise the shaprness past 50 to whatever looks good to you and reduce the brightness in the lower 50's and see how it looks. Plus, I'd also raise the contrast in the 90's. I should take pictures of Wii games running on my LCD to show you guys how gorgeous they look. Funny enough, I've got a new Panasonic 42" Plasma arriving today or tomorrow which will be used for movies and other types of wii games where motion handeling is much more important like Metroid Prime, RE4: Wii edition, anything first or 3rd person related 'and' the VC.

Set the brightness down to 50, bars don't appear any longer ( they're they just blend in with the bars to the sides). I set the sharpness to 10/16 then set the contrast to 90. Color wise everything looks pretty good, it's just that damn jaggedness. For example, when I'm far away from monsters or my camera is zoomed out from my character, my character or the monster looks all jagged, but when i get close/zoom the camera in, things smooth out. It's probably just something with my TV though. It's just a Vizio and was only like $400 so you get what you pay for I suppose. Displays everything from my PC and PS3 via HDMI flawlessly though. Ah well. I sort of stop noticing once I get playing so I'll deal.

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Sounds like some crappy undefeatable edge enhancement(which can create those nasty jaggies) to me. You should of went with a 60hz lower end Panasonic, Samsung or LG LCD. And bars don't appear any longer, do you mean lighter? 50's your safest bet anyways. If I'm up for it I'll snap some photo's of Kirby's Epic Yarn, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 and a few other games while I'm at it. just so i can make you all jealous tee hee. It's a shame LCD/LED's have such lousy motion handeling, because the bright & clean image they both can produce looks wonderful. But even then they SUPER OLED will be the definitive HDTV technology with virtually zero motion blue, amazing black levels/contrast and an extremely bright image. As is, plasma & LCD/LED are all flawed.

Just wipe some Vaseline all over your TV screen. Trust me, it works - it's like antialiasing, but without the associated frame rate hit!

Well I managed to get Monster Hunter Tri looking good now. In the case of Monster Hunter, there's an option in the game menu for 16:9 or 4:3. If I set it in game to 4:3 it looks MUCH better, even then having my TV stretching it to widescreen doesn't look half-bad (the image squash is HARDLY noticeable).