first off, it should be said that this is a silly idea. it's not going to give you results like the dolphin emulator because the dolphin actually renders the games at 720p or 1080p. this system still has the wii render them in 480p, runs them through your AV cables (not component?) to the box, and then upscales them to whatever resolution you want. the upscaled signal is then sent out to your tv by HDMI.
it can be compared to upscaling DVD players, which can have very little effect on picture quality depending on your tv. that's the problem; every hdtv will already upscale lower res conent to it's native resolution to display it. in order to improve the picture, the upscaler you're using has to be significantly better than the one in your tv. so for users of very cheap tvs this could actually make a difference, but if you bought a halfway decent one, forget it.
it's also the case that simply connecting your wii to the tv with HDMI isn't going to give you a better picture. upscaling DVD players have the edge here, since they usually have HDMI outputs built in. this device is taking a signal that's already been output in analog and converting it to HDMI mid-way to the tv. you can't add signal that wasn't there to begin with, so the best an HDMI cable will give you is the same analog signal the device received. besides, when it comes to raw picture quality alone, HDMI and component are actually equals. the only edge HDMI has here is to carry a 1080p signal if you're upconverting to that resolution.
it'd still be interesting to see some pictures of the upscaling, just to see if it improves things by any noticeable amount.
I have an upscaler in my A/V Receiver. It scales up to 720p or 1080i. I do not see much difference to the 480p, the Wii ist sending. So I do not think this 70$ device will really do anything, apart from a nice placebo effect for everyone who thinks that it is an improvement.
i say save your money up, just in case the next system renders wii games to HD resolutions like the dolphin. that's something that truly would make the games look wayyyyy better
it has a wii multi-out plug that goes directly into the system. that makes it a little better, but i'd still say no to this. if the scaling is fast, it really could help eliminate lag though, so if you have issues with that it could be worth looking into.
If it improves PQ and reduces Lag I'd definitly get one....that's if I had a 1080p Plasma. Buttt...I do have a 23" 1080p LCD, but like all computer monitors it has a terrible scaler...which is where this device comes in handy, it would be neat just to play around with hehe.
Thank god for my amazing Sony Wega 32" CRT SDTV But i honestly hate the fact that it's Silver, Dinasaur Heavy and bulky....I'm so mixed on buying an HDTV right now....I mean to have a beautiful black flat panel plasma, that's light, saves space and offers ProgressiveScan and Widescreen for the Wii would be great. But then I look at the downsides which out weigh's the good...Inferior motion compared to my CRT, Green phospher trails when gaming, upscaled image and lag.
At this point I'm so mixed, but it's been like that for 2 years. As it stands when NIntendo jumps to 1080p so will I.
they've updated that page with comparison shots, so you can finally see how it looks. if you don't want to check yourself, right click and open these in a new window (they'll be too small if opened here)
you may note that aside from some discoloration, there's a whole lot of nothing going on in those pics. the blown up photo, however, does show a reduction in jaggies but it seems to come at the cost of altering the brightness and color. maybe they're just inconsistent pictures?
from a normal viewing distance it'll be a subtle improvement at most. and again, the TV has as much to do with this as the scaler, and your tv could get bigger or smaller results than what you see here. a good way to test would be to set your blu ray player to output a dvd at 480p, then set it to upscale to your native resolution. if you can see a noticeable difference with upscaling on then your tv may benefit from this device.
i still say hold out for the next system, which will undoubtedly support full HD and could very likely be backwards compatible.
I'm quite certain I could benefit from this device, as near as I can tell, my TV has no quality upconverter whatsoever and I get jaggie city with my Wii running at 480p. But they're already sold out, and it's not like I have that kind of money to begin with, so...I guess I'll have to make do for now.
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Agreed, Skrubber. I have friends who would not benefit from this because their TV is freaking AWESOME! However, mine is NOT so awesome, and this device would be quite useful.
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note that you don't have to zoom in very far at all to see an enormous reduction in jaggies. compare to the shots above and you can see the difference between upscaling a 480p signal and outputting an entirely new 720p one from the source. that would be worth $70, if only there were an attachment that could do it.
If it improves PQ and reduces Lag I'd definitly get one....that's if I had a 1080p Plasma. Buttt...I do have a 23" 1080p LCD, but like all computer monitors it has a terrible scaler...which is where this device comes in handy, it would be neat just to play around with hehe.
Thank god for my amazing Sony Wega 32" CRT SDTV But i honestly hate the fact that it's Silver, Dinasaur Heavy and bulky....I'm so mixed on buying an HDTV right now....I mean to have a beautiful black flat panel plasma, that's light, saves space and offers ProgressiveScan and Widescreen for the Wii would be great. But then I look at the downsides which out weigh's the good...Inferior motion compared to my CRT, Green phospher trails when gaming, upscaled image and lag.
At this point I'm so mixed, but it's been like that for 2 years. As it stands when NIntendo jumps to 1080p so will I.
Just do it, man! I played my Wii on an SDTV for a year, then on an HDTV ever since, and it's done absolutely nothing but enrich my experience. There's not even any lag for me on Guitar Hero! That is, once I grabbed some Component cables...
romulux, that's a huge difference, but the question is whether the same game on a SD CRT would look different to the 720p. I compared the SMG shot of the 720p to my SD TV and it looked the SAME (looking very very closely there's a slight difference for the 720p version but it's extremely negligible, not like these). So basically this is the irony... if you have a HDTV, Wii games won't look so good even though you paid more for the TV, but they look just fine on an SDTV. Btw, not only does it look very similar between SDTV and 720p emulated (for Wii games) but the SDTV has the edge of having more grit... too bright too crisp look unnatural for a lot of games. So an SDTV is really an awesome set for games... HDTV just ruins it and forces you to use only HD games to capture more detail but lose something in the process, AND ruin SD games... it's still might be worth it, not saying it's not.
So ends a saga older than time itself. The World's oldest and fiercest army has been led to victory, and a lost generation is delivered from its fear of extinction. As the sun sets over the field of conflict the dinosaurs disperse, hoping never to set foot in this place a...
I'm happy enough with my EDTV (420p) Wii component cables. The picture quality is vastly improved from the packaged composite cables on my TV. I play on a widescreen ~50" plasma TV (I believe it has a HDMI port), so EDTV looks so much better than SDTV on it, everything is so vivid and clear, particularly moving objects and text.
mnementh is right, HDTV is a bit restrictive from both the player's perspective and the developer's perspective. The only Wii graphics that would be improved by upscaling to HDTV resolutions would be 3D polygonal graphics - texture resolutions may look blurry however and could ruin the experience. I expect most, if not all, games for the Wii don't have assets prepared for HD resolutions so don't expect them to look like Xbox 360 or PS3 graphics - they will be lower poly and lower res overall. The NSMBWii screenshots earlier are an exception since Mario himself (and the Goomba) is shown from close up several times in the game, so more detailed models and textures are needed for them. If you look at the ? boxes and the background generally you can see how blurry the textures are however.
Also 2D Wii games won't look any better, or may even look worse. Your results will vary according to your TV and visual preferences of course.
I compared the SMG shot of the 720p to my SD TV and it looked the SAME
the main problem with wii on HDTV is jaggy edges, which a standard def tv eliminates by simply being blurry. that doesn't mean that it looks as good as HD, though; interlacing creates a lot of distortion and loses roughly half of the picture every frame. take a look at this image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/HD_vs_SD_r...
notice how terrible 480i looks, and also notice how much better 480p looks even without an increase in resolution. that's a clear demonstration of how much data is lost or distorted through interlacing, and it's through that massive blurring effect that the wii's jaggy edges are lost. in addition to losing the jagged edges you also lose the details that you want to see, so it's a giant compromise. that's not even mentioning the degradations brought by using A/V cables.
720p output smooths the jagged edges by using more pixels for every line. imagine trying to make a curving arc with a few big lego blocks; you'll come out with a staircase instead. but if you used a larger number of smaller blocks, you'll get closer to a smooth curve. that's vaguely equivalent to how 720p solves the jaggy issue. a greater number of smaller pixels also lets every little detail on an HDTV to be displayed more cleanly, since in SD minute details near each other may have to 'share' bigger pixels to be displayed.
if you look at the cleanliness of the lines and text, and try to find the smallest visible details on both resolutions, i don't think it's possible for a 480i picture to look as good as these 720p ones. and if the 480i picture still looks identical, and your eyesight is known to be good, then you've got one hell of a good tv, my friend!
If it improves PQ and reduces Lag I'd definitly get one....that's if I had a 1080p Plasma. Buttt...I do have a 23" 1080p LCD, but like all computer monitors it has a terrible scaler...which is where this device comes in handy, it would be neat just to play around with hehe.
Thank god for my amazing Sony Wega 32" CRT SDTV But i honestly hate the fact that it's Silver, Dinasaur Heavy and bulky....I'm so mixed on buying an HDTV right now....I mean to have a beautiful black flat panel plasma, that's light, saves space and offers ProgressiveScan and Widescreen for the Wii would be great. But then I look at the downsides which out weigh's the good...Inferior motion compared to my CRT, Green phospher trails when gaming, upscaled image and lag.
At this point I'm so mixed, but it's been like that for 2 years. As it stands when NIntendo jumps to 1080p so will I.
Just do it, man! I played my Wii on an SDTV for a year, then on an HDTV ever since, and it's done absolutely nothing but enrich my experience. There's not even any lag for me on Guitar Hero! That is, once I grabbed some Component cables...
Were you using Component Cables on your SDTV, and was your SDTV a flatscreen? If not than the experience must of been weak Component cables are the only way to fly, and when playing the Wii on a 32" flat screen high end CRT SDTV 'with' Component cables Wii games look gorgeous and performance wise is flawless.
but ya, the worst experience for me(besides playing the Wii on a few LCD's) was playing the Wii on a 42" 720p Vizio Plasma...The Lag was just terrible, it made your character control heavy and slow and of course the timing was off. I tried out New Super Mario Bros Wii, Mega Man 10, Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Resident Evil: Archives, Klonoa, Splatterhouse 2 ect ect. Yet imo Virtual Console games looked alittle better on the plasma compared to my CRT because of the progressive scan. As for Wii games, it was a mixed bag. Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil Archives looked like .....RE:Archives is a 4:3 Interlaced game, so maybe that's why....RE4 on the otherhand has fake widescreen and it just looked poor...I know you can select 'widescreen' in the RE4 option menu but it just scales/blows the picture up to fit the screen.
New Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Galaxy both looked great....But the only 2 advantages they had were Progressive scan and widescreen. Cleary the motion wasn't up to snuff as my CRT, and the upscaled image resulted in jaggies....but it really depends on how far you sit from the set. The Lag was VERY anoying. But you know, this is a Vizio set.....lol Which says it all right there.
Also Metroid Prime 3 looked better AND played better on my CRT.....it's amazing how motion is so important. I couldn't stand playing it on the Plasma, the IR wasn't 1:1 compared to what i was doing with my wrist ect compared to my CRT. Even the smallest amount of lag is annoying to me...And if i were to get an HDTV for my Wii I'd know I'd deeply regret it. Yet I'd definitly Buy one just for Bluray/DVD's
I compared the SMG shot of the 720p to my SD TV and it looked the SAME
the main problem with wii on HDTV is jaggy edges, which a standard def tv eliminates by simply being blurry. that doesn't mean that it looks as good as HD, though; interlacing creates a lot of distortion and loses roughly half of the picture every frame. take a look at this image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/HD_vs_SD_r...
notice how terrible 480i looks, and also notice how much better 480p looks even without an increase in resolution. that's a clear demonstration of how much data is lost or distorted through interlacing, and it's through that massive blurring effect that the wii's jaggy edges are lost. in addition to losing the jagged edges you also lose the details that you want to see, so it's a giant compromise. that's not even mentioning the degradations brought by using A/V cables.
720p output smooths the jagged edges by using more pixels for every line. imagine trying to make a curving arc with a few big lego blocks; you'll come out with a staircase instead. but if you used a larger number of smaller blocks, you'll get closer to a smooth curve. that's vaguely equivalent to how 720p solves the jaggy issue. a greater number of smaller pixels also lets every little detail on an HDTV to be displayed more cleanly, since in SD minute details near each other may have to 'share' bigger pixels to be displayed.
if you look at the cleanliness of the lines and text, and try to find the smallest visible details on both resolutions, i don't think it's possible for a 480i picture to look as good as these 720p ones. and if the 480i picture still looks identical, and your eyesight is known to be good, then you've got one hell of a good tv, my friend!
I'm gonna have to disagree with you, and yes I have one hell of a good CRT, top of the line my friend. That picture you posted is also a poor demonstration. And I don't know if you're comparing Wii games on a CRT using composite or component cables to a 720p Set? Because with component cables my CRT looks super sharp .Playing Wii games on a 720p Plasma looks jagedy and blown up. Progressive scan is the only reason why it may look alittle sharper/clearer and Widescreen makes it more engaging and impressive. But it's a mixed bag....Again it's an upscaled image, so while you're getting ProgressiveScan, you're getting an Inferior picture due to scaling so it's hard to fully appreciate it... Inferior motion also plays a part in this, but that's to do with the TV technology itself.
You'd be much more impressed playing wii games on a 480p EDTV CRT using Component Cables than on any Plasma. There would be no upscaled image, you'd get > Perfect motion, color, black levels, zero Lag AND no green phospher trails. It's simply put the way Wii games were intended to play, on a 480p EDTV...CRT
LCD is also out of the question, the technology should just be banned.lol Yet Plasma has come along way and high end models such as the samsungs offer CRT quality Color, while Panasonics are rocking in the black level department, but that aside, the Motion still isn't quite there yet which annoys me...Again it makes all the difference.
Anyways, I know they don't make large sized 480p EDTV widescreen CRT's, yet you can find 32" 4:3 480p EDTV CRT's if you're lucky. As much as I love my 32" Sony Wega 4:3 Trinitron CRT I'd love to have progressive scan HDTV's have too many downsides for Wii gaming...Upscaled/blown up image, Lag and Green phosper trails...And technology wise inferior motion, and even weaker color and black levels depending on the set.
note that you don't have to zoom in very far at all to see an enormous reduction in jaggies. compare to the shots above and you can see the difference between upscaling a 480p signal and outputting an entirely new 720p one from the source. that would be worth $70, if only there were an attachment that could do it.
New Super Mario Bros Wii using component cables on my CRT looked better than that 480p Shot. Yet that 720p shot Looks fantastic on the other hand
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