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Do you run your Wii in widescreen on your widescreen TV? - Page 2

post #31 of 80
12/10/07 at 11:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeekiM View Post

So what aspect ratio is the Wii designed to look "as designed"?

All Wii games must support 4x3. Additionally, some percentage of Wii games support outputting an anamorphic widescreen (16x9) signal.

If one tells the Wii that one is using a 4x3 display, and one puts one's 16x9 display in 4x3 mode (with black or grey bars on the side), everything will appear correct at all times. If one tells the Wii that one is using a 16x9 display, and one puts one's 16x9 display in 16x9 mode, everything will appear correct for games which support 16x9 mode. For games which only support 4x3 mode, everything will be stretched horizontally, appearing "too fat".

There is no automatic aspect ratio selection or adjustment, so Wii owners using the Wii in 16x9 mode must manually tell the TV to use 4x3 or 16x9 mode depending on the capabilities of the game being played if they object to aspect ratio distortion.
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post #32 of 80
12/13/07 at 3:39am
This is the exact Wii issue I've been trying to put a finger on for a few weeks now. I always thought there was resolution differences and now I know for sure. Btw, I have a Sony KD-34XBR960 hd crt.

I discovered the Wii's anamorphic widescreen very recently and, honestly, I notice it enough to find it pretty aggrevating. This combined with the known underscan issue makes some games look sharper in 4:3 IMO. I'd much rather get sharpness and widescreen without having to deal with some kind of lame compromise.

So I assume the PS3 and Xbox 360 can do widescreen with no reduced quality compared to 4:3. Does that mean the Wii is not powerful enough to do "true" widescreen at even standard resolution (854 x 480)? I'm not sure if I believe it.

Are there any possible options in the future? A firmware update maybe for true widescreen? How about increasing the resolution a bit (say... to 540p) to compensate? They need to fix it so that the Wii automatically changes your tv to widscreen mode also.
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post #33 of 80
12/13/07 at 6:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaguarandine View Post

So I assume the PS3 and Xbox 360 can do widescreen with no reduced quality compared to 4:3. Does that mean the Wii is not powerful enough to do "true" widescreen at even standard resolution (854 x 480)? I'm not sure if I believe it.

Are there any possible options in the future? A firmware update maybe for true widescreen? How about increasing the resolution a bit (say... to 540p) to compensate? They need to fix it so that the Wii automatically changes your tv to widscreen mode also.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 support widescreen through the use of 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. These resolutions are high definition and are native widescreen, by definition.

There is no such thing as "true widescreen" at the NTSC standards of 480i or 480p, although if the Wii used a greater horizontal resolution, there does exist the possibility of marginal gains in perceived quality. There is no possibility of increasing the vertical resolution, as there are only 486 visible raster lines (out of 525 total) in the standard.
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post #34 of 80
12/13/07 at 10:57am
I think I get what you're saying about NTSC. So average SDTVs would never be able to resolve a resolution like that. That is, under the assumption that the Wii has strict adherence to the NTSC standard.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Wii, if it's supposed to do widescreen 480p, should at least be able to resolve all of the horizontal pixels available in 16:9 mode, which at the correct widescreen ratio would be 854 x 480. The Wii being a proprietary, contemporary game console should be capable of that much. The funny thing is, many screenshots I've seen of Wii games are at this resolution, but for some reason the Wii doesn't display all of the detail and decides to use anamorphic.

It could be that Nintendo doesn't care about enforcing any kind of standard, and anamorphic widescreen is easier to apply, but I really have no idea. All I know is that the original Xbox, which could do limited 720p, is laughing at the Wii right now and that bothers me a little.
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post #35 of 80
12/13/07 at 3:05pm
854 x 480 is a nonexistent pixel resolution in all forms of televised media. That is why we use anamorphic.
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post #36 of 80
12/13/07 at 7:49pm
I get you, it's not part of any conventional standard. However, if all HDTVs are capable of such a resolution and the Wii can do it internally (as evidenced by screenshots), why degrade the resolution in widescreen when it can be just as good as the 4:3 aspect ratio? It makes sense for movies and television which are specifically filmed in one standard, but the Wii is capable of handling various kinds of apect ratios and resolutions. No doubt that the workstations Wii games are made on are capable of rendering visuals in an infinite variety of resolutions. As long as the set you're playing on supports it in the end, then why not go for it?
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post #37 of 80
12/14/07 at 2:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaguarandine View Post

I get you, it's not part of any conventional standard. However, if all HDTVs are capable of such a resolution and the Wii can do it internally (as evidenced by screenshots), why degrade the resolution in widescreen when it can be just as good as the 4:3 aspect ratio? It makes sense for movies and television which are specifically filmed in one standard, but the Wii is capable of handling various kinds of apect ratios and resolutions. No doubt that the workstations Wii games are made on are capable of rendering visuals in an infinite variety of resolutions. As long as the set you're playing on supports it in the end, then why not go for it?

I don't think analog component supports 854 x 480. What are the specs on this signal put out over YCrCb? There is no NTSC or ATSC standard that matches this. How would you output it on the analog component? TVs do not do continuous multiscan like the multisync PC monitors of yore.
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post #38 of 80
12/14/07 at 11:06pm
What about the new slim PSP with tv-out? It's native resolution is 480 x 272 (or 272p widescreen I guess), and it's able to output PSP games over component to any progressive-scan capable TV.

I didn't understand the other parts of your post (concerning YCrCb and multiscan). I apolgize, I'm a bit of a newb to AVS
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post #39 of 80
12/15/07 at 7:22am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaguarandine View Post

What about the new slim PSP with tv-out? It's native resolution is 480 x 272 (or 272p widescreen I guess), and it's able to output PSP games over component to any progressive-scan capable TV.

I didn't understand the other parts of your post (concerning YCrCb and multiscan). I apolgize, I'm a bit of a newb to AVS

The new PSP outputs 480p, just like the Wii; same resolution and everything. That's why there's a border around the PSP's output, though -- it can't fill in the full resolution, since it only renders games at 480 x 272, not full 480p.

Also, there is no such thing as a 854 x 480 television signal -- it just doesn't exist, and since it doesn't exist, televisions can't accept it, and there'd be no point in making the Wii output such a resolution. In fact, I don't even know if it's possible if it's not in one of the television standards. I know you could do it with a computer, but I don't know about television.

Finally, those widescreen 480p Wii screenshots are not screenshots of games natively rendered in widescreen. It's still anamorphic, and the screenshots are still just stretched to the widescreen aspect ratio. That's why they always seems so jaggy.
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post #40 of 80
12/15/07 at 7:30am
Well long story short, Nintendo likes staying behind the times and then saying they do it because they don't think it's important. lol They did that about online play also. When others were really getting into online play, Nintendo acted like it was not important to implement it for their games.
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post #41 of 80
12/15/07 at 8:21am
i'm going to try putting the wii into 4:3 mode and see how it looks, because using the 16:9/480p mode on my DLP projector (at 110"), it looks pretty abysmal. if i could get a small bump in sharpness i'd take 4:3 over what i am seeing in "true 16:9 wii" mode.

oleus
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post #42 of 80
12/15/07 at 4:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh7289 View Post

The new PSP outputs 480p, just like the Wii; same resolution and everything. That's why there's a border around the PSP's output, though -- it can't fill in the full resolution, since it only renders games at 480 x 272, not full 480p.

Also, there is no such thing as a 854 x 480 television signal -- it just doesn't exist, and since it doesn't exist, televisions can't accept it, and there'd be no point in making the Wii output such a resolution. In fact, I don't even know if it's possible if it's not in one of the television standards. I know you could do it with a computer, but I don't know about television.

Finally, those widescreen 480p Wii screenshots are not screenshots of games natively rendered in widescreen. It's still anamorphic, and the screenshots are still just stretched to the widescreen aspect ratio. That's why they always seems so jaggy.

Thanks for the info. I've really learned a lot from this discussion. The detailed responses are very appreciated.

So, when the PSP is outputting its games to TV, it's really playing those games in a 480 x 272 window of the 480p standard?

Could the Wii do the same thing theoretically? While games would internally be 480p or 540p, the Wii would play them through the 720p standard. It could then flag the content for the tv to play it fullscreen.
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post #43 of 80
12/15/07 at 5:48pm
FWIW, I just got my Wii so I haven't been able to test this yet but I play FFXII in widescreen on my PS2 and it's well worth it. It might be very slightly sharper in 4:3 but simply for the fact that I can see about 30% of the game space in widescreen makes is totally worth it. I didn't buy my widescreen TV to simulate playing on a 27" 4:3 TV, I bought it to play in widescreen and it's very worth it to do so.

Also is Wii sports widescreen? Because I play it in 16:9 and it doesn't look distorted at all and having the image take up the whole screen is really nice. Then again the smart stretch option on Sharps Aquos LCDs also does a very good job at stretching out 4:3 to 16:9.
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post #44 of 80
12/15/07 at 7:55pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaguarandine View Post

So, when the PSP is outputting its games to TV, it's really playing those games in a 480 x 272 window of the 480p standard?

Could the Wii do the same thing theoretically? While games would internally be 480p or 540p, the Wii would play them through the 720p standard. It could then flag the content for the tv to play it fullscreen.

I'm not 100% sure about the PSP, but as far as I'm aware, it's as you say -- it outputs in 480p with games running in a 480 x 272 window. Also, I'm pretty sure the XMB is actually outputted in full 480p -- no windows or anything like there are with games.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bkchurch View Post

Also is Wii sports widescreen? Because I play it in 16:9 and it doesn't look distorted at all and having the image take up the whole screen is really nice. Then again the smart stretch option on Sharps Aquos LCDs also does a very good job at stretching out 4:3 to 16:9.

Wii Sports supports anamorphic widescreen on the Wii. Just make sure your Wii is set to output 16:9 and that your TV is set to Full so that it stretches the image to fill the screen. The Smart Stretch option is not what you want in this case, as that would distort the image.
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post #45 of 80
12/16/07 at 12:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh7289 View Post

Wii Sports supports anamorphic widescreen on the Wii. Just make sure your Wii is set to output 16:9 and that your TV is set to Full so that it stretches the image to fill the screen. The Smart Stretch option is not what you want in this case, as that would distort the image.

Wow thanks for bringing that to my attention lol. I've been using smart stretch for my 16:9 SD games all along. I just changed it and noticed how it was cutting about half an inch from the top and bottom of the screen. Characters in FFXII look alot more normal now too, I didn't even notice they were a little squished before. Thanks man.
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post #46 of 80
12/16/07 at 5:00am
"Also, there is no such thing as a 854 x 480 television signal -- it just doesn't exist, and since it doesn't exist, televisions can't accept it, and there'd be no point in making the Wii output such a resolution. In fact, I don't even know if it's possible if it's not in one of the television standards. I know you could do it with a computer, but I don't know about television."

480p is called 480p for a reason. It has a strictly defined 480 lines of vertical resolution, but the horizontal resolution is very flexible. Notice that 480p is not called 720x480p (or 704x480p, or 640x480p...). When talking about component video, being an analog signal I can cram as much horizontal resolution is I want into the signal. I can run it as 1920x480 if I want to. The only limit for horizontal resolution over an analog connection like the component video that the Wii uses is the horizontal sampling rate of the Wii, and in turn, the sampling rate of the DACs in the display.

Quick example of differing 480p resolutions:
720x480p and 704x480p - common DVD resolutions
640x480p - common console resolutions
848x480p - Orange Box on the 360 will run in this resolution if your 360 is set to output 480p. Hey, I thought you said that didn't exist!
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post #47 of 80
12/16/07 at 5:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by darklordjames View Post

"Also, there is no such thing as a 854 x 480 television signal -- it just doesn't exist, and since it doesn't exist, televisions can't accept it, and there'd be no point in making the Wii output such a resolution. In fact, I don't even know if it's possible if it's not in one of the television standards. I know you could do it with a computer, but I don't know about television."

480p is called 480p for a reason. It has a strictly defined 480 lines of vertical resolution, but the horizontal resolution is very flexible. Notice that 480p is not called 720x480p (or 704x480p, or 640x480p...). When talking about component video, being an analog signal I can cram as much horizontal resolution is I want into the signal. I can run it as 1920x480 if I want to. The only limit for horizontal resolution over an analog connection like the component video that the Wii uses is the horizontal sampling rate of the Wii, and in turn, the sampling rate of the DACs in the display.

Quick example of differing 480p resolutions:
720x480p and 704x480p - common DVD resolutions
640x480p - common console resolutions
848x480p - Orange Box on the 360 will run in this resolution if your 360 is set to output 480p. Hey, I thought you said that didn't exist!

If you're using component, is there any way to tell the frame buffer size and be sure that the DAC stage is actually running the clock high enough to generate 848 samples per line that the TV is picking up? If this is commonly the case with conventional digital TVs nowadays, then I've learned something & I was wrong. This isn't that different from multisync CRTs that could accept variable scanning rates, though I'd expect a flat panel would only bother to optimize for NTSC & "square pixel" sampling rates.

Given the cost pressures on the Wii, is there any documentation that the DACs will do more than NTSC bandwidth (13.5 MHz luminance bandwidth, 52.85 µsec per horizontal line excluding the blanking interval)? Nintendo has been stingy about letting the public know.

For those folks wondering where 720 pixels came from, and why the legacy of NTSC hangs over our heads, see below:
http://broadcastengineering.com/infr...lution_pixels/

As the quoted poster points out, you could just ramp up the sampling rate to put out more samples per scanline, but some of us just aren't sure whether much consumer equipment will do it. The XBox has a high quality analog output stage capable of doing 1080P at least over component, so it obviously can. Who knows about the Wii.
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post #48 of 80
12/16/07 at 1:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh7289 View Post

I'm not 100% sure about the PSP, but as far as I'm aware, it's as you say -- it outputs in 480p with games running in a 480 x 272 window. Also, I'm pretty sure the XMB is actually outputted in full 480p -- no windows or anything like there are with games.

Yeah, PSP also outputs videos at full 480p. Not sure why it can't upscale PSP games, but oh well.

---

Isn't resolution determined by fillrate? The fillrate of the Wii is good enough to do 720p I believe, but the games would not look as detailed (future games, lol). Which is why 854 x 480 and 960 x 540 are good alternatives. Anything less than that is just too blurry, especially on a decent-sized TV.

Yeah, I figured in the end that most consumer TVs were equipped only to handle NTSC and ASTC standard resolutions, but the Wii itself has no such limitation. Although I learned a lot, my ignorance on this topic has taken me out of it pretty much.
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post #49 of 80
12/16/07 at 3:26pm
I have no idea if the Wii can physicly produce 848 samples through it's DAC. An educate guess though tells me that it was cheaper for ATI to use the 1024x768 integrated TV-out DAC that they already had laying around, than to develop a new one. By no means does this mean that anyone will ever make a Wii game that goes beyond 640x480p, but it would be physicly possible. Hell with a 1024x768 DAC, you could even spit out a 1024x720p signal, much like the original Xbox.

Concerning ADCs on TVs - It depends on the display. A proper CRT will just dump the image to the screen without sampling it. Any display where component video gets converted to a digitial signal before display comes down to the ADC and the design of the processing stage.

Resolution is determined by targets. Given a large enough framebuffer (6mb), component-out, and proper DACs, I could get full 1920x1080x24bit out of the SNES... If I could settle for 1 frame every 3 seconds. In the same vein, I could phsyicly get 1024x720x24 out of the Wii's 3MB frame buffer. V-sync would probably be sacrificed though, as a single 1024x720p frame is 2.2MB.

Keep in mind that all of this leads nowhere. Wii games are 640x480, and will probably stay that way for the life of the console.
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post #50 of 80
12/16/07 at 9:56pm
We could try waiting a week on Nintendo's tech support to get an answer. /shrug
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post #51 of 80
12/17/07 at 2:07pm
Well, there are currently more high priority things to make Nintendo do with the Wii, like voice chat, a decent cheap memory soluion, etc. This is really high on my list though. We should a least be seeing all the pixels in widescreen, and the Wii should make your tv do widescreen automatically. Plus, 960 x 540 is a nice resolution bump without effecting preformance much and compatible on most tvs (any tv that can do 1080i/p; should scale nicely on 720p sets).

But, I'll be first in line to sign a petition, talk to Nintendo or Wii IGN, or make by own petition when the time is right.
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post #52 of 80
12/21/07 at 9:24pm
This is an easy poll to vote YES (widescreen) to...
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post #53 of 80
12/21/07 at 10:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaverJ View Post

Lots of confusion in this thread.

The Wii, like DVD video, is designed to display properly on both 4:3 and 16:9 TVs. The user just has to select the correct settings on both the Wii and the TV to make sure the aspect ratio is correct.

The OP simply stated he liked the sharper res of the Wii's 4:3 mode in 4:3 on his 16:9 TV.

Well a lot of Wii games are at least. Gotta remember not all Wii games have the anamorphic widescreen thing goin for em like Mario Party so when you put it in widescreen you get stretch-o-vision. Thankfully most anything you'd really care about graphics on like SMB, LoZ:TP, and MP3 have widescreen support.
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post #54 of 80
12/21/07 at 10:40pm
"Mario Party so when you put it in widescreen you get stretch-o-vision."

Mario Party is 16:9. Gameplay is 4:3 in a 16:9 window (graphical pillarboxes), but it is still 16:9. There is no stretching going on when setup properly.
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post #55 of 80
12/21/07 at 10:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by darklordjames View Post

"Mario Party so when you put it in widescreen you get stretch-o-vision."

Mario Party is 16:9. Gameplay is 4:3 in a 16:9 window (graphical pillarboxes), but it is still 16:9. There is no stretching going on when setup properly.

Hmm interesting, ok but there are games that only run in 4:3 right? Or have I just been completely lied to and any game worth taking a second look at is 16:9?
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post #56 of 80
12/22/07 at 8:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bkchurch View Post

Hmm interesting, ok but there are games that only run in 4:3 right? Or have I just been completely lied to and any game worth taking a second look at is 16:9?

Good point... When I said the Wii is like DVD video, I failed to mention that, unlike DVD-video, the Wii doesn't send the widescreen flag to the TV to tell it which aspect ratio it is calling for. This requires the user to set the aspect ratio correctly on both the Wii and the TV, and for 4:3 games the user has to manually switch aspect ratio on the TV... it won't do it automatically.

The original Xbox also has this flaw when output was set to 480p.

And yes, some games are 4:3 only. I believe all of the Virtual Console titles are 4:3. And if I remember right, the Wii versions of the original Ravin' Rabbids and Trauma Center are two 4:3-only examples.
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post #57 of 80
12/22/07 at 8:53am
16:9. I am going to try it on my CRT HDTV to see how this looks. I just cannot believe how bad the graphics are on my 46" LCD.
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post #58 of 80
1/14/08 at 1:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bkchurch View Post

Hmm interesting, ok but there are games that only run in 4:3 right? Or have I just been completely lied to and any game worth taking a second look at is 16:9?

Mario Party 8 is a bit confusing in that it technically supports 16x9, but what it sends to the display in 16x9 mode during the mini-games is a signal with black on the left and right sides. Hence, when the display performs the anamorphic "unsqueeze", what one is left with is pillarboxed 4x3 content.

But to answer your other question... There are indeed plenty of Wii games which only support 4x3 mode.
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post #59 of 80
1/15/08 at 11:28am
Ok. I have my Wii selected for 16:9 and my Sony 55A2000 shows it only at 4:3. I read in this thread that you need to have the TV be selected for 16:9 mode. I can not find an option on my remote for this on my TV. I also checked the settings on my TV. My Wii and my DirectTV box are going through Video 5 (component) through my Denon 1803. The DirectTV shows 1080i 16:9 like it should, which leaves me to believe that the TV is setup right. What am I doing wrong? Wii has the latest firmware update. For some reason knowing it is not in 16:9 mode is chapping me.
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post #60 of 80
1/16/08 at 7:14am
Even when sending anamorphic video, the Wii never signals the TV, so the TV must manually be placed into the correct mode. On your TV remote, this is usually a button which cycles between "Normal", "Full", "Zoom", etc. The button itself may be labeled something along the lines of "Mode", "W. Mode" or "Wide".

You would not need to use this button when viewing 720p or 1080i content (as per your DirecTV example), since the TV will lock into 16x9 mode automatically for high definition video.
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