On the 29th it was my birthday, and my gf got me a Wii. I've been willing to buy one for some time, so I'm quite happy because:
1) the girl cares
2) I have it now

Question: I tried the PAL-60 (60Hz 480i) video mode, as it's said to be better than the 50Hz 576i, but it looks very blurred and way worse than plain PAL-50, at least with the video cable bundled with the console (ugly composite). So I'm wondering if going component or Scart-RGB and enable EDTV/HDTV would make a difference. I'm pretty sure my LCD TV can show 480p, but I understand this video mode is supported only for component or HDMI input. Or not?

Anyway, I spotted the Wii component cable in different flavours: Nintendo, Atomic and others. Since the Nintendo one costs at least twice the other ones, I was wondering if there really is a difference, or it's just because of the brand. Any experiences you'd like to share?

Speaking about games, at the moment I have:
- Wii Sports (I guess it's always sold with the console)
- Cooking Mama (Very fun in multiplayer, a lot less charming alone)
- Mario Kart Wii (Good rehash of a great game, also nice for multi)

As soon as I get it connected to the Internet, I'll try to connect to Marv and anybody else who wants to share a Mario Kart game on the net :)

I'm planning to get No More Heroes and Metroid Prime 3 for single player love, but I'll wait for the price to shrink a bit: buying the second Wiimote+Nunchuck, and MarioKart+Wheel drained me down...

> On the 29th it was my birthday, and my gf got me a Wii. I've been willing to buy
> one for some time, so I'm quite happy because:
> 1) the girl cares
> 2) I have it now
>
> Question: I tried the PAL-60 (60Hz 480i) video mode, as it's said to be better
> than the 50Hz 576i, but it looks very blurred and way worse than plain PAL-50,
> at least with the video cable bundled with the console (ugly composite). So I'm
> wondering if going component or Scart-RGB and enable EDTV/HDTV would make a
> difference. I'm pretty sure my LCD TV can show 480p, but I understand this video
> mode is supported only for component or HDMI input. Or not?
>
> Anyway, I spotted the Wii component cable in different flavours: Nintendo,
> Atomic and others. Since the Nintendo one costs at least twice the other ones, I
> was wondering if there really is a difference, or it's just because of the
> brand. Any experiences you'd like to share?
>
> Speaking about games, at the moment I have:
> - Wii Sports (I guess it's always sold with the console)
> - Cooking Mama (Very fun in multiplayer, a lot less charming alone)
> - Mario Kart Wii (Good rehash of a great game, also nice for multi)
>
> As soon as I get it connected to the Internet, I'll try to connect to Marv and
> anybody else who wants to share a Mario Kart game on the net :)
>
> I'm planning to get No More Heroes and Metroid Prime 3 for single player love,
> but I'll wait for the price to shrink a bit: buying the second Wiimote+Nunchuck,
> and MarioKart+Wheel drained me down...
>

And Happy Birthday!

I don't have a HDTV (I have a cheapish widescreen CRT), but I did find that Scart-RGB made a big difference on my TV. I have friends with CRTs and component cables, and it is slightly better than my Scart-RGB, but not much ... however, the fact that it's on an LCD may mean that a Scart-RGB will look rubbish compared to 480p.
I bought a 3rd-party cable and it's fine (branded GAME - they're a UK retailer, don't know if they exist in the US). From what I've read, there's very little difference between the official video cables and the unofficial ones ... just make sure you check reviews before you buy.

There are a decent number of games out for the Wii now, IMO. Metroid Prime 3 has just dipped below £19 in the UK at one retailer (shopto.net), so I guess it will come down in price in the US soon too.
If you haven't played Resident Evil 4 on PS2/Gamecube, then buy it for the Wii. Amazing single-player game...

The composite looks a lot worse than the other options. I can't speak about the PAL options but I know that 480p on component/scart looks a lot better than composite. You do need either component or scart for 480p, and the Wii doesn't do HDMI but in theory it would allow you to do 480p. You can't use your composite cable for it. 3rd party cables work excellent so don't worry about it. I got a component cable from icon for less than $10. Maybe the reason 480i looks bad on your TV is because a lot of LCD HDTVs really don't handle 480i very well (don't know if that's what you tried it on).

> I'm planning to get No More Heroes and Metroid Prime 3 for single player love,
> but I'll wait for the price to shrink a bit: buying the second Wiimote+Nunchuck,
> and MarioKart+Wheel drained me down...

Hehe. You also need to try Super Mario Galaxy, Excite Truck, and Medal of Honor Heroes 2. If you were a fan of RE4, you should at least give it a rent on this system, an excellent game that gets even better.

It's funny that a Wii is only a suped up Gamecube with a motion sensing controller and it's the most popular system out there. When, on the other hand, the Gamecube only did mediocre in sales.

Leave it to Nintendo to beat the competition with last generation's hardware ;)

_ _ - - = = Pr3tty F1y = = - - _ _

> On the 29th it was my birthday, and my gf got me a Wii. I've been willing to buy
> one for some time, so I'm quite happy because:
> 1) the girl cares
> 2) I have it now
>
> Question: I tried the PAL-60 (60Hz 480i) video mode, as it's said to be better
> than the 50Hz 576i, but it looks very blurred and way worse than plain PAL-50,
> at least with the video cable bundled with the console (ugly composite). So I'm
> wondering if going component or Scart-RGB and enable EDTV/HDTV would make a
> difference. I'm pretty sure my LCD TV can show 480p, but I understand this video
> mode is supported only for component or HDMI input. Or not?
>
> Anyway, I spotted the Wii component cable in different flavours: Nintendo,
> Atomic and others. Since the Nintendo one costs at least twice the other ones, I
> was wondering if there really is a difference, or it's just because of the
> brand. Any experiences you'd like to share?
>
> Speaking about games, at the moment I have:
> - Wii Sports (I guess it's always sold with the console)
> - Cooking Mama (Very fun in multiplayer, a lot less charming alone)
> - Mario Kart Wii (Good rehash of a great game, also nice for multi)
>
> As soon as I get it connected to the Internet, I'll try to connect to Marv and
> anybody else who wants to share a Mario Kart game on the net :)
>
> I'm planning to get No More Heroes and Metroid Prime 3 for single player love,
> but I'll wait for the price to shrink a bit: buying the second Wiimote+Nunchuck,
> and MarioKart+Wheel drained me down...
>
>


All work and no play makes me..., well, you know the rest.

I have the NTSC version (not sure if it will make a difference), running perfectly fine on 480p in HDTV mode with a cheap 3rd party component cable.

The component wouldn't work at first and I thought I got swindled by the shop for a second.... then I noticed the cable was not inserted deep enough on the Wii.

Then I furiously played through half of Mario Galaxy until I noticed I was running the 480i mode because I forgot to switch it in the options. 480p made a lot of differene in that everything looks much more vivid.

Some things still look a bit blurry because it's not HDMI, but hey I suppose that acts as some kind of anti-aliasing.

Now for some reason the Neo Geo VC refuses to run with 480p... so it has some weird interlacing issues sometimes.




[download a life]

I'm on dialup, so no multiplayer online gaming for me. I rented Mario Kart and got the wheel rental free.

I have Marble Mania, Code Lyoko, and Pinball Hall of Fame Williams Pinball which I'm playing at the moment.

London Taxi, Metroid 3 *bagged it on a special $10 off used sale at Electronics Boutique last month*, Zelda: Twilight Princess *some family thought it was inapropriate for their preteen, ok why buy a Teen game for a preteen?* and sold it on EBay at 1/2 price with free shipping, Namco Museum, which is a PIA if you want to use the classic controller you have to switch out the regular controller when you load the retro game and hook the nunchuck back it when you exit the classic game.

I'm also getting the Metal Slug Anthology. It's being sent snail mail to me.

I must admit the Zelda fishing has piqued my interest in buying a Fishing Rod / Fishing games for the Wii. I used to like fishing, but I never eat the fish, I just let them go, now I won't have to hurt them anymore!


> On the 29th it was my birthday, and my gf got me a Wii. I've been willing to buy
> one for some time, so I'm quite happy because:
> 1) the girl cares
> 2) I have it now
>
> Question: I tried the PAL-60 (60Hz 480i) video mode, as it's said to be better
> than the 50Hz 576i, but it looks very blurred and way worse than plain PAL-50,
> at least with the video cable bundled with the console (ugly composite). So I'm
> wondering if going component or Scart-RGB and enable EDTV/HDTV would make a
> difference. I'm pretty sure my LCD TV can show 480p, but I understand this video
> mode is supported only for component or HDMI input. Or not?
>
> Anyway, I spotted the Wii component cable in different flavours: Nintendo,
> Atomic and others. Since the Nintendo one costs at least twice the other ones, I
> was wondering if there really is a difference, or it's just because of the
> brand. Any experiences you'd like to share?
>
> Speaking about games, at the moment I have:
> - Wii Sports (I guess it's always sold with the console)
> - Cooking Mama (Very fun in multiplayer, a lot less charming alone)
> - Mario Kart Wii (Good rehash of a great game, also nice for multi)
>
> As soon as I get it connected to the Internet, I'll try to connect to Marv and
> anybody else who wants to share a Mario Kart game on the net :)
>
> I'm planning to get No More Heroes and Metroid Prime 3 for single player love,
> but I'll wait for the price to shrink a bit: buying the second Wiimote+Nunchuck,
> and MarioKart+Wheel drained me down...
>
>


The new and improved King of Lamers 2003!

I don't have an HDTV, and I like the titles. I had a Gamecube, and I liked that system. I still have over 1/2 my Gamecube library. In fact, I just purchased Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Battle Nexus so I could play a legal emulated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the Wii! I still have 2 Wavebirds for the Gamecube and they work like a charm on the Wii!



> It's funny that a Wii is only a suped up Gamecube with a motion sensing
> controller and it's the most popular system out there. When, on the other hand,
> the Gamecube only did mediocre in sales.
>
> Leave it to Nintendo to beat the competition with last generation's hardware ;)
>
> _ _ - - = = Pr3tty F1y = = - - _ _
>


The new and improved King of Lamers 2003!

I might pick one up cos I still want to play Luigi's Mansion ;)

And although you don't own an HDTV, I don't even own *a* TV. Only got my PC's 22" WS LCD + Kworld HDTV tuner card (although, the OTA stuff that it picks up looks fantastic). Definitely a way to do HD on the cheap.

_ _ - - = = Pr3tty F1y = = - - _ _

It wasn't the biggest reason, but I like playing Ikaruga on a Wii, although I love fishing with Zelda: TP, it's great fun!

It uses Gamecube memory cards and peripherals as well, 2 memory cards and up to 4 Gamecube controllers, I suggest the Wavebirds. I have 2 of them.

;)



> I might pick one up cos I still want to play Luigi's Mansion ;)
>
> And although you don't own an HDTV, I don't even own *a* TV. Only got my PC's
> 22" WS LCD + Kworld HDTV tuner card (although, the OTA stuff that it picks up
> looks fantastic). Definitely a way to do HD on the cheap.
>
> _ _ - - = = Pr3tty F1y = = - - _ _
>


The new and improved King of Lamers 2003!

> Some things still look a bit blurry because it's not HDMI, but hey I suppose
> that acts as some kind of anti-aliasing.

Could be the upscaling on your TV? Try something in 480p on another console to see.

> Could be the upscaling on your TV? Try something in 480p on another console to
> see.
>

I don't have another 480p console :-) It could be the upscaling because connecting a PC is also slightly blurred (I can't get it to run the native res, I need to find a driver).

To be honest you have to be close to the TV to notice. I also saw there is some light "ghosting" on the right of edges which I have always seen on S-Video DVD players, so I always wrote it down to some S-video artifact.

The ghosting is mostly noticeable for pixel games (Virtual Console), otherwise it doesn't bother me. One day I asked about that in a store (because it surprised me to see it with BlueRay media) but they told me some bull crap about "signal strength". I could tell the guy was talking out of his ass so I left it at that. I don't believe a better cable could fix it because I have seen it for *every* DVD player demoed in stores out there.

Component *does* give the crispier graphics I've ever seen on a TV though. Colors are also stronger. I think to get PC pixel quality I would have to use an HDMI connection. I didn't try as I don't have a machine that supports it yet.

I'm not really being fair as I'm comparing to a PC LCD screen :-D



[download a life]

> I don't have another 480p console :-) It could be the upscaling because
> connecting a PC is also slightly blurred (I can't get it to run the native res,
> I need to find a driver).

I don't know what exactly you need, but if you just need to define a resolution then you can edit your video card driver's inf file and add in a line for the resolution you want. Then reinstall that (I think you can even just right-click the INF and select Install) and the new resolution should show up in display properties. (On another note I just finished installing Windows for the first time in a long time for someone and I can't believe how many settings you have to change, for example especially in "Internet Options" if you're using IE or also with the services like turning off Messenger and shit so you don't get spam. Sorry about the rant!)

> To be honest you have to be close to the TV to notice. I also saw there is some
> light "ghosting" on the right of edges which I have always seen on S-Video DVD
> players, so I always wrote it down to some S-video artifact.

It's possible but I think it just might be the upscaling. Some TVs just do that like some bilinear filtering on a texture so that the upscaling won't be point sampled which would look ugly, especially since 480p doesn't translate well to the native resolution of most 720p TVs (some pixels are wider/longer than others because 720p is not a full step up, it's not 640x2 x 480x2 it's somewhere in between, for example 1366x720 but 1280x960 = 640x2 x 480x2).

> One day I asked about that in a store (because it
> surprised me to see it with BlueRay media) but they told me some bull crap about
> "signal strength".

Hm, I can't say I ever saw any such image problems with bluray media on my TV. What do you use to play bluray? If you have a PS3, try setting it to 480p in video options and seeing if games look like that with a PSX game (I guess try Chrono Trigger Remake for PSX or something like you would see in VC).

Also if you have a 720p TV that supports 1080i/p, then usually the PS3 will set itself up to default at 1080 anyway but games will play in 720p because there aren't many 1080 games. So then you'd never really notice that your PS3 was trying to run movies in 1080 and your TV would be scaling it to 720p, and if your TV's scaler is in use it might make it look a lot shittier than if you just set your PS3 to 720p.

> I could tell the guy was talking out of his ass so I left it
> at that. I don't believe a better cable could fix it because I have seen it
> for *every* DVD player demoed in stores out there.

Hm, I wonder if I know what you're talking about then?

> Component *does* give the crispier graphics I've ever seen on a TV though.
> Colors are also stronger. I think to get PC pixel quality I would have to use an
> HDMI connection. I didn't try as I don't have a machine that supports it yet.

I have a 360 with HDMI and a PS3 with HDMI... I never tried the PS3 with anything except HDMI which looks great. For the 360, switching from component to HDMI makes absolutely no difference. I took close up photos and examined them and I really didn't see any difference. I don't have any HD movies that play in the 360 but I was trying it with some games.

Also, while playing Gamecube games on Wii, it fully emulates the Gamecube component video cable, so the old games will support progressive scan if they did on GC(some require you to hold B on bootup).

> On the 29th it was my birthday, and my gf got me a Wii. I've been willing to buy
> one for some time, so I'm quite happy because:
> 1) the girl cares
> 2) I have it now
>
> Question: I tried the PAL-60 (60Hz 480i) video mode, as it's said to be better
> than the 50Hz 576i, but it looks very blurred and way worse than plain PAL-50,
> at least with the video cable bundled with the console (ugly composite). So I'm
> wondering if going component or Scart-RGB and enable EDTV/HDTV would make a
> difference. I'm pretty sure my LCD TV can show 480p, but I understand this video
> mode is supported only for component or HDMI input. Or not?
>
> Anyway, I spotted the Wii component cable in different flavours: Nintendo,
> Atomic and others. Since the Nintendo one costs at least twice the other ones, I
> was wondering if there really is a difference, or it's just because of the
> brand. Any experiences you'd like to share?
>
> Speaking about games, at the moment I have:
> - Wii Sports (I guess it's always sold with the console)
> - Cooking Mama (Very fun in multiplayer, a lot less charming alone)
> - Mario Kart Wii (Good rehash of a great game, also nice for multi)
>
> As soon as I get it connected to the Internet, I'll try to connect to Marv and
> anybody else who wants to share a Mario Kart game on the net :)
>
> I'm planning to get No More Heroes and Metroid Prime 3 for single player love,
> but I'll wait for the price to shrink a bit: buying the second Wiimote+Nunchuck,
> and MarioKart+Wheel drained me down...
>
>