Wii graphics on large/HD Tv's..

azith28

Hiya,

I purchased Kirby's Epic yarn last week, and while its a fun game, and so much cuteness that the only way it would get cuter is if a kitten was playing it, I couldnt help but think The graphics were really not all what I expected. The video previews i had seen before looked very detailed and the textures were much deeper and richer then what I was seeing. In fact while i occasionally would catch a frame that looked good, most of it just wasnt really all that special looking.

I don't blame the game, I'm playing my wii on a 40" HD television, so I imagine that my problem is with the upscaling or with the size of the television. But im not sure what, if anything i can do about that. I've seen smaller televisions like the ones that usually are on demo models at bestbuy/gamestop running videos or demos and they look great, but appear to be capible of high def themselves so I cant help but wonder what im doing wrong.

Has anyone else run across these issues and have a fix? Is there a possible setting in the TV or the Wii, etc or at the least, what television requirements are used to get the best picture?

Thanks

Bartholamue

Use component cables and set it to 480p. Using the cables that came with the system, no, just no. Especially when you have an HDTV.

Guek

are you using component cables?

Mr_Grinch

I'll echo the above, component cables and then set the wii to 480p.

In honesty it COULD be your tvs upscaling though. If I have my Wii going straight to the tv it looks crap, if I put it through my amp and let that upscale to 1080p it looks considerably better. Guess the scaler in my tv is poor.

UncleSporky

Bartholamue wrote: »

Use component cables and set it to 480p. Using the cables that came with the system, no, just no. Especially when you have an HDTV.

Also set the Wii to 16:9 widescreen. All of these things combined will make Kirby look pretty dang awesome.

Dourin

Even with component, Kirby still doesn't look as good as you see in those videos. The problem is, you're running a signal, even with component, of no more than 480p (if I recall) on a television with a resolution capable of 1080p. The amount of upscaling going on is going to cause you to see flaws that you would otherwise not notice on a smaller display. There's really nothing you can do to make it look better, short of buying a smaller television.

But yeah, if you're not using component, it's pretty much a must have for any Wii owner running an HDTV > 19".

darkwarriorva

I doubt it's the size of the screen (I play Wii games on my 100" projection, and Kirby looks great!). Could be the scaling of your particular TV, or maybe your color/brightness/contrast settings. And the component/480p thing mentioned already is a must.

Shorn Scrotum Man

Echoing the "use a component cable and set the Wii to 480p" crowd.

Kirby looks great on my big screen.

Dourin

Mr_Grinch wrote: »

I'll echo the above, component cables and then set the wii to 480p.

In honesty it COULD be your tvs upscaling though. If I have my Wii going straight to the tv it looks crap, if I put it through my amp and let that upscale to 1080p it looks considerably better. Guess the scaler in my tv is poor.

Hmm...I never thought about the scaler in the TV being the culprit. Mine doesn't look terrible, but Wii games definitely show some noticeable flaws on my display.

slash000

Sometimes certain HDTVs have pretty poor scaling built into them.

Also you might need to adjust the settings on the TV to get the appropriate color / contrast / saturation / etc. I have a friend with a cutting edge HDTV and when we play certain games we have to really alter the default contrast settings to get a good picture out of the game, and that's even with the xbox 360.


Make sure you're on 480p widescreen is the first step though. Second step adjust settings. Third step is look up how well your tv does its own upscaling. That's what I'd do anyway.

Mr_Grinch

Yeah, even good name brand tvs can have sub-par scalers. Mine's not really a poor tv (Panasonic PZ81), getting on a bit but still decent enough. But the difference between the scaler in that and the scaler in my amp (Yamaha RX-V765) is night and day.

kleinfehn

Not supporting this at all, but I think computers can emulate a Wii and get a higher image quality.

maximumzero

kleinfehn wrote: »

Not supporting this at all, but I think computers can emulate a Wii and get a higher image quality.

Yeah let's not go down this road.

While the legality of emulators are debatable, the methods you have to use to get the games onto your computer definitely isn't.

UncleSporky

Also generally there are tons of glitches and problems with it anyway. It's not what the OP is looking for.

azith28

Yeah i have the component cables. The scaler may be the issue. I have a samsung 40" HDTV and so far the only gripe i have is its audio isnt the best and i havent shelled out money for a sound system. DVD's look reasonably poor on it as well while Blue rays are beautiful so the upscaler sounds like the problem. PS3 and 360 games look great on it, especially games like Uncharted 2, but then again they are putting out or upscaling the signal through their own hardware not letting the tv do it for me while the wii has no choice.

I use to have my wii connected to my Del 24" monitor (put sound through the soundcard) and From what i recall that looked much better but i figured that was just due to it being a smaller screen. Do monitors typically have a really great upscaler built in?

Thanks for the input. might just move my wii back to my old standard tube tv.

maximumzero

azith28 wrote: »

Yeah i have the component cables. The scaler may be the issue. I have a samsung 40" HDTV and so far the only gripe i have is its audio isnt the best and i havent shelled out money for a sound system. DVD's look reasonably poor on it as well while Blue rays are beautiful so the upscaler sounds like the problem. PS3 and 360 games look great on it, especially games like Uncharted 2, but then again they are putting out or upscaling the signal through their own hardware not letting the tv do it for me while the wii has no choice.

I use to have my wii connected to my Del 24" monitor (put sound through the soundcard) and From what i recall that looked much better but i figured that was just due to it being a smaller screen. Do monitors typically have a really great upscaler built in?

Thanks for the input. might just move my wii back to my old standard tube tv.

Keep in mind that while your monitor and TV have probably the same resolution (If not more on the monitor) the pixels on a 24" monitor are going to be almost have the size of those on the 40" screen. Smaller pixels equal sharper image, as evidenced by the Game Boy Micro, iPhone 4 and PSP Go.

Mr_Grinch

You could probably pick up some kind of third party upscaling thingy-me-bob.

Oh, are the component cables the official ones? I had a real issue with third party component cables making the image soft with crap colours.