Ever since the launch of the Wii I've had a hard time playing it. It wasn't anything to do with the games, but merely how terrible things looked on my Dell 2005fpw. But now, apparently, there's a solution.
I remember how excited everyone was when Nintendo announced that the Revolution would have a built in VGA port. I mean, a lot of us are college age, or just don't have enough room for a big ass TV. We're forced to use our monitors for gaming. But then the bad news started to roll in. We realized the Wii wouldn't have a VGA port. It wouldn't be HD. And it wouldn't even come with an s-video cable.
But along comes a chinese company with the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable.
Not only does it allow people to hook up the Wii to their VGA monitors, it also seems to have a higher display quality than the "component -> VGA box" solutions. Just check out what I mean.
Images behind Spoilers to protect H-scroll.
I placed an order for a set today, and I'm posting this here to get the word out some. I mean, until searching today I had no idea this was out. I'll post some first hand experiences once I get my cables, but if anyone else is willing to take the risk, including shipping it ends up costing about $50. And they take orders from just about anywhere.
No I don't.
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PSN: theIceBurner, IceBurnerEU, IceBurner-JP | X-Link Kai: TheIceBurner
Dragon's Dogma: 192 Warrior Linty | 80 Strider Alicia | 32 Mage Terra
Really all I need is the Brawl part, since this product exists.
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A.) VGA on most HDTV's eliminates input lag by up to somewhere around 95 to 99 percent.
B.) VGA is incapable of transmitting interlaced material, so that vastly cuts down on the third party GC games you can play on the system. Only progressive scan enabled content will work.
Although, there was a person in the tech forum that complained about his (probably defective) cable spazzing out and jacking up the picture. I'd hate to try to put out a return on this thing, being that the company is based in some overseas Asian territory.
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I have a 42inch 1080P LCD HDTV. Would using VGA over Component increase the image quality? Maybe get rid of the jagged edges?
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Not a chance. Might reduce any input lag, but that's about it.
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http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-zp-49-en-70-2jp6.html
It looks like it is made by a different company (and hooks up to both the Wii and PS3). Some of the reviews are bad, but I suspect that may be because they were trying to use 480i. Are these worth getting?
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Heh, that's not the reason why the GCN cable was so shoddy. Remember that the GCN component cable has a custom bit on the GCN end that changes the signal. So basically any GCN VGA cable is the offical cable that has been hastily rewired with a VGA end.
The actual cable by itself is high quality.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
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This is, from the reviews I've read, suppose to give a better quality image than conversion boxes.
How fast is this conversion? Is it quick enough that you wouldnt notice any lag on the video end?
Just get a Wii component cable from monoprice.com. It's what I'm going to do now that I'm starting to actually play my Wii again.
That would depend on the DSP. It's possible that it would be as fast as the component processor in your TV.
Or you're using 480i (or any other interlaced format, exceptions are made for some CRT HDTVs), or your TV is doing extra image processing/enhancement on the picture (good TVs should let you disable this). Inexpensive HDTVs may have cheap/slow scalers, so they are a likely culprit.
Going from the fact that the cable does not support interlaced games I think it's same to assume nothing too fancy is going on, so lag should not be noticeable. For instance if the cable was introducing 3 frames of lag, it would have to include internal memory for 3 frames, however going from one colorspace to another can be done on a per pixel basis. So most likely it will only introduce a few pixels of lag.
I think that using the term "DSP" is overstating the capabilities of this chip. If the Wii is anything like the Gamecube, and I suspect that it is, the video output port is digital. The cable contains a simple D/A converter chip that produces a VGA signal. It won't introduce any lag.
The Wii's video output port is analog. The cable contains an analog converter that converts from YPbPr to RGB.
If the Wii's video output port was digital (as the Gamecube's was) then you would need a DAC inside of any component video cables, too (as the Gamecube did), and there are no DACs inside Wii component cables (which is why, unlike for the Gamecube, you can find third-party ones for like $4).
I imagine the chips to convert YPbPr to RGB are a good deal less expensive than the ones to convert YPbPr to digital TMDS. Besides, even if it was HDMI, it would still only be outputting 480p, although I guess it would help clean up cable clutter.
Anyway, I see no reason to buy this expensive cable unless the only way you can possibly get 480p is through a VGA connector.
I'm hoping it will scale correctly on my monitor. Right now when I use the Wii over component cables I get vertical stretching (my monitor is 16:10) no matter what scaling option I use with my monitor.
Well, test it from your PC before you blow $50. Can you scale a 640x480 VGA signal into 16x9 widescreen on your monitor?
But the Wii doesn't output in 640x480 if you use the widescreen option, correct?
At any rate, when I use the Xbox 360 VGA cable with my monitor everything is scaled properly (I get the horizontal black bars on the top and bottom of the screen). Conversely, the image is stretched when using the 360 component cables with my monitor.
I'm in a college dorm room, so I don't have room for a bigass tube TV. I own a decent-sized LCD monitor, but don't have the budget for a flat-screen TV. Hence, this is the perfect solution for me. It has nothing to do with getting 480p so much as it does with getting a way to play my Wii at all.
Then again, it's at least half the price of a box which would allow video to VGA on multiple consoles, allowing me to forget about all that HDTV nonsense like I'd planned in the first place. If the difference in image quality is minimal, math tells me that's the better deal.
PSN: theIceBurner, IceBurnerEU, IceBurner-JP | X-Link Kai: TheIceBurner
Dragon's Dogma: 192 Warrior Linty | 80 Strider Alicia | 32 Mage Terra
I think it does, even in Widescreen.
In fact, I'm fairly sure that instead of putting out a widescreen resolution, it's still a 4:3 resolution but with everything a bit different so it looks normal when you stretch it. I don't know why.
All I know is my TV insists it's a 4:3 signal regardless of wether I put it to 16:9 or 480p. I can stretch it to fill the screen, but eventually it decides it knows better than I do and sets it back to letterbox mid game.
It doesn't have this issue with the first Xbox over shitty ol' composite cables. It's strange.
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Crap, if that's the case then I think I am out of luck. I set my Xbox to 640x480 over my VGA cable and my monitor could correctly scale it, but not stretch it into widescreen. Oh well
Is there any official confirmation on this?
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
You would likely have a 16:9 image stretched out to 16:10, which isn't that bad.
Heh, woops. Assumption makes an ass of, well, pretty much just me.