Nintendo Wii - HD Upscaling Advice

[Lyris]

I used the Optoma HD3000. Lumagen use their own proprietary scaling which is totally ringless (Optoma's is a tiny, tiny bit ringy).

Lumagen's implemention of the VXP chip may be better though. They may have some detail enhancing functions that could make things a little nicer, but if your TV already does a good job of Component 480p, then you'll likely just end up with a picture that looks different rather than one that's necessarily better.

[smouty]

All their stuff seems pretty high level and if that's not doing it then I don't see what I'm hoping to be spending doing anything at all worth mentioning!

LCDs have always been awful when run at anything except their native resolution. A scaler no matter how good will never give as good a result as a plasma or CRT.
Look at a SNES emulator for example. They have modes such as super eagle to make the low res image acceptable for recent display tech.
I can't beleive this thread has even mentioned ?3k video scalers for a 480p source especially on a ?600 TV

[Lyris]

Look at a SNES emulator for example. They have modes such as super eagle to make the low res image acceptable for recent display tech.

Or make it look worse, depending on your opinion

[JP]

The main thing I'm looking for here is just a sharper image rather than smoothing it out (The Wii does enough of that for me already).

Didn't somebody mention importing a VGA cable for the Wii in another thread? Is that likely to improve it in any way as the signal being output from the Wii would still be the same signal and still carry all the filtering?

[EvilBoris]

Using a VGA lead will bypass all the mucky picture processing that TVs like to do, so that would help, plus you'll get no overscan. It's the same reason lots of people liked using VGA on 360

[Swallow]

Not read this thread, but doesn't the Wii do 480p over component anyway? Surely most modern teles can make this look good, no? I think it looks fine on my cheapo HD LCD, I don't really see how much it can be improved..?

[JP]

Using a VGA lead will bypass all the mucky picture processing that TVs like to do, so that would help, plus you'll get no overscan. It's the same reason lots of people liked using VGA on 360

Is the Wii actually outputting a VGA picture though or is it just outputting the component picture via a VGA cable?

The BIG problem with the 480p output from the Wii is that it filters everything so that it looks really blurry.

[Baseley09]

For best results you need a 480p capable CRT, it looks superb, truly.

[JP]

I know mate!

Really don't want to have another TV along with the set I've got though.

[smouty]

The BIG problem with the 480p output from the Wii is that it filters everything so that it looks really blurry.

The Wii filter is set by the developers as mentioned earlier.
Some games are worse than others, have you seen RE4? - but until a hack comes along to disable it (a la xbox), a cable will only improve things slightly unless the filter varies depending on cable type.

Have you read this thread?

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=74748&page=1

[JP]

I'd not seen that thread, Thanks!

It was suggested earlier in one of the many threads about this that using a VGA cable would somehow improve this. What I wanted to know is if that was true as surely the Wii would still be outputting exactly the same signal whatever type of connector is on the TV end of the cable.

I don't think that the Wii outputs an unprocessed VGA signal at all and the blurring will still be there.

[EvilBoris]

You'll still have the flicker filter on (as that is software controller) but you'll be getting a VGA signal, which your TV could handle better.

[Kotatsu Neko]

I'd be happy if I could just get my LCD to upscale the Wii's output without filtering. Blocks are better then blur to my eyes.

Strangely enough it does just that with the native 320x240 VC stuff. Super blocky but nice and sharp.

[JP]

And doesn't the VC stuff just look so much better than the proper Wii games?