VD-W3 Wii HDMI upscaler any good?

[Escape-To-88]

Hi all,
seen a few reviews on this, and am thinking of getting one.
Wondered if anyone had one of these on here and their impressions?
Cheers

[Lyris]

I've not used one, but unless your TV is especially bad at scaling, I'm not sure what the point would be.

A quick way you can check your TV's scaler on the cheap is to have a DVD player output standard-def to the TV, and pull up its on screen menus (or its Setup screens). If the text and graphics in here are reasonably clear and crisp, your in-TV scaling is fine.

[Escape-To-88]

Hmmm, yeah I have a pretty good onboard scaler, just hoped to get the Wii even clearer, it's not terrible by any stretch just trying to improve the component picture, but to be honest, as you say, I'm now thinking it's probably not worth it!

[Shozuki]

to be honest, i've only been happy with the Wii's image after running it through an XRGB in linedoubling mode. It makes the system seem like its on a SDTV which is about the best the Wii can look to be honest.

Other route is PC Emulation...

[Lyris]

The problem with the Wii is the blurry source, and nothing can recover the lost detail.

The only way I can think of getting around that would be to tap the digital output of one of the chips before it gets screwed up by the video encoder chip, and making some sort of alternative output on the Wii...

[Escape-To-88]

Yeah, had a fiddle with the Dolphin emu Sho. and was impressed, but thought I'd stick with the system as it only cost me 40 bob

Yeah agreed Lyris, simialr to the old N64 RGB mod or the DC VGA port methinks

Can the XRGB upscaler still be purchased? Or are they quite tough to pick up now?

I've also noticed on my dad's LE46C650 the Wii looks really crisp, obviously got a better scaler in than my LG set!

[Lyris]

It depends on the game as well. Some of them are blurry mush (Okami) and others are crisp (Smash Bros Brawl).

[Lyris]

Does anyone have any info on the GPU and video encoder chips (or is it one chip now?) in the Wii?

[Psyduck]

I'm pretty certain that virtually nothing on the wii is blurry. It might be "low res" (ie 480p/576i) but it's all going to rendered natively with the exception of the odd port such as neo geo stuff. The only reason it looks blurry is either because your TV is upscaling it or just because you're now used to HD games. That said, an "upscaler" is going to make very little difference. I think it's an absolute waste of money...

[Lyris]

That's not quite the case, some games are clearly much softer than others. Okami is a clear example. Resident Evil 4 is another. Sonic and the Secret Rings was blurred as well. I look at ultra-crispy Standard Def video (on Digital Betacam) quite a lot so it's not just me expecting HD clarity or anything.

Whereas stuff like Wii Sports is totally crisp, and Smash Bros actually lets you turn the flicker filter on or off to illustrate the difference.

That said - I haven't played a whole lot of Wii games lately. I don't know what the situation for new titles is like right now.