Need to test Wii vs Wii U sharpness at 480p, suggest games

[BazookaBen]

So I recently tried a Wii game at 480p on my Wii U, playing on a PC CRT (so, native res in theory). Things looked a little blurry, possibly from scaling, but it may have been placebo. Any suggestions for a game I can try, maybe one that is high contrast or has some patterns I could use to contrast the two consoles.

Alternatively, how easy it is it to install the homebrew channel on a Wii U? Maybe I could use the 240p test suite in that case.

[bobrocks95]

Extrems has said before that the Wii U has chroma delay and other problems in Wii mode, so it probably doesn't look all that sharp.

[Ikaruga11]

The Wii U is really easy to hack. Easier than the 3DS. And the current firmware is still hackable.

Extrems has said before that the Wii U has chroma delay and other problems in Wii mode, so it probably doesn't look all that sharp.

this. It also suffers from the Wii U's Limited RGB Range, which isn't related to sharpness but makes colors inaccurate and dull.

[Extrems]

It also suffers from the Wii U's Limited RGB Range, which isn't related to sharpness but makes colors inaccurate and dull.

Not if you expand from limited to full range, as you're supposed to. It just cause some minor banding if there's no dither.

[Ikaruga11]

It also suffers from the Wii U's Limited RGB Range, which isn't related to sharpness but makes colors inaccurate and dull.

Not if you expand from limited to full range, as you're supposed to. It just cause some minor banding if there's no dither.

The Wii U doesn't support Full Range though.

[Extrems]

The Wii U doesn't support Full Range though.

...you expand on the display's end.

[Guspaz]

There is no difference in dynamic range between limited and full if the display matches the source. There are just less steps in between the two extremes.

[Ikaruga11]

The Wii U doesn't support Full Range though.

...you expand on the display's end.

Well, yeah. That will improve the colors by correctly mapping the values. But Limited RGB on a Limited RGB Display isn't as good as Full RGB on a Full RGB Display.

There are just less steps in between the two extremes.

You mean less color information

[BazookaBen]

I have the Wii U hooked up with component cables (then to an RGBHV converter to my CRT). Those should be full range, right? They look damn good with Wii U games.

[bobrocks95]

It's come up a bunch of times, but I still don't know if the concept of RGB range applies to analog signals at all. I don't think it does.

[ZellSF]

Isn't the Wii (and vWii) YPbPr native though? Won't you have to go through a conversion process to get to RGB anyway? Whether you convert to limited or full range doesn't seem like it would make a ton of difference in that case.

Extrems has said before that the Wii U has chroma delay and other problems in Wii mode, so it probably doesn't look all that sharp.

I recall one forum member here saying he had two Wii U consoles, and one had a worse chroma delay problem than the other.

Mine looks terrible, much worse than I see on Youtube videos. And yes, the chroma delay is so bad it would've shown on even a low-resolution Youtube video.

For sharpness, I didn't notice a huge observable difference. For games to try, uh, try the ones you intend to play. It doesn't really matter how much sharpness difference there is for games you don't intend to play anyway.

[Thomago]

I presume you can enter this menu in the WiiU's Wii mode?



The "i" in "Settings" is supposed to be pixel perfectly sharp* as long as you don't move the Cursor over it, so this might be nice for starters.

*Due to the Wii's meager signal quality you can actually only see that in 480i mode.

[theclaw]

Isn't the Wii (and vWii) YPbPr native though? Won't you have to go through a conversion process to get to RGB anyway? Whether you convert to limited or full range doesn't seem like it would make a ton of difference in that case.

The internal video is digital. HDMI vWii should look best of all, but we've seen before how Wii had slightly worse YPbPr than Gamecube even though those theoretically were the same process.

[Gunstar]

The previous thread on the WiiU's vWii mode has some good posts, it's not great and seems to have a few issues compared to the Wii.

Here are some great 480p Metroid Prime 2 screen caps from Madao comparing GC, Wii and WiiU/vWii. It looks to me that the image is a fair bit blurrier on vWii.

[panzeroceania]

It's come up a bunch of times, but I still don't know if the concept of RGB range applies to analog signals at all. I don't think it does.

I don't know about analog RGB, but the idea of limited range actually came from analog video, not digital. It has to do with how Luma and Chroma are calculated from RGB math before generating an analog video signal.

[BazookaBen]

Here are some great 480p Metroid Prime 2 screen caps from Madao comparing GC, Wii and WiiU/vWii. It looks to me that the image is a fair bit blurrier on vWii.

Yep, thanks for the link, this is pretty much what I suspected after playing 10 seconds of Xenoblade Chronicles on my new Wii U. Something just seemed off, like it was definitely being scaled to a minor degree.

It stinks that Nintendo fumbled on this, considering they've gotten it so right in the past, with things like 1:1 mode for DS games on the 3DS, and good emulation for most consoles (minus NES of course) on the original Wii's VC.

But I guess they weren't too concerned about people using 480p LCD's or high-frequency CRT's, since that's only a fraction (of a fraction) of a percent of their market.

But yeah, thanks for the help everybody, I'm definitely late to the party on the Wii U and missed all the previous conversations. I guess I'll have to move my original Wii back and forth between my 15kHz CRT and my 140kHz CRT depending on which games I'm playing. But thanks to the Wii U I have two sets of component cables and sensor bars, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

[Extrems]

I don't know about analog RGB, but the idea of limited range actually came from analog video, not digital. It has to do with how Luma and Chroma are calculated from RGB math before generating an analog video signal.

It actually came from SDI. It's to account for filter overshoot and synchronization.

[Einzelherz]

Here are some great 480p Metroid Prime 2 screen caps from Madao comparing GC, Wii and WiiU/vWii. It looks to me that the image is a fair bit blurrier on vWii.

Yep, thanks for the link, this is pretty much what I suspected after playing 10 seconds of Xenoblade Chronicles on my new Wii U. Something just seemed off, like it was definitely being scaled to a minor degree.

It stinks that Nintendo fumbled on this, considering they've gotten it so right in the past, with things like 1:1 mode for DS games on the 3DS, and good emulation for most consoles (minus NES of course) on the original Wii's VC.

But I guess they weren't too concerned about people using 480p LCD's or high-frequency CRT's, since that's only a fraction (of a fraction) of a percent of their market.

But yeah, thanks for the help everybody, I'm definitely late to the party on the Wii U and missed all the previous conversations. I guess I'll have to move my original Wii back and forth between my 15kHz CRT and my 140kHz CRT depending on which games I'm playing. But thanks to the Wii U I have two sets of component cables and sensor bars, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

What's odd about it to me is that proper integer scaling, or even not scaling in this case, always seems to be the easiest to program. Not that I'm a programmer.

[BazookaBen]

What's odd about it to me is that proper integer scaling, or even not scaling in this case, always seems to be the easiest to program. Not that I'm a programmer.

My guess is it's the same issue as with the backwards compatible PS3. They're more focused on the scaling for higher resolutions, and don't do the work to use a different method at lower resolutions. So it gets scaled everywhere. Like, I seem to remember Gradius 3 ouputting at 480i over component even though it output at 240p on a PS2.

[Ikaruga11]

Yep. PS3 doesn't output 240p. Also I believe even the launch model of the PS3 couldn't play every PS2 game. All models of the PS3 can play PS1 games though, but isn't that through emulation?

[Guspaz]

Integer scaling is almost never what you want to do in a general video scaling solution. Its basically the worst possible option for photographic content that most scaling is going to be dealing with. That's why TVs never do integer scaling.

As for the WiiU, the focus there is on scaling 480p content to 1080p. Integer scaling doesn't work there to begin with (that's a 2.25x scale). Ditto for 240p scaling for VirtualConsole, that's not an integer scale there (that's 4.5x).

[BazookaBen]

Integer scaling is almost never what you want to do in a general video scaling solution. Its basically the worst possible option for photographic content that most scaling is going to be dealing with. That's why TVs never do integer scaling.

As for the WiiU, the focus there is on scaling 480p content to 1080p. Integer scaling doesn't work there to begin with (that's a 2.25x scale). Ditto for 240p scaling for VirtualConsole, that's not an integer scale there (that's 4.5x).

Yeah, the thread is about 480p>480p though. So interger scaling is exactly what you want. Instead it's seems to be 1:1.03 or something super weird.

[bobrocks95]

Integer scaling is almost never what you want to do in a general video scaling solution. Its basically the worst possible option for photographic content that most scaling is going to be dealing with. That's why TVs never do integer scaling.

As for the WiiU, the focus there is on scaling 480p content to 1080p. Integer scaling doesn't work there to begin with (that's a 2.25x scale). Ditto for 240p scaling for VirtualConsole, that's not an integer scale there (that's 4.5x).

Yeah, the thread is about 480p>480p though. So interger scaling is exactly what you want. Instead it's seems to be 1:1.03 or something super weird.

Gunstar posted a link to the old thread- 16 pixels are cut off in all resolutions, giving 480p the most overscan and 1080p the least.