480i widescreen CRT for Wii & GC?

[Ikaruga11]

As I said before, it bears repeating that filters would not be picked up on HDTVs nor Consumer Grade CRTs.

Actually you can if you have a good enough display. You're underestimating the clarity and precision of high quality consumer displays, whether they be CRTs, LCDs, Plasmas, OLED, etc. HDTV is also a vague umbrella term. A lot of CRTs are capable of HD resolutions, such as BVMs, a couple PVMs, PC monitors and consumer HD CRTs (the FW900 has a max resolution of 2304x1440). You do realize that there are professional and broadcast LCDs and OLEDs, right?

Comparing 480i and 480p outputs of the Wii on HDTV would not render the same result as it would comparing 480i to 480p on a broadcast monitor at all due to the fact that HDTVs can not process 480i pictures the same way that a CRT would, nor does a 480p look like on a native display as it does when scaled on an HDTV, also there is the fact that HDTV work according to their own native resolution restrictions, which does not yield the same resulting quality from a CRT for the simple reason that CRTs are not restricted by native resolutions.

That is true, but it's a moot point simply because you can capture the Wii's output directly via capture card and compare the 480i output against the 480p output. Displays introduce too many variables and are thus the reason we upload direct capture footage instead of shoot videos of the game on the TV/monitor. We're talking strictly about the output itself, not the displays that it shows up on.

The Wii is an 720x480 console that was meant to be used with CRTs

640x480* console

also there is the fact that video games native signal is RGB but RGB is disabled in NTSC Wiis and the best NTSC Wiis can work with are Component Cables which furtherly decreases the quality away from it's original look, RGB is 4 video signals vs 3 for component.

This is complete bullshit. The GameCube and Wii's internal framebuffer uses the YCbCr color space, not RGB. Are you telling me that Nintendo would design their games with RGB in mind when they've designed their console to output in YCbCr? Are you telling me that the Japanese and North American GameCubes/Wiis are displaying the wrong signal, while the PAL GameCubes/Wiis are displaying the right signal?

At this point, between the stretching, scaling and whatnot the picture is so muddled up that attempting any sort of proper comparison becomes worthless and the apparent or unapparent blurriness of 480p should be the least of your worries.

Good thing we do direct captures and not compare by using a camera.

my point was that the 480p output on the Wii was relatively blurrier than the 480i output on the Wii

Except it's not and you still haven't shown any evidence yet.

Perhaps I should break out the 240p test suite and take photos of 240p/480i/480p output from a Wii to the OSSC to settle this. 480i and 480p on the OSSC have identical horizontal resolution, so softer output would be obvious even in 480i.

That would be really great, Guspaz. Appreciate your efforts man. Do you have a capture card by chance?

[peterwright1234]

Lawfer are you using official cables? Guspaz are you using a broadcast crt or a very similar crt? Let make sure were all using the same stuff.

[Lawfer]

Lawfer are you using official cables?

I am using the official Wii component cables when using my US Wii and I also have a European Wii which supports RGB output when connected with the official Nintendo Euroscart cable, 480p is only possible through Component cables though.

Both my US and European Wiis are both RVL-001 with GameCube controller ports.

[Guspaz]

I don't have a capture card. I can either display with 1:1 (no scaling) on my U2711, or I can display it on my 80" projection screen using a projector that has sharp scaling, or I can display it on my 15KHz PVM (a 600TVL 14" unit). The U2711 will probably be best since it will avoid the effects of any display scaling that the projector would have, or the variances in sharpness that a CRT would have. Also, taking decent photos of CRTs is really hard even with the camera on manual mode.

My NTSC Wii was purchased a few months after launch (it was the very first opportunity to get it, and still required lining up for hours before the store opened), and is quite likely the same revision as the initial launch units. I use an official Nintendo component cable, and for the purpose of the test I could connect it directly to the OSSC instead of my normal cable path from the Wii to the OSSC, which includes two switches, a GARO, and a PVM.

[Guspaz]

Here we are.

Camera (Canon S95) was on manual, handheld, 1/200 shutterspeed, F2.0 aperture, ISO 400. The photos were shot as RAW and imported into lightroom. The only adjustments that I made in Lightroom were to unify the whitebalance (I had forgot to lock it) on all the photos, enable lens profile correction and chromatic aberration removal, and then to crop/rotate them all the match as closely as possible. They were exported as sRGB 24-bit TIF and then converted to PNG in Photoshop for upload.

They are presented here at their full resolution in PNG. The image sizes vary a bit as they were all shot at slightly different distances, but the individual LCD pixels are visible anyhow. You'll want to look near the centre of the image, as that is where there is the least lens distortion and chromatic aberration.

Console was an NTSC Wii, connected directly to an OSSC via the official component cables, using the default OSSC settings. That is line double mode for 240p, bob deinterlacing for 480i, and passthrough for 480p. All of these produce a 480p output signal from the OSSC. Software was the 240p test suite, v1.9, loaded via the homebrew channel. The following resolution modes were tested, and are presented in order: 240p, 480i scaled, 480p scaled, 480i mixed, 480p mixed.

Here are the photos (presented as links because they're large):

• • 240p
  • 480i scaled
  • 480p scaled
  • 480i mixed
  • 480p mixed

What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, firstly there is definitely no blur filter on the Wii, the 480p output does not bleed between pixels. Second, the Wii is definitely outputting 640x480, both in 4:3 and 16:9 mode. We can see from the screenshots that the OSSC is clearly sampling 1:1 for the pixels, and the 240p test suite confirms that this is 640 pixels wide (I counted using the overscan screen). When you change the Wii's aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9, the active area doesn't change (the OSSC samples the same number of horizontal pixels and the image width is unchanged), it's just that the image appears squished. You're expected to set your TV to 16:9 to compensate.

Further confirmation: I set my monitor to "fill" mode, which forces the signal from the OSSC to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and I then set the sampling active area to 640 pixels and adjusted the back porch accordingly. The 640 pixel wide image was the same width as the OSSC screen. I'm not sure how a TV would know to do this, though. I would expect pillarboxing on a TV in 16:9 mode, since the Wii is outputting 640 pixels on a 720 pixel wide signal...

[ZellSF]

Since I'm bored anyway:

Extrems already posted a link to a comparison image. A clean, seemingly native resolution capture of a Wii running 480p and 480i over component. That's the best comparison basis we have to go on and IMO the difference is negligible.

But you Lawfer, insist that it's an intentional filter, that's somehow not applied to 480i because of reasons you haven't explained. Despite logic dictating that applying a blur filter to 480i makes more sense. Despite the fact that 99% of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Despite that according to you a professional CRT capable of 480p is needed to see it.

And someone got approval to spend time and money developing such a feature? All logic and common sense goes against what you're saying. That's why I was saying you're trolling, because it's nicer than assuming you really are this stupid.

That's not to say 480i can't look sharper. It can be a weird thing with the signal that makes it very slightly sharper, it can be your monitor somehow displaying 480i sharper, it can be your brain somehow interpreting the 480i flicker as a sharper image. If you ask me, all the evidence we've seen points to 480i not being worth the trade-off in terms of flicker.

If 480i is noticeable sharper and if it's worth it is a valid discussion, but this bullshit about there being an intentional filter in place has to got stop. The bullshit about it being commonly accepted that 480i is significantly sharper has got to stop. Hanging on to those two points despite everything to the contrary just shows it's impossible to have a discussion with you.

[peterwright1234]

That's not to say 480i can't look sharper. It can be a weird thing with the signal that makes it very slightly sharper, it can be your monitor somehow displaying 480i sharper, it can be your brain somehow interpreting the 480i flicker as a sharper image. If you ask me, all the evidence we've seen points to 480i not being worth the trade-off in terms of flicker.

The trade off is what it has come down to for me. I was having a hard time deciding which one i liked better. I think I'll stick to 480p even though 480i does appear slightly sharper with better colors to me. 480p is just easier on the eyes.

[Ikaruga11]

It's not just the lack of flicker either. 480p has noticeably smoother animation in games that run at 60FPS like Mario Kart Wii and Brawl.