WiiU analog output better than Wii?

[BaliBlast]

This might be a long shot to answer, but…

It's widely said the Wii's analog output, even with "official" component cables and progressive scan output, is not great quality. I understand the WiiU HDMI improves Wii's video quality (one youtube video was relatively convincing about better contrast over HDMI). My question is: does anyone know if the WiiU's analog output (especially if playing a Wii game) is better than the Wii's?

[Sixfortyfive]

I understand the WiiU HDMI improves Wii's video quality (one youtube video was relatively convincing about better contrast over HDMI).

I didn't really notice a difference between Wii 480p component and Wii U 480p HDMI. What video are you referencing?

Anyway, I'm not sure if the Wii U's analog output has better or worse quality. I know it can't do 240p over HDMI, but now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if anybody has tested for it over component.

[BaliBlast]

This is the video.

Ignoring the fact that he mislabeled component as composite, most of the Zelda TP and Super Paper Mario captures to my eye have better color over HDMI.

[kerframil]

This might be a long shot to answer, but…

It's widely said the Wii's analog output, even with "official" component cables and progressive scan output, is not great quality. I understand the WiiU HDMI improves Wii's video quality (one youtube video was relatively convincing about better contrast over HDMI). My question is: does anyone know if the WiiU's analog output (especially if playing a Wii game) is better than the Wii's?

I just picked up a Wii U. Thus far, I've only tried it over HDMI at 1080p. One thing I immediately noticed is that the upscaling is atrocious for Wii games. The overall appearance is similar to that of running a Wii at 480p through a Framemeister, only with the H_SCALER setting way off. My original Wii looks better running at 480p over component through my Optoma HD3000 or directly to my Sony W9.

For that matter, I can't actually tell what resolution it's upscaling from because the options for 480i, 576i and 480p that are present on a real Wii are missing. Thus, it occurs to me that the Wii U might fare better in Wii mode if forced to output natively at 480p. I intend to try with a component cable also so, if I can see any difference in quality, I'll report back here.

Still, even if ends up beating the Wii when forced to 480p, I can't ever see myself using the Wii U to run Wii games because having to switch between HD and SD resolutions would be too grating. If Nintendo can't be bothered to implement half-decent upscaling then the least they could do is drop to the native resolution when switching to Wii mode but Nintendo doesn't seem to care much for execution these days.

[kerframil]

So, I did a quick comparison between both my Wii and Wii U running at 480p (with the Wii U still hooked up via HDMI). I made sure that all the display settings were the same for both TV inputs and I used Metroid Prime 3 for testing.

I started with the Wii U. Dropping the Wii U to 480p does indeed eliminate the scaling artifacts that I could see before. That's not surprising as the console no longer has to perform the upscaling. However, I immediately felt that the image looked slightly too soft. That feeling was confirmed by firing up the Wii (*) and alternating between both inputs on the TV. As implausible as this may sound, the Wii emerges as the winner. The picture from the Wii is slightly sharper in a good way. What clinched it was the grey scrolling text shown at the Mii Select screen. The form and detail from the Wii U was obviously worse. Further, I could discern no difference in terms of colour accuracy.

All that is left for me to do is to run the Wii U over a component cable so that I can carry out an apples-to-apples comparison.

* I have an additional copy in the form of Metroid Prime Trilogy.

[BuckoA51]

Eurogamer/DF did some comparisons too:- http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... y-analysis

[BaliBlast]

Thanks for the replies, guys. It's interesting. The WiiU in Wii Mode transmits 720x480 in 480p Wii mode over HDMI. That can be cropped and corrected back to 4:3 or 16:0 with image software. What can't is what I perceive to be the very low quality over analog video in 480p, especially color bleed. Changing my WiiU back to 720p and HDMI looked better, but I don't have a good scaler to compare what the original Wii would look like at the same res. My next step is to try hooking my GC with component up to the same capture card to see if its simply that the capture card (Avermedia) has much worse component video quality than HDMI.