• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Wii games upscaled (not natively rendered in higher res) on WiiU

Ahasverus

Member
The Wii-U still transmits in whatever resolution you set your TV to output in...BUT it does not upres the 480p games

It's not that hard people

image.php
 
It looks like a Wii when you plug it into any half decent HDTV via Component cables. Nothing more.

Precisely. The digital (HDMI) vs Analogue (480p component) argument is strictly true but I would bet nobody making it could actually pass a double-blind identification test on a real setup.
 

CLEEK

Member
I've never understood the concept of upscaling. It's a fancy way of saying stretched right?

Yeah, but there are different ways to acheive it. If you have a 480p image (640x480) and want to view that on a 1080p TV (1920x1080), you can't just double the image size or you'd only get a 1280x960 image. So you have to stretch the image by 2-and-a-bit times. That requires a scaling algorithm and takes CPU time to do the maths.

Cheap scalers found in a lot of TVs do a crappy job of producing a clean image. Decent TVs or dedicate scalers (either hardware ones in AV receivers, or ones in consoles) do a better jobs and produce a cleaner image.

Playing a Wii game on a HDTV with and without a good scaler is a night and day difference.
 

Margalis

Banned
I've never understood the concept of upscaling. It's a fancy way of saying stretched right?

Your TV or the console needs to stretch the image in some fashion to display it at the correct res, but there are different ways to upscale an image with different quality results.
 

FyreWulff

Member
could the better look be due to the HDMI input vs. component input?

It's going to look better because it bypasses everyone's cheap black friday TV scaler chip. This is part of the reason why the 360 fared so well, because Microsoft bypassed shitty scalers by having the 360 do it itself before handing off the image to the TV.

So while it's not actually rendering in the native res, your TV isn't pooping all over the image with their questionable scaler and technically should also reduce latency on controller inputs.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Yeah, but there are different ways to acheive it. If you have a 480p image (640x480) and want to view that on a 1080p TV (1920x1080), you can't just double the image size or you'd only get a 1280x960 image. So you have to stretch the image by 2-and-a-bit times. That requires a scaling algorithm and takes CPU time to do the maths.

Cheap scalers found in a lot of TVs do a crappy job of producing a clean image. Decent TVs or dedicate scalers (either hardware ones in AV receivers, or ones in consoles) do a better jobs and produce a cleaner image.

Playing a Wii game on a HDTV with and without a good scaler is a night and day difference.
Oh, makes sense, thanks.
 

Dead

well not really...yet
come to think of it, I never have seen a wii through a decent receiver, im guessing the result with the wii u would be somewhat similar...
 
Note that neither your $1000 HDTV or the scaler (hardware or software) found in the Wii U will do a noticeably different job on upscaling or converting from 480p's pixel aspect ratio to square.

OLD HDTVs often introduce additional input lag on processing non-native signals so this could be good news for some.
 

Risette

A Good Citizen
You're still 'stretching' less pixels across more pixels. Simple as.
No, you're interpolating new pixels from the pixels you start with.

Doesn't mean it'll look better. In fact it often looks worse with ringing and other artifacts introduced in the new pixels caused by poor scaling.
 

jbueno

Member
I bet Wii games would look great played via Wii U upscaled in one of those Sony CRT HDTVs, at least much better than using the Wii´s terrible component out. But nothing beats higher resolution rendering in Dolphin of course.
 

Ydahs

Member
Upscaling can look really good when using the right scaling algorithm. Some 360 games do this really well.

I don't think it'll be much help there though, considering it's a jump from 480p -> 1080p, not 720p to -> 1080p where the latter already looks good on a moderately sized HDTV.
 
Great. Too bad running 480p games on a 480p high quality CRT will still look way better than an HD tv.

Play games on their intended displays. Anyone doing otherwise is doing it wrong.
 
No, you're interpolating them.
It's moot because you have to start getting into high-end dedicated hardware to access significantly superior "interpolation" methods; and even then very few people could tell the difference.

Also most Wii games are aliased messes that no interpolation method could do anything with.
 

Risette

A Good Citizen
It's moot because you have to start getting into high-end dedicated hardware to access significantly superior "interpolation" methods; and even then very few people could tell the difference.

Also most Wii games are aliased messes that no interpolation method could do anything with.
I'm not saying it's magic. I'm saying that it's an actual thing.
 
I don't have a digital camera good enough to make a difference at home, but I can see a major difference in the scaling between my Wii and Wii U when changing inputs.

The Wii U's wii mode output actually puts a slight black border around all sides of the image. The nature of the scaling artifacts is different from the output of my Wii (using component, not composite). Colors on the Wii U side are more vibrant, less washed out by the upscale. I am not sure if one or the other is "cleaner" in terms of upscaling artifacts. But the Wii U side looks less stretched and distorted.

Verdict: I would assume the Wii U is upscaling the image before sending it to the TV. The output looks nothing like the TV's own scaler on the vanilla Wii's input.

Edit: don't overhype expecting it to look vastly superior, I'm just saying it's visibly different. The colors do look richer tho.

This is good news to me.
 
I just think trying to discuss this is confusing people.

This is not going to make a difference to the layman unless they have an old, cheap TV with a ridiculously bad scaler or a TV that introduces display lag when upconverting.
 

Aeana

Member
The difference in image quality between the Wii and WiiU with Wii games is definitely there, but I'm not sure how much of it has to do with the Wii's crappy output chip to begin with. Either way, I'm really happy with it.
 

Jomjom

Banned
Unless your TV is cheap your TVs native upscaler is likely as good if not better than the Wii U's.

This is really only good news for people with the store brand or old TVs.
 

Aeana

Member
Unless your TV is cheap your TVs native upscaler is likely as good if not better than the Wii U's.

This is really only good news for people with the store brand or old TVs.
The Wii has a notoriously bad video output chip - it was considerably worse than the GC. As I mentioned above, I think that could be a major contributing factor to the difference.
 
Unless your TV is cheap your TVs native upscaler is likely as good if not better than the Wii U's.

This is really only good news for people with the store brand or old TVs.

I have a krp500m and if anything the wiiu's upscale is better. Not by a bunch, but it looks good. I assume it now going over HDMI is the big reason, as stated.
 

Risette

A Good Citizen
The Wii has a notoriously bad video output chip - it was considerably worse than the GC. As I mentioned above, I think that could be a major contributing factor to the difference.
Too bad the Wii U doesn't play Gamecube games, or it'd be the definitive way to play them since the Wii output is so bad. GC component cable prices will remain insane...
 
I did some comparison testing earlier. The Wii output on Wii u via HDMI is definitely crisper with richer color than the regular Wii via component on my setup. Sounds better too. It's not a huge difference, but noticeable.

Regular Wii was using Nintendo component cables and being up scaled from 480p by either my Onkyo receiver or my Sony TV, I tried both ways with the same result.
 
It overheated often, too. My Wii still outputs those noise artifacts in addition to the trademark smear filter. Also add to the fact I'm on a fairly old HDTV and I think the Wii U difference could actually be significant.
 
I have a krp500m and if anything the wiiu's upscale is better. Not by a bunch, but it looks good. I assume it now going over HDMI is the big reason, as stated.

How about a comparison between setting the Wii U's video output to 480p (letting your TV upscale it) vs. letting the Wii U upscale to 1080p? That should let you know which has the better scaler.
 

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
How about a comparison between setting the Wii U's video output to 480p (letting your TV upscale it) vs. letting the Wii U upscale to 1080p? That should let you know which has the better scaler.

Would have to be off-screen pics/judgment call.
 
Fuck, he got my hopes up big time with that Zelda pic lol

Yeah, that move did kinda suck. Having no real knowledge of how Dolphin works I was an easy mark and was blown away. We have a couple of old tanks for the Wii stuff, though that was inspiring in comparison to how they look on our plasmas, which treat the Wii fairly well, actually.
 
Man, a Wii U Galaxy HD collection would be awesome!

I still haven't played Galaxy 2, because Wii games looked like ass on my TV. I'm glad to hear Wii U improves the image quality, maybe I'll finally play the game on a Wii U.

A proper HD remaster would be heavenly though.
 
I played some Xenoblade and klonoa earlier today and noticed the colors looked somewhat crisper, and things seemed less blurry. I immediately noticed the difference. It's not gonna make it look like dolphin or whatever, but on my HDTV it looks better than component on wii. Personally I think this Is great. As someone whose wii backlog is quite huge this will be a preferable way to play them IMO.
 
Top Bottom