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Wii VGA Cable Impresisons (56k, good luck!)

S

Stabby McSter

Member
This thread was created in honor of all the other Wii VGA question threads and somebody requesting me to take pictures of it in action.
So here it is!

About a week ago I put in an order to see what the big deal was about this Wii VGA cable. I was fairly psyched about it, seeing how I was coming from the Xbox 360 VGA cable (one of the best things I ever bought).
Friday, November 2nd, I was 100% sure it came in. So I rushed home from school, only to find a piece of paper on my door. Apparently, the thing told me that I have to go to the Post Office to pick up the thing. Thinking about the other times I've been to the Post Office, I was sure that it was closed, thus pausing my Wii VGA adventures for now.
Today I go to the Post Office and pick up my cables, and spend about five to ten minutes setting the thing up. WAS THE HASSLE WORTH IT?

Alright, enough wankery, I will show you the pictures now!

camera isn't always indicative of what it looks like, some of the pics look very saturated and such. also, there are some bad pics so bare with me

DSC02379.jpg

So this. This is the menu. Very basic, very clear. Crisp and such.

The first thing on my list to do was try the VC. So I pop in F-Zero X.
DSC02385.jpg

Actually very crisp and clear, the colors pop nicely.
DSC02386.jpg

AUAUGDHGFLKBMdf.bame;mar5kl jrtbklmm@!!!

DSC02387.jpg

So after epic crash, I decide to go to the menu and try out some SNES games.
DSC02388.jpg

DSC02389.jpg

Standard and whatnot. Expected.

I then look through my very limited Wii library and see Sonic. I pop that in (now its time for a warning, apparently the camera took pictures with very dull colours, when in fact the game looked fine. it wasn't as crisp as f-zero x, but thats my only real commentary).
DSC02390.jpg

"SUP BITCHES"

DSC02394.jpg

sonic is a very violent game :(

DSC02395.jpg

L2RUN STRAIGHT AMIRITE

DSC02396.jpg

AG:SUB:OMSRBF:lDKMN;glknjagnm

Apparently I can't play games without running into shit.
But at this point, I'm assuming that Nintendo games are the best looking running at 480P games compared to third-parties. Wii Play somewhat proves my point.

DSC02397.jpg

Wii Play, although fairly basic looking, was one of the better looking Wii games-- vibrant, crisp and clear.

DSC02398.jpg

s;lasdmb.a;,xmb

DSC02400.jpg

please like my high score :(

so then going off with my nintendobestlooking480pgames-theory, i decide to try excitetruck
DSC02401.jpg

so the green is actually a bit more greener, i just suck at taking pictures.

DSC02404.jpg

A:LMBDFS>?MB Dl;sGkn df;labn NOT AGAIN :(

Now a bit curious of the Wii's other functionalities through 480p, I decide to test the photo channel.
DSC02406.jpg

its nice. DUHURRRRR

DSC02408.jpg

hi gaf

DSC02409.jpg

hi internet :(

DSC02411.jpg

then i tried paper mario and it looks fine. i should just stop commenting on these pics :(

okay, so the final drumroll was the legend of zelda: the twilight princess.
i think this happens to be one of the best 480p wii games.
judge for yourself, even though the pics have the colors very dull ;(
DSC02413.jpg

DSC02415.jpg

DSC02416.jpg


In conclusion, the Wii VGA cable is actually pretty nice to use. It's just a hassle to set up.

Also, I tried RE4 for the GCN, and it looks like ass, but thats just me. I'll do any requests of anything (if I have it) if you want pics. I'll try to get pics of RE4 if you guys want.

Aaaaanddd in the event these pics go down, anyone want to rehost them?
 
D

Dot50Cal

Banned
Well, I appreciate the break down but really its easy to make an image on a television screen look a lot better than it really is. Those are some funky scan lines..Is the game running in 480i mode, while the cable is interpreting it as 480p?

Is the cable an official Nintendo product?
 
B

bigmakstudios

Banned
Have you tried using component video cables? If you have, how do they compare to the picture quality produced by the VGA cable?
 
S

Stabby McSter

Member
we had a somewhat big thread awhile back. the cable itself isn't an official nintendo product.

http://www.vdigi.com/index.php

it was a hassle because you have to hook up the cable to a tv and then set the wii to progressive

the games are running at 480p, the scanlines are probably just from the camera picking it up.
the only problem that i can see is that it won't run any 480i games.

i have tried normal component cables (but not that extensively), and i would say the vga cable puts out a better picture quality. i would ask someone who has used the component cable for more than half an hour, though (and through something that wasn't just madden)
 
N

neptunes

Member
wow, that looks pretty crisp (not the games mind you)

is the wii that crisp when using component?

VVVVare they better or worse??VVVV
 
L

Lee N

Membre
If you're going to make a thread showing the image quality of the VGA cable.. you should learn how to take proper photos of your monitor. These are quite bad and your scaling induced quite a bit of interference.

I have the VGA cable for Wii myself, and these images are not very indicative of the image quality.
 
M

MGrant

Member
I've got it, and it's pretty good. About the same quality as on most progressive scan LCDs/DLPs. Since it's still 480p, you're going to see jaggies, but otherwise the colors are great and the image is completely clear.
 
H

HAL_Laboratory

Member
neptunes said:
wow, that looks pretty crisp (not the games mind you)

is the wii that crisp when using component?

VVVVare they better or worse??VVVV
Click to expand...

Looks quite a bit crisper on my set, and yes, component looks really good with Wii.
 
M

minus_273

Banned
HAL_Laboratory said:
Looks quite a bit crisper on my set, and yes, component looks really good with Wii.
Click to expand...


agreed. I have an XCM universal 1080p vgabox i got off play asia and it is amazingly crisp.
 
S

spoon!

Member
chris0701 said:
viewsonic

WOW.
Click to expand...
What aspect ratio is that? Looks too wide for 4:3 but seems too tall for 16:10 o_O
I ask because I'm wondering what this'd look like on my dell2007wfp :x
 
S

Stabby McSter

Member
Barkley's Justice said:
dude these threads crack me up. like i'm supposed to see what you see vis a vis pictures taken off your monitor? hilarious.
Click to expand...
i'm glad i just wasted all that fucking effort for your enjoyment
 
B

Beer Monkey

Member
* Something that may be useful if your monitor is crappy enough to transcode component to VGA worse than this cable does, or does not have a component input. No true quality upgrade is possible using this cable.
 
T

thatbox

Banned
Dot50Cal said:
Well, I appreciate the break down but really its easy to make an image on a television screen look a lot better than it really is. Those are some funky scan lines..Is the game running in 480i mode, while the cable is interpreting it as 480p?
Click to expand...
The big, thick lines are almost certainly because his camera was taking pictures with a shutterspeed greater than 1/60th of a second, guaranteeing that he'd catch the CRT during a screen redraw with its pants down.
 
D

DayShallCome

Member
spoon! said:
What aspect ratio is that? Looks too wide for 4:3 but seems too tall for 16:10 o_O
I ask because I'm wondering what this'd look like on my dell2007wfp :x
Click to expand...

You can change the aspect ratio of the 2407 on the VGA channel. I have this VGA cable for the 2407, works well.
 
H

HyperZone<3

Member
My TV has a VGA out and I'm considering this cable just because the image I'm getting from component is so shite. It looks to me that you've got a better picture quality out of your moniter then you do my TV, so well done sir.

Thank you for your labors.
 
N

Naked Snake

Member
For some reason the Gamecube VGA cable doesn't work with my Samsung HDTV, Dreamcast and laptop work fine, but I get "No Signal" from GC VGA, I wonder if the same would happen when the Wii VGA. I have component cables for GC and Wii, but I wonder if VGA gives a better picture.
 
Rockman

Rockman

Member
I actually just placed an order for one after reading this thread. The Wii has been the only one of the new consoles I haven't been able to play at work simply because it doesn't have an hdmi port. The spare monitor I use for gaming has hdmi/dvi/vga ports on the back so PS3/X360 haven't been a problem. Thanks for the informative post.
 
L

Ledsen

Member
jet1911 said:
I if tried to use one of these with my 1440*900 monitor would it look like sit?
Click to expand...

I tried it on my 1680x1050, and the ghosting was hooooorrible. Not because of the response time on my monitor (it's 5ms and PC games have NO ghosting), it's because monitors are VERY BAD at scaling. The more it has to scale, the more the signal gets delayed, and thus more ghosting. So my advice is not to use this on an LCD monitor unless it has a good scaler. LCD TV:s are fine since they have good scalers in comparison, or (for best results) a CRT monitor which doesn't have to scale at all.
 
V

Verve

Member
Rockman said:
The Wii has been the only one of the new consoles I haven't been able to play at work simply because it doesn't have an hdmi port. The spare monitor I use for gaming has hdmi/dvi/vga ports on the back so PS3/X360 haven't been a problem.
Click to expand...


sometimes i'm asking myself what wonderful jobs some of you have and how your companies manage to still exist...
 
T

Tempy

don't ask me for codes
Verve said:
sometimes i'm asking myself what wonderful jobs some of you have and how your companies manage to still exist...
Click to expand...

I play games at work all the time.
 
D

DeathbyVolcano

Banned
Okay, question for all you TV philes and such.

I have no idea what a VGA cable is. I'm a noob at this sort of thing. I have a 32 inch JVC 720p widescreen, and I have my Wii on it at the moment. Of course, it looks pretty assy. But I only have composite cables. Do I buy the component calbes, or do I buy these VGA cables people are speaking of in this thread?

I'm confused–just tell me which will make everything look better.
 
F

Formless

Member
BrandNew said:
Okay, question for all you TV philes and such.

I have no idea what a VGA cable is. I'm a noob at this sort of thing. I have a 32 inch JVC 720p widescreen, and I have my Wii on it at the moment. Of course, it looks pretty assy. But I only have composite cables. Do I buy the component calbes, or do I buy these VGA cables people are speaking of in this thread?

I'm confused–just tell me which will make everything look better.
Click to expand...
I've the same dilemma, but a VGA cable is the same thing that hooks up your computer to a computer monitor. If your TV doesn't have such a port for that kind of cable, you'll have to get component cables.
 
D

DDayton

(more a nerd than a geek)
Verve said:
sometimes i'm asking myself what wonderful jobs some of you have and how your companies manage to still exist...
Click to expand...

..and how one goes about finding these places.

(Along with pay and benefit information, of course.)
 
6

65536

Banned
Stabby McSter said:
i'm glad i just wasted all that fucking effort for your enjoyment
Click to expand...
Well I thought the pictures were great, thanks, I know how tricky it can be to get good photos off a CRT monitor. The colours in TP have always been very dull though, that's just the style they went with for the game. It could be worse with RE4 though - the Wii one is filtered and manages to look worse than the 'cube one. (rather than just being heavily aliased (jaggy) it's now blurry and aliased)

BrandNew said:
Okay, question for all you TV philes and such.

I have no idea what a VGA cable is. I'm a noob at this sort of thing. I have a 32 inch JVC 720p widescreen, and I have my Wii on it at the moment. Of course, it looks pretty assy. But I only have composite cables. Do I buy the component calbes, or do I buy these VGA cables people are speaking of in this thread?

I'm confused–just tell me which will make everything look better.
Click to expand...
VGA is basically a monitor cable. It typically bypasses most of the processing on an HDTV, so if the TV will accept the signal (some are very picky about the resolutions they accept) it tends to look quite a bit better than Component, or even HDMI.

The only thing is that VGA tends to lock out things like the colour control, so you're seeing games as they're supposed to look, rather than how you prefer them to look, so some people think it looks dull. In reality it's just that that specific game looks dull by design. (eg Twilight Princess)


I ordered one of the VGA leads a few days back, along with an HD Fury to use my PS3 on a monitor as well. :D I'm also trying to get hold of one of these: http://cgi.ebay.com/SONY-PREMIER-PR...yZ116350QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem as there are no good CRT TVs for sale here any more, and the only HDTVs that were released in the UK are all flat panels. (crap)
 
M

Martial Loh

Member
don't suppose you could post a couple of cube games running on your monitor?
I'd actually buy a wii if it meant i could start working through my gamecube-pile-o-games...
 
F

Formless

Member
andrewfee said:
Well I thought the pictures were great, thanks, I know how tricky it can be to get good photos off a CRT monitor. The colours in TP have always been very dull though, that's just the style they went with for the game. It could be worse with RE4 though - the Wii one is filtered and manages to look worse than the 'cube one. (rather than just being heavily aliased (jaggy) it's now blurry and aliased)


VGA is basically a monitor cable. It typically bypasses most of the processing on an HDTV, so if the TV will accept the signal (some are very picky about the resolutions they accept) it tends to look quite a bit better than Component, or even HDMI.

The only thing is that VGA tends to lock out things like the colour control, so you're seeing games as they're supposed to look, rather than how you prefer them to look, so some people think it looks dull. In reality it's just that that specific game looks dull by design. (eg Twilight Princess)


I ordered one of the VGA leads a few days back, along with an HD Fury to use my PS3 on a monitor as well. :D I'm also trying to get hold of one of these: http://cgi.ebay.com/SONY-PREMIER-PR...yZ116350QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem as there are no good CRT TVs for sale here any more, and the only HDTVs that were released in the UK are all flat panels. (crap)
Click to expand...
So if I use a VGA cable for the Wii on a 720p monitor will it look noticeably better than component cables?
 
6

65536

Banned
Formless said:
So if I use a VGA cable for the Wii on a 720p monitor will it look noticeably better than component cables?
Click to expand...
Well, I can't say for certain, but it probably will.
 
K

kkg1701

Member
andrewfee said:
The only thing is that VGA tends to lock out things like the colour control, so you're seeing games as they're supposed to look, rather than how you prefer them to look, so some people think it looks dull. In reality it's just that that specific game looks dull by design. (eg Twilight Princess)
Click to expand...

Ooo, so that's why I thought I got such a weird color when I used my cable (the main menu), doesn't look bad though just so different to what it usually looks like.



jet1911 said:
I if tried to use one of these with my 1440*900 monitor would it look like sit?
Click to expand...

I have no ghosting that I can discern on my 19" 1440x900 lcd monitor (is a LG L194WT I think), however I'm not that good at seeing that in the first place :D.


KK
 
6

65536

Banned
kkg1701 said:
Ooo, so that's why I thought I got such a weird color when I used my cable (the main menu), doesn't look bad though just so different to what it usually looks like.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm still waiting on my lead arriving, so I can't say if that's what is causing the difference or not. As the Wii is only designed with a component output in mind rather than VGA, it's almost certainly outputting video levels (16-235) rather than PC levels (0-255) so unless this cable does the conversion it may end up washing out the image somewhat. It shouldn't really change the overall colour reproduction though, it just might dull the image a little. (but it doesn't look like it is, based on the photos I've seen of it in use at least)
 
D

DefectiveReject

Banned
My Sharp Aquos has a VGA connector and i connect component through this with the included Component>VGA adaptor. would i just be able to connect this cable direct to my TV??
 
R

RiskyChris

Banned
Ledsen said:
I tried it on my 1680x1050, and the ghosting was hooooorrible. Not because of the response time on my monitor (it's 5ms and PC games have NO ghosting), it's because monitors are VERY BAD at scaling. The more it has to scale, the more the signal gets delayed, and thus more ghosting. So my advice is not to use this on an LCD monitor unless it has a good scaler. LCD TV:s are fine since they have good scalers in comparison, or (for best results) a CRT monitor which doesn't have to scale at all.
Click to expand...

What monitor do you use? My 22" widescreen is also native 1680x1050, but I use my 360 on it too.
 
N

Naked Snake

Member
If I knew for sure that this cable would give a better picture than component on my TV then I'd buy it in a heartbeat, even if it's only a very small improvement. I'm such a perfectionist when it comes to getting the best image I can on my TVs, and since I switched from a CRT to an LCD recently, I'm having a hard time getting used to upscaled SD content, and I really want to maximize the image quality on my TV for Super Mario Galaxy.

But I spent $75 on the GC VGA cable and I never used it because I didn't like how it looked on my CRT computer monitor, I also have like every video cable you can think of for every console I own, which is a big waste of money when you think about it, I had forgotten how many cables I have until I looked over them again the other day, here is what I have:

S-Video for SNES/N64/GC
S-Video for PSOne/PS2/PS3
S-Video for Dreamcast
S-Video for XBox
RGB Scart for each of the above (the one for GC is an expensive one as its specially made utilizing the digital port)
Component for each of GC, PS2, XBox, and Wii
VGA for Dreamcast and Gamecube

There's probably more, but you get the idea... The reason I have so many is because at first I could only use S-video, then got a TV with RGB Scart, and then component... and now it's HDMI! I feel bad for spending so much on cables and don't want to risk it with the Wii VGA unless I'm sure that it will look better than component.
 
L

Ledsen

Member
RiskyChris said:
What monitor do you use? My 22" widescreen is also native 1680x1050, but I use my 360 on it too.
Click to expand...

I have the HP w2207. I'm guessing your 360 looks good because the resolution is quite close to the monitors native res so it doesn't have to scale that much (=less delay and less ghosting). Maybe someone who knows more about this stuff can confirm this?

Like I said, the ghosting on my monitor was REALLY BAD. At first I thought it was a motion blur filter or something, but then I tried on my SDTV and everything was sharp.
 
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