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

Best way to tell is to set your Wii U to 480p and back to 1080p to compare, don't bother playing it on the Wii for comparison unless somehow it's still upscaled? If you know what I mean?
 

Dead

well not really...yet
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.
Do you have a decent enough camera to take comparison shots?
 

Anth0ny

Member
To avoid confusion, I'll again present how upscaling works compared to upresing.

samuses.jpg


At the very least, true digital output will give a much better PQ than the Wii ever did.

There we go.
 

Eusis

Member
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.
Makes me glad I held off on a bunch of Wii games, the image is alright on my TV but a lot of games do look kind of washed out.
Doesn't this just mean that there are no black bars around the image?
Not all upscaling is equal, some TVs or systems have better hardware/software for it than the other does. You could see this with, say, different PDF readers on a tablet or whatever, some of them do good smoothing, while some look like pixalated messes.
 

Eusis

Member
It could be that. I dunno.
If it is it'd probably be because the Wii U's outputting an HDMI signal itself. HDMI converters far as I could tell looked exactly the same as a Wii with component, surely because it was just interpreting that signal.
 

MThanded

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
Why is this in quotes?

This is exactly what the term means. Is there another kind of upscaling?
Straight upscaling is not inherently going to make anything look better. It's just doubling dimensions. A lot of people don't understand this.
 

cloudyy

Member
Yeah, the question here is does the wiiu handle the upscaling or not. That's all we need to know. Upres-ing won't happen.
 

CLEEK

Member
Err, what the fuck else would your 1080p display be showing other than a 1080p image?

It means that the TV is receiving a 1080p signal, not that is it displaying something in 1080x1920.

When you play on a Wii hooked up to a 1080p TV, the TV will get a 480p signal and do the scaling itself.

Set 720p in your 360's dashboard, and the TV with get a 720p signal, and upscale so it fill the 1080p screen.
 

Eusis

Member
Seriously? No one has a WiiU and a random Wii game to post a screenshot?
To do it justice you'll want to have something capturing the feed to take a screenshot from. A phone pic won't do justice, though it probably will be of SOME use if you do it with a Wii screen too.
 

Ydahs

Member
Can anyone else confirm this? It might just be OP's TV doing the upscaling considering it's been explicitly stated the WiiU won't upscale Wii games.
 

Eusis

Member
Can anyone else confirm this? It might just be OP's TV doing the upscaling considering it's been explicitly stated the WiiU won't upscale Wii games.
The screens above show the resolution as 720p. The Wii U is definitely sending a 720p signal here.

If possible, please take shots of the same or similar images on a Wii to compare, that'll give some idea of how the Wii U could be better at scaling here.
 

CLEEK

Member
The TV is doing the upscaling, not the system of course

When you change the source on your TV, it should flash up what signal it's receiving. If the source for the Wii U HDMI shows 1080p/60 or similar, the the console is doing the scaling, not the TV.
 

Medalion

Banned
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
 

Margalis

Banned
You really need a comparison shot of the same game running on Wii vs Wii U...a shot of just the Wii U version by itself is pretty meaningless.

BUT it does not upres the 480p games

Hence the use of the term "upscale" rather than "upres."

The Wii put out a 480 signal, it didn't upscale. The question here is does the WiiU upscale Wii games and is the upscaling better than what a TV would generally do?
 

CLEEK

Member
Exactly. I took some photos. Shits blurry as hell.

iGgKl9eidS6aj.jpg


i4I2wNkH3jnWI.jpg

There you go, the TV is saying it's receiving a 720p signal. The Wii U is upscaling the Wii games to 720p and outputting that to the TV.

As others have said, the native resolution of the Wii games is the same. But having the Wii U upscale should result in a cleaner image for a lot of folks, as it will do a better job than many TV's crappy scalers.
 
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