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[Mega]

OK CRT Experts - I need a hand here.

I bought a Sony PVM and it appears that something happened in shipping; the colors are all messed up. See image below.

I tried a degaussing coil, but that didn't make any substantial change. The right edge of the display has the correct colors, and while using the coil, there are areas within the magnetic field which will display the correct colors. Tried several inputs, and it seems consistent over RGB, S-Video and composite inputs, so it's not an input issue. I suspect there's a relatively easy way to fix it, but my very low level of CRT maintenance expertise is exhausted. Any suggestions?

Looks like your CRT has suffered permanent damage to the aperture grille/shadow mask as a result of shipping damage. Ask for a full refund because it can't be fixed.

 

[Galdelico]

Arg, I hoped my phone could do something a bit less shitty than this, but I overestimated it. :/ Nonetheless, I thought to post at least the (barely) lookable shots.

OSSC with my new LG 27MU67.

Especially the colors look nothing like in those pictures, but they are indeed spectacular. I'm going for a proper CRT feel, so I do actually prefer the slightly softer output of Line X2 - compared to the extra bright but a bit too 'digital' appeal of Line X3 - as it genuinely renders an analogue-like picture, with the pixel-perfect geometry that I've never achieved on my CRTs.

I promise better photos in the future. ^^;

 

[March of the Crabs]

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I'm just getting back into retro gaming. Is there anyway to run Gamecube and N64 on my 1080p TV without looking like garbage beyond spending $200ish on the GCN component cable?

 

[ehnox]

So people I'm in the middle of something here and I would like some really deep technical advice. I have a Sony BVM-14G5U , hooked to this same monitor I have a SNES,N64,WII,PS1,PS2 and a Mega Drive jap model , all connected to a bandridge SCART switch but the Wii ,its using component and I play gamecube games in it.

Everything works perfect, but there is still a last console I want to hook to this gorgeous professional monitor....The might eternal NES

Unfortunately the official NES is costing way to much here, and believe I've way too much spent money on cables , switches and what not, so I choose to buy a Retron 1 to play NES games, it only outputs composite just like the NES, well my problem is that the BVM do not accept composite not even S-Video, so I started reading and trying to find a way to hook this console in my beloved monitor. I ended up finding this :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Composite-Video-to-RGsB-RGB-Component-Video-Converter-/120332220654

I want to know what kind of mambo jambo this pricey shit does actually???
Is this thing for real??? Can it actually up convert to RGB from composite???

Another way I was thinking is using this DVDR to capture from composite to component

Philips Dvdr 615 Recorder

Well I don't know if it would work since I've no knowledge of what kind of processing this DVDR does to send a composite signal to its component output, or is it only pass trough?

 

[Timu]

Unfortunately the official NES is costing way to much here, and believe I've way too much spent money on cables , switches and what not, so I choose to buy a Retron 1 to play NES games, it only outputs composite just like the NES, well my problem is that the BVM do not accept composite not even S-Video, so I started reading and trying to find a way to hook this console in my beloved monitor. I ended up finding this :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Composite-Video-to-RGsB-RGB-Component-Video-Converter-/120332220654

I want to know what kind of mambo jambo this pricey shit does actually???
Is this thing for real??? Can it actually up convert to RGB from composite???

I heard some people liked using it. Basically it takes the composite and convert it to RGB as a signal but still keep all the composite flaws. I have a upscaler like that that converts composite and svideo to RGB and works flawlessly. Be warned that some may not detect 240p while other types are suppose to.

 

[Peltz]

So people I'm in the middle of something here and I would like some really deep technical advice. I have a Sony BVM-14G5U , hooked to this same monitor I have a SNES,N64,WII,PS1,PS2 and a Mega Drive jap model , all connected to a bandridge SCART switch but the Wii ,its using component and I play gamecube games in it.

Everything works perfect, but there is still a last console I want to hook to this gorgeous professional monitor....The might eternal NES

Unfortunately the official NES is costing way to much here, and believe I've way too much spent money on cables , switches and what not, so I choose to buy a Retron 1 to play NES games, it only outputs composite just like the NES, well my problem is that the BVM do not accept composite not even S-Video, so I started reading and trying to find a way to hook this console in my beloved monitor. I ended up finding this :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Composite-Video-to-RGsB-RGB-Component-Video-Converter-/120332220654

I want to know what kind of mambo jambo this pricey shit does actually???
Is this thing for real??? Can it actually up convert to RGB from composite???

Another way I was thinking is using this DVDR to capture from composite to component

Philips Dvdr 615 Recorder

Well I don't know if it would work since I've no knowledge of what kind of processing this DVDR does to send a composite signal to its component output, or is it only pass trough?

Bvm doesn't take composite?

 

[Voliko]

Anyone with an OSSC know how to make 480i / 480p display as 4:3?

 

[sixteen-bit]

Arg, I hoped my phone could do something a bit less shitty than this, but I overestimated it. :/ Nonetheless, I thought to post at least the (barely) lookable shots.

OSSC with my new LG 27MU67.







Especially the colors look nothing like in those pictures, but they are indeed spectacular. I'm going for a proper CRT feel, so I do actually prefer the slightly softer output of Line X2 - compared to the extra bright but a bit too 'digital' appeal of Line X3 - as it genuinely renders an analogue-like picture, with the pixel-perfect geometry that I've never achieved on my CRTs.

I promise better photos in the future. ^^;

you should share these in the 240p thread

 

[ehnox]

I heard some people liked using it. Basically it takes the composite and convert it to RGB as a signal but still keep all the composite flaws. I have a upscaler like that that converts composite and svideo to RGB and works flawlessly. Be warned that some may not detect 240p while other types are suppose to.

thanks for the information, could you tell me which upscaler is this?

 

[Timu]

thanks for the information, could you tell me which upscaler is this?

It's the Inline IN1402, I got it from ebay. So that upscaler you listed should do the same thing. I've been using mine since 2015 and with great results.

 

[Mega]

Bvm doesn't take composite?

They use input cards so whether it can take a signal type depends on what cards you have on the back.

my problem is that the BVM do not accept composite not even S-Video, so I started reading and trying to find a way to hook this console in my beloved monitor. I ended up finding this :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Composite-Video-to-RGsB-RGB-Component-Video-Converter-/120332220654

I have the opposite, RGB to Composite/S-Video version of this, same Arcadia CA seller too. I can't vouch for this exact version but mine works well.

 

[Galdelico]

you should share these in the 240p thread

As soon as I'll grab some decent pics, sure. Even though they aren't good in the slightest, I didn't want to waste the above shots, so I thought to drop them here, instead.

Anyone with an OSSC know how to make 480i / 480p display as 4:3?

If I remember correctly, you have to rely on your display's ratio control settings, for that.

 

[Beer Monkey]

My old Panasonic DVD recorder could convert composite to component on the fly (not just for the recording, where it has to), I'd imagine most of them do. The Panny in particular had a really good comb filter so the results were quite good, better than most cheap converters and honestly most HDTVs. Of course these have a delay but for capturing one probably would not care.

 

[Voliko]

As soon as I'll grab some decent pics, sure. Even though they aren't good in the slightest, I didn't want to waste the above shots, so I thought to drop them here, instead.



If I remember correctly, you have to rely on your display's ratio control settings, for that.

Thanks, yeah just had to find that on my monitor. I'm no expert but 480i/480p looks pretty good to me. Plus now that I'm not using a CRT as my main display I can output 480p easily. Mostly been using it for 240p though.

Best purchase I've made in a while. Zero picture noise and lag unlike framemeister. Wish I hadn't dumped money into buying multiple broadcast monitors the past couple of years but at least I didn't pay more than $100 for any of them

 

[ehnox]

My old Panasonic DVD recorder could convert composite to component on the fly (not just for the recording, where it has to), I'd imagine most of them do. The Panny in particular had a really good comb filter so the results were quite good, better than most cheap converters and honestly most HDTVs. Of course these have a delay but for capturing one probably would not care.

That's really interesting, so I dig more information and it actually fits your explanation
That Philips DVDR is being sold as broken, but its only the drive that's not reading nor recording and I just found out that it is an actual computer DVD-RW IDE drive that can be easily replaced, well I actually don care, I just need the inputs and outputs working but watch some DVD movies I have laying around here would be a bonus, and the guy is selling for dirty cheap

So the philips DVDR 615 uses a VIP SAA7118 Multistandard video decoder with adaptive comb filter and component video input, according to the data sheet:
"Philips X-VIP is a new multistandard comb filter video
decoder chip with additional component processing,
providing high quality, optionally scaled, video.
The SAA7118 is a combination of a four-channel analog
preprocessing circuit including source selection,
anti-aliasing filter and ADC with succeeding decimation
filters from 27 to 13.5 MHz data rate. Each preprocessing
channel comes with an automatic clamp and gain control.
The SAA7118 combines a Clock Generation Circuit
(CGC), a digital multistandard decoder containing
two-dimensional chrominance/luminance separation by an
adaptive comb filter and a high performance scaler,
including variable horizontal and vertical up and
downscaling and a brightness, contrast and saturation
control circuit."

That's all beautifull techy words but I needed an actual opinion from someone who actually played video games in it, then I found it on digitalpress.com forum:

" - What I was saying is that I HAVE been doing this for nearly ten years successfully and was just wondering if anyone else was trying or had tried it with the same results. As for the picture being improved, I would say that it is brighter, sharper, and with deeper colors. As previously mentioned, it's on an old, cheap (even back then) Philips DVD-Recorder. As for lag, I have not once noticed any"

 

[missile]

yes, that was among the first things I tried.

Looks like your CRT has suffered permanent damage to the aperture grille/shadow mask as a result of shipping damage. Ask for a full refund because it can't be fixed.

Could also be the case that the color purity magnet got skewed a bit, which
would also lead to such color distortions. If so, it would be an "easy" fix
for someone who knows about it. Doing it yourself without any knowledge would
mess up the whole thing much further, for, there is sort of a procedure to
follow when adjusting for color convergence.

 

[ehnox]

Looks like your CRT has suffered permanent damage to the aperture grille/shadow mask as a result of shipping damage. Ask for a full refund because it can't be fixed.

I had a similar problem with my BVM but its was really subtle , the bottom left corner had this purple thing , I got one small magnet from these butterflies my mom have attached on the refrigerators door and placed with duck tape near it and its gone , but if I remove the magnet it will come back, so I removed the front cover, placed it again and put it back to cover it.

 

[Peltz]

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I'm just getting back into retro gaming. Is there anyway to run Gamecube and N64 on my 1080p TV without looking like garbage beyond spending $200ish on the GCN component cable?

Emulation.

Wii can also do N64 (emulation) and GCN (native) at 480p with very affordable component cables.

 

[NormalFish]

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I'm just getting back into retro gaming. Is there anyway to run Gamecube and N64 on my 1080p TV without looking like garbage beyond spending $200ish on the GCN component cable?

Have you tried your gcn on your TV with svideo? Depending one what you're looking for that might be sufficient. Else wise, there are few gamecube mods for higher quality video being released or worked on, though development of more consumer friendly units seems to be a bumpy road lately.

For N64, you'll want some sort of scaler or linedoubler, which will likely run you quite a bit if you want something versatile or designed for games.

 

[Peltz]

Have you tried your gcn on your TV with svideo? Depending one what you're looking for that might be sufficient. Else wise, there are few gamecube mods for higher quality video being released or worked on, though development of more consumer friendly units seems to be a bumpy road lately.

For N64, you'll want some sort of scaler or linedoubler, which will likely run you quite a bit if you want something versatile or designed for games.

Yep, and N64 will also require a mod for the best results on an HDTV.

By the way, the same S-video cable will also work on N64 if you go that route for GCN. It will likely give a worse picture due to the 240p resolution (depending on your HDTV) but it's worth a shot.

 

[CrashPrime]

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I'm just getting back into retro gaming. Is there anyway to run Gamecube and N64 on my 1080p TV without looking like garbage beyond spending $200ish on the GCN component cable?

I have always believed the Wii is the best jumping point for most HDTV needs. Built in N64 emulation and it will do GCN natively (make sure to grab a model with GCN controller and memory ports). Component cables get you 98% of the way there compared to an actual GCN. You really only miss out on the game boy player.

 

[NormalFish]

Yeah the Wii is a good option. Video isn't quite as crisp but playing on a 1080p TV with its internal scaler it won't make a difference, especially given you don't want to shell out for component cables.

 

[NormalFish]

Got my Wii and SFC from storage this weekend. Waiting on cables and then I'll test them out with the OSSC. Should be interesting.

 

[Wounded]

Speaking of the Wii, how do Virtual console games look when running on HDTVs?



I've been on a bit of a Final Fantasy kick and the best way I can see to play SNES Final Fantasy 3/6, without spending a ton on a cart is on the virtual console. Do games fare OK?

 

[Shin Johnpv]

Argghh, looks like my component cables for my PS2 are going, played it tonight and there was a distinct lack of red color. Now to swim the sea of cables and figure out what's not shit for replacements.

 

[NormalFish]

Argghh, looks like my component cables for my PS2 are going, played it tonight and there was a distinct lack of red color. Now to swim the sea of cables and figure out what's not shit for replacements.

what's your set up like? Might look in to swapping to SCART.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

Argghh, looks like my component cables for my PS2 are going, played it tonight and there was a distinct lack of red color. Now to swim the sea of cables and figure out what's not shit for replacements.

The official PS3 cables are good if you can find those new.

 

[televator]

Argghh, looks like my component cables for my PS2 are going, played it tonight and there was a distinct lack of red color. Now to swim the sea of cables and figure out what's not shit for replacements.

What brand are they? Either way, it's possible that its just the contact on the red jack that is comming loose. That can be easily fixed with some solder if you can take the plug apart.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

Could also just try spraying deoxit on the contacts and in the AV port.

 

[Beer Monkey]

EDIT: Oops, meant to post this in the retro thread. Oh well.

Local arcade owner is such a great guy. He buys big lots of games, consoles, and accessories from Japan and sells them locally (not online) at super fair prices. Today I got a Hudson Fami (15 pin) controller from him for 10 bucks. Works great, and feels great! Slightly larger than Nintendo Fami controllers. Will use this with my Analogue NT Mini.

 

[sixteen-bit]

Joycard!

 

[NormalFish]

Anyone know of a site that sells modded Saturns so I can play games from an SD card without worrying about region? Curious about pricing.

 

[Fuzzy]

Anyone know of a site that sells modded Saturns so I can play games from an SD card without worrying about region? Curious about pricing.

Let me guess, you're watching the MLiG live stream right now?

 

[NormalFish]

Let me guess, you're watching the MLiG live stream right now?

I saw it while browsing my youtube feed which is what reminded me lol. I've been interested in getting a saturn for shmups for a while, though.

 

[Shin Johnpv]

what's your set up like? Might look in to swapping to SCART.

I'm kind of at my limit right now for SCART connections.

The official PS3 cables are good if you can find those new.

I'll have to look around, I saw some ebay auctions for them but prices were a bit high.

What brand are they? Either way, it's possible that its just the contact on the red jack that is comming loose. That can be easily fixed with some solder if you can take the plug apart.

These are official sony ones, I'll have to give that a check.

 

[KC-Slater]

I still want to do some testing but I think 240p over HDMI is a "hidden jewel" of connecting all this shit up. If I can find a reliable VGA to HDMI unit that does no scaling, a simple SCART->VGA cable or Sync Strike to pair it with should be all you need, assuming your TV is cool with 240pHDMI which from what I can tell most are.

I already have a setup to make this happen but it's a bit more complicated.

I ordered a $6 converter that I think will have the right chip for this to test (I want to check compatibility and image quality) but I honestly don't expect to have it in hand until late February or maybe March. I figured for $6 why not -- worst case scenario I have a way to hook up VGA devices when that connector's no longer available on modern monitors.

Has anyone tried the Hammerhead? I was thinking about using this with a Dreamcast a year or two ago, but ending up going with an OSSC. It doesn't list 240p as supported, but it's also highly unlikely that it would've been tested for it specifically in this day and age, so it may have undocumented support.

Has anyone used this device that can share their experience?

 

[Laevateinn]

Anyone know of a site that sells modded Saturns so I can play games from an SD card without worrying about region? Curious about pricing.

I got a Rhea on Saturday but Majima Goro threatened me so I haven't installed it yet. I paid 130 euros. Good luck getting one if that's the route you're looking to go. It took me several months to even get an opportunity to send him money.

 

[NormalFish]

Has anyone tried the Hammerhead? I was thinking about using this with a Dreamcast a year or two ago, but ending up going with an OSSC. It doesn't list 240p as supported, but it's also highly unlikely that it would've been tested for it specifically in this day and age, so it may have undocumented support.

Has anyone used this device that can share their experience?

I think this was discussed a little while back. Might try running a search.

I got a Rhea on Saturday but Majima Goro threatened me so I haven't installed it yet. I paid 130 euros. Good luck getting one if that's the route you're looking to go. It took me several months to even get an opportunity to send him money.

130 isn't bad. I'm not going to get one in the near future, mostly just interested in cost itself like i said.

 

[Kawika]

Phonedork from youtube clued me in on something I was totally unaware of. The Wii is actually Anamorphic wide screen. It just stretches out the 4:3 image. Now I am starting to wonder if it does some tricks with 480p. Or is the console truly a 480i machine.

I have been trying so hard to get my Wii to look halfway decent. Perhaps I should just feed it into my XRGB using my Gamecube settings and see if that works. I have been using the Firebrand X profile.

No one seems to care about the Wii but I kind of discovered it after the fact and most threads dedicated to the Wii don't really give a shit about the image quality.

If anyone has some settings on their XRGB that they use I would love to give it a shot. My tv doesn't really like the Wii for whatever reason so it kind of always looks like crap. I wonder if the official cables would make much of a difference. I've been using Monoprice cables since I got it.

 

[NormalFish]

Phonedork from youtube clued me in on something I was totally unaware of. The Wii is actually Anamorphic wide screen. It just stretches out the 4:3 image. Now I am starting to wonder if it does some tricks with 480p. Or is the console truly a 480i machine.

I have been trying so hard to get my Wii to look halfway decent. Perhaps I should just feed it into my XRGB using my Gamecube settings and see if that works. I have been using the Firebrand X profile.

No one seems to care about the Wii but I kind of discovered it after the fact and most threads dedicated to the Wii don't really give a shit about the image quality.

If anyone has some settings on their XRGB that they use I would love to give it a shot. My tv doesn't really like the Wii for whatever reason so it kind of always looks like crap. I wonder if the official cables would make much of a difference. I've been using Monoprice cables since I got it.

I'm not sure the wii is consistently 720x480. There are definitely games that, even if their resolution is 720x480, they are clearly designed with 16:9 stretch in mind. It's kind of an awkward system due to that. truly between generations.

 

[Timu]

I'm not sure the wii is consistently 720x480. There are definitely games that, even if their resolution is 720x480, they are clearly designed with 16:9 stretch in mind. It's kind of an awkward system due to that. truly between generations.

It seems like that on my end when I use my capture card.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

The Wii is actually Anamorphic wide screen. It just stretches out the 4:3 image.

I don't think this is really accurate. The Wii (and Gamecube) internally generates non square pixels for both 16:9 and 4:3. They just happen to be wider non-square pixels over widescreen.

Now I am starting to wonder if it does some tricks with 480p. Or is the console truly a 480i machine

It's real deal 480p. There's an enormous amount of documentation about how it works online, especially if you go digging for SDK documentation.

I have been trying so hard to get my Wii to look halfway decent. Perhaps I should just feed it into my XRGB using my Gamecube settings and see if that works. I have been using the Firebrand X profile.

I've found it looks best just direct into my TV. The FM's 480p is a bit weird. I've also found firebrand's profiles to be pretty off in a lot of cases, especially on systems like the Wii that internally render to different target resolutions.

No one seems to care about the Wii but I kind of discovered it after the fact and most threads dedicated to the Wii don't really give a shit about the image quality.

If anyone has some settings on their XRGB that they use I would love to give it a shot. My tv doesn't really like the Wii for whatever reason so it kind of always looks like crap. I wonder if the official cables would make much of a difference. I've been using Monoprice cables since I got it.

The Wii's in a weird spot right now. Some of it's games (mostly the more notable Nintendo stuff) are weirdly expensive but there's a huge variety of stuff on that platform that's super cheap. It's a good time to be buying for it.

You might want to try messing with some of the advanced controls for picture on your TV. There could be something getting applied to your component inputs that's not quite right.

I use nicer quality Nintendo branded third party cables I got at best buy a while back. It looks almost identical to my GameCube's component, minus a bit of color accuracy.

Monoprice is generally pretty good but you get what you pay for. Their cables come in a wide variety of shielding configurations.

 

[Madao]

i've seen the Wii always do 720x480. what changes is how much of the frame is covered by the games.
most games leave a black boder only visible with capture cards and TVs that display all the image hidden by overscan. most TVs hide this border due to how they handle 480p.
there's very few games that use this border area (i only remember Kirby's Epic Yarn doing this since i noticed the capture card footage looked different back in the day)
also, i think the only resolution that changes is the internal one but you can't see that since output is always scaled to 720x480. you can see when emulationg that several games's internal res is different.

the weirdest games are those that are 16:9 with black bars on top and bottom when set to 4:3. i guess devs wanted to save time by not coding 2 different aspect ratios at that point since it happens with late Wii games mostly (Zelda Skyward Sword and NSMBW are some popular games that do this)

You might want to try messing with some of the advanced controls for picture on your TV. There could be something getting applied to your component inputs that's not quite right.

i bet it's something like this. my HDTV does that to the component input. when i use the OSSC to convert the signal to HDMI, it looks way clearer than what i get when plugging it directly to the component input.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

It's not just the frame, there's scaling internal to the GC/WIi hardware.

OK if I just quote research I did earlier in this thread?

There's this for one:

Firstly(-ish), there's the Wii/GC framebuffer. This is the maximum 640×528 box where everything you ever see on your screen is placed, in digital form

The video encoder is the step right before the image gets shunted down the cable to your display; the place where the picture is converted to an analog television signal. The video encoder's resolution is always 720 pixels wide (vertically, it can do a variety of resolutions; 240p and 480p are the ones we're looking at here). The video encoder receives the image from the framebuffer and can perform some simple operations on it before sending it to the TV, like positioning it (usually, this means putting the image in the center) and setting the horizontal scaling. The video encoder can scale the image's width to as wide as 720 pixels, but on most TVs, a large portion (32 or more pixels) of this is not displayed.

The video encoder must be doing some blurry horizontal scaling of whatever the game native res is to exactly 720 pixels wide. That would explain Wii softness.

I've noticed first hand games like Fortune Street use notably lower horizontal resolution than other games on Wii.

Edit: I'd look up more but trying to google Wii related stuff is painful. Man there are some stupid people out there.

Edit2: God even looking for Wii screenshots is painful. Fucking emulator screenshots all over the place, or the lowest resolution some preview site could possibly use in 2008.

I've been doing some more reading about Wii framebuffers. I was curious what's different in how the GC operates since they're so similar. Sounds like copy to XFB doesn't need to stretch out the full resolution, but as far as I can tell Wii titles must generally do that. This would also explain why GC titles on Wii don't look nearly as soft as many Wii titles.

If the GCVideo is outputting from the XFB then you'd probably still have the scaling issues present on Wii, and wouldn't bypass it.

 

[NormalFish]

That all makes more sense. As I was responding I was doubting the fact that it was ever not 720x480 and yet I knew from my own experience that the presentation of different games differs pretty dramatically in the way some older 240p or early 6th gen games would.

 

[Mega]

Phonedork from youtube clued me in on something I was totally unaware of. The Wii is actually Anamorphic wide screen. It just stretches out the 4:3 image. Now I am starting to wonder if it does some tricks with 480p. Or is the console truly a 480i machine.

This isn't true if you're implying that Wii widescreen is merely a 4:3 image stretched to a fucked up, distorted wide picture. In simplest terms, it's a scrunched up image (with more of the game visible on screen) that the Wii expands to 720x480, then your TV's scaler does the rest of the work to bring it to 16:9. The final image is softer than native 16:9 but it's all the correct proportions.

i've seen the Wii always do 720x480. what changes is how much of the frame is covered by the games.
most games leave a black boder only visible with capture cards and TVs that display all the image hidden by overscan. most TVs hide this border due to how they handle 480p.
there's very few games that use this border area (i only remember Kirby's Epic Yarn doing this since i noticed the capture card footage looked different back in the day)
also, i think the only resolution that changes is the internal one but you can't see that since output is always scaled to 720x480. you can see when emulationg that several games's internal res is different.

the weirdest games are those that are 16:9 with black bars on top and bottom when set to 4:3. i guess devs wanted to save time by not coding 2 different aspect ratios at that point since it happens with late Wii games mostly (Zelda Skyward Sword and NSMBW are some popular games that do this)

i bet it's something like this. my HDTV does that to the component input. when i use the OSSC to convert the signal to HDMI, it looks way clearer than what i get when plugging it directly to the component input.

This is my exact experience. However, I keep the Wii at 4:3 (640x480). Wii output is blurrier at 720x480.

Windowed 960p on my HDTV is second best to a 480p CRT.

Also copying an old post:

Are you sure the Wii is always putting out 720x480 at widescreen? I remember reading a while back that there are at least a few different horizontal resolutions possible for Wii.

I've read about how the internal res is smaller... but yeah, it always outputs a 720x480 frame. Games themselves are not always exactly 720x480 either. In all my direct caps, edit: some don't fully cover the frame and each has differing amounts of black border on the sides from the fixed Amarec window...

...Mario is 720x480, Klonoa is 705x480... no idea what their internal res might be. Guilty Gear is 640x480. That game as far as I can tell is remarkably sharp compared to others and has no very discernible blur. That tells me that perhaps like a 4:3 GC game, there is no horizontal stretch for the crappy encoder to pull off and blur the image.

Thanks for the link. I think it's interesting that the encoder horizontally stretching + the anamorphic 16:9 widescreen together are the likely culprits of the Wii's soft output.

 

[the androgyne]

Silly question - why does the Framemeister report a 240p signal as 720x240p instead of 320x240p?

 

[PumpkinSpice]

Silly question - why does the Framemeister report a 240p signal as 720x240p instead of 320x240p?

Serious answer, that's the to-spec digital equivalent of 240p according to EIA-CEA, which is pretty much the bible as far as digital video / HDMI is concerned. That link is for revision B -- newer revisions actually allow for higher output/sample rates for analog 240p/480i like 1440 and 2880 which is nice.

Remember that analog does not have corresponding horizontal resolutions -- the SNES for example just outputs 256 internal pixels to whatever timing it pleases, which it does to fill the 4:3 frame with fat pixels, and CRTs will just scan that out to phosphors. Digital TVs need hard pixels to work with so a frame is at some point made with 720x240p.

 

[Timu]

Silly question - why does the Framemeister report a 240p signal as 720x240p instead of 320x240p?

My capture card does the same as well, and it actually makes sense in a way, plus what Sheepyguy said.

 

[Peltz]

Windowed 960p on my HDTV is second best to a 480p CRT.

Interesting. What does this look like and what HDTV are you using?