It's not the Wii it's your TV

[NightDragon83]

dschumm said:

I have always assumed when people complain about the Wii''s graphics they mean in comparison to HD game systems. Now I realize that that many people aren't taking full advantage.

 

I have a 42 inch 1080P Sharp Aquos with the Wii hooked up via component. I think the Wii looks great on it (very sharp and slick in a minimalist kind of way)

 

My friend recently purchased a 56 inch Samsung DLP. And quite frankly it looked like crap. He didn't bother with components and he didn't even know that he could set it to widescreen. It looked worse that the crappy comcast feed I get for basic cable. Now his 360 stilll looked prety decent, but the Wii was so flickery and even dvds looked pretty bad.

 

So I advise all of who are interested in fidelity to take a look at your set-up and try to make the most of it, and not all HD tvs are good at displaying DVD quality content (480P).

QFT.

My friend has a 32" Olevia 720p LCD and even with component cables it doesn't do justtice for the Wii as the colors seem bland and not as sharp as they should be, almost "fuzzy." Same thing with standard DVDs

My current setup is a 50" Panasonic 720p Plasma (last year's model) which I purchased 4 months ago, and the Wii looks amazing on it... colors are rich and vivid, the screen is nice and bright without straining your eyes, text is very sharp eg. the internet channel we can read text crystal clear from the other end of my living room which is almost 20' from the TV set.  I also tried out a few of my GC favorites and although they aren't as good visually as top of the line Wii games such as Galaxy or Brawl they hold up surprisingly well, especially for games that support 480p and widescreen (RE4 and F-Zero GX are some top performers... even launch titles like Rogue Squadron 2 and Melee still look impressive).

Before that i used to have the Wii hooked up in my room to my 20" standard def CRT, and it still looked pretty good but text was hard to read.  I usually have my 360 in my room now where the router and modem are located for online purposes, but even @ 480i with composite cables the 360 still looks pretty damn good (text is still a problem in some games).  When I have people over I usually put the 360 on the Plasma via HDMI w/ 1080p output and my Panny handles it pretty damn well. I also have a Pioneer 1080p DVD player and some newer releases like Transformers and Ratatouille look amazing as well on it and are comparable to their Blu-Ray counterparts IMO.

Overall I think alot of people underestimate Wii's visual ability simply because it isn't tailored to the HD-philes who can't stand anything that isn't 720p or higher, but it does have alot to do with your set up as well.  If you go and get a cheap LCD like the ones Walmart, K-Mart, Target, etc. sell then you can't really expect much... most don't really look much better then standard def TVs especially the smaller ones.  But you can definitely go for high quality w/out breaking the bank... i paid only $1100 for a brand new 50" Panasonic Plasma that was barely over a year old.  So do some research (and a little shopping around) and you'll soon realize don't have to drop a couple grand on and HDTV and several hundred more on a Blu-Ray (or PS3) player in order to get a stunning picture out of your DVDs and game systems.

BTW the place i got my TV from, 6th Ave Electronics, still has it listed and its now under $1000 if anyone's interested on a good deal for a high quality set.