There's a peripheral for the 360 that alledges to give the console HDMI support. It costs $80, and is supposed to be an option for early 360 owners. I wish there was some kind of enhancer for the Wii. I can ignore it, but the Wii is kinda blurry on my LCD tv.

The best thing a developer could do if they wanted to make a true HD Wii game in 720p-1080i would be to use static pre-rendered backgrounds. Reducing the real time graphics frees up a good deal of power. The PS2 could do 1080i and wasn't even as powerful as the Gamecube.
In theory with a fairly sparse background or a pre-rendered background the Wii could do 720p fairly easily. The system itself is about as strong as the Xbox which did offer 1080i and 720p I see absolutely no reason why, in fact judging from amount of shaders etc I'd venture the Wii would be more capable than the original Xbox which everyone raved about looking so good last gen.

I'm not going to claim that it is impossible under the current hardware configuration, but it is pretty unlikely that the Wii could support 720p ...

One thing I have seen suggested which is unrealistic but possible is that Nintendo may be able to overclock the CPU and GPU with a firmware update, and they may have a larger framebuffer built onto the Hollywood processor which currently hidden by the firmware of the system. This wouldn't be the first time a system could be overclocked with a patch, and many hardware manufacturers have released chips with disabled components on them (typically because those components were built in for redundancy); unless Nintendo was expecting to have to make the jump to HD, I couldn't see them building a system that was unnecessarily expensive on the off chance that they needed to use the extra components.

HappySqurriel said: I'm not going to claim that it is impossible under the current hardware configuration, but it is pretty unlikely that the Wii could support 720p ... One thing I have seen suggested which is unrealistic but possible is that Nintendo may be able to overclock the CPU and GPU with a firmware update, and they may have a larger framebuffer built onto the Hollywood processor which currently hidden by the firmware of the system. This wouldn't be the first time a system could be overclocked with a patch, and many hardware manufacturers have released chips with disabled components on them (typically because those components were built in for redundancy); unless Nintendo was expecting to have to make the jump to HD, I couldn't see them building a system that was unnecessarily expensive on the off chance that they needed to use the extra components.

It really doesn't need to be overclocked as you said to achieve an actual HD picture, what it would need would be to scale back on real time processing. That's not too difficult a task and in fact pre-rendered backgrounds could be effective on the Wii given it cannot produce the amazing power that the 360 or PS3 can. Think about PS1 pre-rendered graphics then think what the PS2 or Gamecube could achieve having pre-rendered items and apply it to a slightly greater effect on the Wii. I think overall it might be seen as a step back in the way things are done but it might be able to come out as effective for the Wii. They may have built in some things for redundancy as you said but if at all I doubt it'd be much it's probably a slight boost at best to give it that extra kick for future games as developers unlock the wii's potential and push it to it's limits. Do I think it's possible for Wii to produce 720p and 1080i even, sure but I don't think it's practical especially I believe nintendo locked out any resolution greater than 480p(though simple update could unlock them) I think it'd be a good idea for Nintendo to allow 720p as developers become smarter in using the Wii. If they push it you'll get a clunky shuddering mess that has frame rate dips to no end, they have to be smart about producing the game if they want 720p and the best option again is, pre-rendering their backgrounds.

It's been long accepted by those with the knowledge of hardware that Wii can render a 720p frame. The problem is the output. The Wii doesn't have the proper output configuration for a 720p signal.

NO, that would be going too far...


Nintendo tries to make everything as cheap as possible
adding HD would just be too expensive and not needed to some...

sc94597 said: In another thread we were discussing the wii being able to have 720p and it seems its very easy to do. So thats not all. I found out the original xbox could support 1080i in some games. This means that the wii a much more powerful and efficient console may be able to produce the same resolutions as the existing hd consoles. That means if games start supporting these resolutions there is no need to buy ps3 and 360 for hd gaming. That makes the only thing left the hds have that the wii doesn't are their exclusives and better graphics.

 The ps2 had some games that supported 1080i.... GT4 was one of them

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Progressive_Scan_PS2_Games 

sc94597 said: routsounmanman said: PCs can do HD before Playstation even came to. Playstation 2 gave 1080i in Gran Turismo ( not sure which part ). I'm sure the Wii can handle 720p as long as something gets a bit cut - emphasize a bit - like framerate down to 30fps, lower texture quality, longer loading times, lower polygon count, etc. I think it could do 1080p with a cut but a very little one and 720p with no cut at all.

 no... I don't think it could do 1080p... 1080i is the most I think it'll be able to do..

 

http://hdgames.net/   This is interesting....

1080p probably no, it needs something else, like a VGA out or and HDMI. With component I think it would need some de-interlacing, but I don't remember the exacts on that.

If 720p is ever used, it would be smart to only make it accessible to good developers, you know.... no EA, no UbiSoft, etc... you know, those guys who can't achieve a good framerate at 480i.

"That means if games start supporting these resolutions there is no need to buy ps3 and 360 for hd gaming."

Oh my god where do these guys come from? A PC from 1980 would have been able to support 1080p. (Perhaps he would have only painted one polygon per hour but who cares 1080p Woohooo)

When do you get it the resolution alone doesn't mean shit. Even the Ps3 and 360 which are 10times more powerful than the Wii mostly use 720p because the images they can compute for 720p look better than a potential 1080p game with fewer pixel-render operations.

If you want gorgeous HD graphics buy a 360 or a PS3, if you like the motion controls of the Wii buy a Wii but please think before you write.
//rant off