Jupiter research (which is considered overly optimistic by many) has HDTV adoption in the United States at 70% at the end of 2010; European estimates have HDTV adoption at 30% in 2010. Beyond that, Japan has HDTV adoption rates that are far higher than anywhere else in the world and the Wii is far more dominant there than North America.

Anyways, I still think people are overestimating the adoption rate of HDTV mainly because I expect people to be spending far less on luxury items in 2 years than they're today. The combination of reduced equity because of reduced home values, a slowing ecconomy increasing consumer doubt, and higher energy prices will reduce the ability of people to borrow money.

To those who think that Nintendo will include HD capabilities with the Wii2, I don't know why you assume it currently doesn't.

[ SNES ] 

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

Resolutions

Progressive: 256x224, 512x224, 256x239, 512x239
Interlaced: 512x448, 512x478

[ N64 ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N64

...can display a resolution range of 256 × 224 to 640 × 480 pixels.

[ GCN ]

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

Resolutions: 480i, 576i, 480p

[ PSX ]

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

Resolutions from 256×224 to 640×480

[ PS2 ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2 

Video output resolution: variable from 256x224 to 1280x1024 pixels

[ PS3 ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ps3 

...SDTV and HDTV resolutions (from 480i up to 1080p)

[ Xbox ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox 

Resolutions: 480i, 576i, 480p, 720p and 1080i.

[ Xbox360 ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360 

A wide array of SDTV and HDTV resolutions are supported by the console hardware;^[64] up to 1080p

[ Master System ]

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

Screen resolutions 256×192 and 256×224. PAL/SECAM also supports 256×240

[ Genesis ]

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

• 256x224 (32Hx28V), 320x224 (40Hx28V), 256x240 (32Hx30V, PAL only), 320x240 (40Hx30V, PAL only)
• Interlace mode 1 provides no increase in resolution, but still generates a true interlaced signal
• Interlace mode 2 can provide double the vertical resolution (i.e. 320×448 for NTSC, 320x480 for PAL). Used in Sonic 2 for two-player split screen

[ SEGA 32 ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_32x 

...standard Mega Drive/Genesis resolution.

[ SEGA CD ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_cd 

320 x 224 pixels and 256 x 224, video size from ¼ to full screen

[ SEGA Saturn ]

http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/details/saturn.html 

Display Resolution

• 352x224
• 640x224
• 704x480

[ SEGA Dreamcast ]

http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/dc.htm 

Resolution
640x480

[ PC Engine ]

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

Resolution:

• X (Horizontal) Resolution: variable, maximum of 512 (programmable to 256, 352 or 512 pixels)
• Y (Vertical) Resolution: variable, maximum of 242 (programmable in increments of 1 scanline)

[ PC-FX ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-FX 

Resolutions: 256x240p, 320x240p, 256x480i, 320x480i

[ FM-Towns Marty ]

http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/fmtowns.htm 

Resolution
352x232 to 640x480

Funny how the Wiki entry for the Wii does not mention anything about resolution. Even the NES talks about resolution... 

The point is, there are many consoles past and present that are capable of displaying a (wide) range of resolutions. I don't understand why people think the Wii is "incapable" of displaying higher resolutions when in most cases this is not a hardware, but software limitation, and with the Wii capable of online and has already received patches, I do believe the Wii can output HD - just that Nintendo don't want to "enable this feature" yet (if at all). 

PCs allow you to change resolutions without having to change hardware provided the hardware has enough under its hood to start with. I even recall during the transition from 4:3 to 16:10 aspect ratios, how people that adopted widescreen monitors were complaining that the graphics card drivers could not handle those then-exotic resolutions of "1280x720", "1440x800" and "1600x1020". Nvidia and ATI got to work on the drivers, and soon enough, by simply downloading the most recent driver you were able to get widescreen to work in your monitor's native resolution, a process that literally takes less than 1/2 hour (mostly due to the driver downloading time).  The Wii definitely has enough power to output in HD (albeit sacrificing the amount of polygons/texture quality shown onscreen, but the other two next-gen consoles have the same issue).

The only time I was confined by resolution on a PC was when I had a Trident 1MB card that was unable to display 1024x768 resolution @256 colors; I could display 1024x768@16 colors only because I simply didn't have enough RAM, but a 4MB upgrade fixed that. The Wii (or indeed, any modern console nowadays) has considerably more RAM dedicated to video, so there is no technical limitation nowadays as far as I'm concerned.

In short, I do believe the Wii is capable of HD right out of the box. Whether Nintendo wants us to have HD is another issue. 

Agreed. I'd totally agree that HD support would be an obvious choice if it came at no additional cost.

But it does cost money -- both to develop and to produce. Increasing HD support for the Wii and its games would bump the price of the system itself considerably, and probably push the games to 59.99 instead of 49.99. Saying that Nintendo should have included more HD capabilities is precisely the same as saying that they should have made a console with better graphics and a higher price. I strongly believe the system would be doing less well if that were the case.

I think the Wii too should have HD support. The cost consideration gets less and less by the day, plus a larger install base entering the next generation will help fuel something more ambitious than the Wii(in terms of hardware) with little or no cost increase to the customer. In, what are wii(silly pun, I love those) guessing, 3-5yrs? the HD consideration should be very important. One thing that MANY people fail to realize is that HD market saturation is happening faster than any other market advance, whether it was b&w to color, over-the-air to cable, 8mm film to VHS, VHS to DVD, NONE of these can compare with the percentage of people that are upgrading from SD to HD.

Yeah, but SD to HD isn't as big of a deal to most consumers...a lot of them probably get HDTVs because they're big and flat, not really because of the higher def.

There is ZERO chance of Nintendo releasing an "updated" Wii with "HD" support.

Why? Because its impossible.

Only the next evolution of the machine (i.e. a full Wii II) could do that. Requires increased frame buffer, new games designed for it - which wouldn't work on old Wii - etc...

...

Nintendo will release increase storage for the Wii soon - maybe even E3. Even a BIOS update to better support SD cards could handle this.

A DVD-playback channel is more than possible, and may also be coming.

...

In short Nintendo just don't care - the Wii is still constantly selling out, which indicates that they are on the right track as it is.

(you could argue that MS/Sony should release NON-HD versions of the PS3/360 to boost sales!).

many of the reasons people think the wii will slow down are the same reasons that the DS will slow down. the DS tells us that they were wrong--and the same likely applies to the wii as well. the big hitters from nintendo haven't even arrived yet.

Seriously...games like Mario Sunshine and SSBM carried the weak-selling GC through its life...

What happens when big hitters like Mario Galaxy and SSBB come out this year? Not to mention games later in the Wii's life like a Zelda 2, more Mario sports and kart racers...Metroid, plenty of third party support...the Wii has more than enough to sell strongly for years, with or without the ability to output in 720p or 1080p...it doesn't matter.

We have been discussing this in another thread.

In short, we don't believe its possible because:

a) The frame buffer is too small (3MB - 2MB frame buffer, 1MB texture cache)

b) The RAMDAC probably isn't designed for it (i.e. cannot sample at a high enough rate to output 720p)

I have also seen documentation that indicates that the Wii *only* does 32bit colour output (i.e. 32bit frame buffer) - rather than 18bit that the GC used. This would also take more memory.

If the RAMDAC was fast enough, AND the GPU (Hollywood?) could use main memory for the frame buffer - it may be possible.

...

I wouldn't keep your hopes up. Its just another indication of "manufacturing efficiency", and why the Wii is so small, tight and cheap to manufacture.

If that's the case, then I'd be disappointed, but what you mention sounds like it is a memory shortage issue, and yeah, there'd be no workaround for it, unless of course color depth takes a hit, but even then you mention the Wii only does 32-bit, so them's the breaks.

It does seem very shortsighted though, IMO that Nintendo would design the hardware like that for the sake of manufacturing efficiency when (on PCs at least) cost-wise the impact would seem to be minimal.