You could use the main RAM to buffer menus to 720 (possibly cut scenes provided they are pre-rendered but I'm not sure) but it's not fast enough for actual game play.

The DAC may be locked at 480p so it might not matter anyway.

We had a thread a long long time ago talking about the Wii being locked at 480 and could possibly do 720. Don't as for me to look for it cuz it ain't happenin'.

The only thing holding Wii off of 1080i and 720p resolutions to me, seems to be a software choice not hardware limitation. I firmly believe Nintendo could do a 720p output as the original Xbox did as they hold roughly the same power but Wii is far more efficient. However rendering things in native 720p would be impractical. The environments would need to be fairly sparse for wii to render in true 720p or 1080i.

Pre-rendered cut scenes, menus, intros and other pre-rendered items could easily do it at current. Doing things on the games engine with real time rendering in 720p, it might be a bit tougher. Maybe if they added a chip to handle scaling in the Wii they could upscale it pretty easily. 480p isn't such a bad resolution to start stretching with a good scaling chip, but scaling it will never produce as good a result as native.

I really think that technically, the Wii can output at 720p, at least the cutscenes and menus, etc. or some not complicated game, like some WiiWare titles (but the extra resolution would mean bigger size).

I mean, even the PS2 could output at 1080i (Gran Turismo 4) and the Xbox had some 720p games...

Surely the problem is if you have to have pre-rendered cut scenes, then the DVD is going to be filling up really fast, that is the reason why jRPGs have to be on so many discs, pre-rendered cut scenes take up masses of room

Yes. but are whatever ports available on the Wii able to output that resolution native-ly ?

Component can carry a 720p, 1080i and 1080p signal.   It's just that DVI and HDMI do it much better.

I seem to remember that same thread that narfwack was talking about (certainly predates my joining here by some time, but i remember being linked to it from somewhere else). If it wasn't a thread here, it was one elsewhere which crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion that, on paper, the Wii is perfectly capable of doing it, but my guess is that fillrate problems and other issues with the Wii's architecture would prevent it from being practical save in a few situations

As for cutscenes, i think it would definitely be possible. Especially considering that high-def video relies more on disc space than on a devices technical prowess, and very few Wii games really tap the disc space (since the number of dual-layer titles can still be counted on one hand, i think)