Hardware Anyone have experience with those Wii to HDMI adapters?

[Elodain]

So I Just found out that My Wii U no longer outputs a signal through HDMI anymore. I think I know why. I had it hooked up to a 3-port HDMI switch box where one of the ports was busted (effectively making it a 2 port switch) before now. I originally thought there was just physical damage to the faulty HDMI port and avoided using it but now I think they whole box was faulty, and somehow fried the HDMI IC chip in my console.

Thankfully I was replacing it with a brand new 5 way switch, so the other device I had hooked up to the faulty switch didn't get fried. That's how I found out the Wii U HDMI wasn't working in the first place.

Any way, I tried different cables, tried connecting directly to my TV. Unplug it, all the basic troubleshooting. Nothing. HDMI is just dead. I know it's not the HDMI port on the console because the thing hasn't moved since I last used it, nor had the HDMI cable gotten yanked or bent. It worked like 4 months ago when I last used it, and then POOF it's just dead.

I know I could try and replace the IC, they seem easy enough to obtain, but while I have some experience repairing electronics, I simply don't trust myself enough to not destroy even more components, and sending it to someone who could do it for me would probably be FAR too expensive.

Bearing that in mind, I was wondering if maybe the better route would be to get one of those adapters that just plugs into the Wii(U)'s standard AV output and converts it into HDMI, upscaling it to 1080p and such. Might not be Native, but upscaled HD is better than Standard Def, and it would let me connect to the new not faulty HDMI switch instead of hogging up my only Composite input on my TV for something that should have never been broken in the first place (I should have pitched the old switch box and got a new one when I saw the one port was gone, that's my screw up) Of course there are plenty of other Component/Composite to HDMI adapters, but those require more cables and such, having the purpose built dongle is cleaner.

To get to the actual question: Has anyone used one of these little dongle things before? Are they any good? Is there any perceivable input lag, or anything that might make these a less than stellar route to getting around the fried HDMI in my console?

 

[Shadow#1]

So I Just found out that My Wii U no longer outputs a signal through HDMI anymore. I think I know why. I had it hooked up to a 3-port HDMI switch box where one of the ports was busted (effectively making it a 2 port switch) before now. I originally thought there was just physical damage to the faulty HDMI port and avoided using it but now I think they whole box was faulty, and somehow fried the HDMI IC chip in my console.

Thankfully I was replacing it with a brand new 5 way switch, so the other device I had hooked up to the faulty switch didn't get fried. That's how I found out the Wii U HDMI wasn't working in the first place.

Any way, I tried different cables, tried connecting directly to my TV. Unplug it, all the basic troubleshooting. Nothing. HDMI is just dead. I know it's not the HDMI port on the console because the thing hasn't moved since I last used it, nor had the HDMI cable gotten yanked or bent. It worked like 4 months ago when I last used it, and then POOF it's just dead.

I know I could try and replace the IC, they seem easy enough to obtain, but while I have some experience repairing electronics, I simply don't trust myself enough to not destroy even more components, and sending it to someone who could do it for me would probably be FAR too expensive.

Bearing that in mind, I was wondering if maybe the better route would be to get one of those adapters that just plugs into the Wii(U)'s standard AV output and converts it into HDMI, upscaling it to 1080p and such. Might not be Native, but upscaled HD is better than Standard Def, and it would let me connect to the new not faulty HDMI switch instead of hogging up my only Composite input on my TV for something that should have never been broken in the first place (I should have pitched the old switch box and got a new one when I saw the one port was gone, that's my screw up) Of course there are plenty of other Component/Composite to HDMI adapters, but those require more cables and such, having the purpose built dongle is cleaner.

To get to the actual question: Has anyone used one of these little dongle things before? Are they any good? Is there any perceivable input lag, or anything that might make these a less than stellar route to getting around the fried HDMI in my console?

Shit in ahit out they r crap

 

[CrisMod]

Hi @Elodain,

here I am, yes, I have this experience in the past with these types of products mounting them on the Wii and not the Wii U. And one time I remember that I inquired everywhere and saw many comparative videos, heard all kinds of conflicting opinions and also searched to understand what differentiated from each other at the hardware chip level.
I have 4 Wii, and I can transfer this experience to you.

All these products come from the same Chinese factories and the brands simply rename and resell at different prices with more or less misleading advertisements.

You will hear many opinions about it, but I bought two different ones specifically to understand the real differences, between a any renowned poor Chinese product and good quality brand.

The poorer Chinese products, tend to sell you the product as if it had a particular scaler that re-processes the 480p and brings the 1080p image to the television, but in reality the imagine it is always at 480p and is made compatible in full screen with the signal 1080p without image reworking, which in the end is different in speech.

Instead, the most renowned brand as PORTHOLIC, puts you the specification that it is always a 480p that is made compatible with 1080p without any particular reworking (except the digital image HDMI to out).

At the end of the day, making a comparison, between the most expensive and the poorest, are the following:

High Quality as PORTHOLIC:
1) Maintains 480p image with color and black fidelity in Digital output.
2) Good quality of plastics.

Poor quality that you can find around (like yours above in the picture):
1) Maintain the quality in 480p (does not re-elaborate and upscale the image in 1080p as the same like PORTHOLIC), the blacks will be reddish and the colors do not maintain the fidelity of the original image in Digital output.

2) Cheaper plastics, but nothing so bad.

What interests you in the end is to know, "okay but in the end between a PORTHOLIC and a product that costs less there is a difference ?!"; for me, NO! That is, if you put them side by side you notice the differences, if instead you buy one right to play, I guarantee you that you do not notice the defects mentioned above. Unless you are a fanatic of the image, like when you buy a TV and see them at the Mall and you notice the differences between the TVs, once you bring one at home you don't notice the differences anymore.

On the other hand, if you want to see huge differences in this case, I advise you to buy the PORTHOLIC and the mClassic by Marsille (here https://www.marseilleinc.com/mclassic/) to increase the image to your 1080p WIii U image, but you would go to spend a lot.

The above products in the Wii U I have not tried it honestly (but only Wii), but I think it can always take the crap image from 480P and then make it compatible with 1080p. I'm not sure about this, as I haven't tested the connection in the Wii U.

 

[tmnr1992]

In my experience they're pretty bad, the first one I bought died in a couple weeks. The second one worked, but while the image looks a little sharper than composite it also looks very grainy. So in the end it looks as bad as composite but for different reasons. You also need to connect the audio separately through the auxiliary port which is annoying. I would recommend an original Wii component cable, they're not too expensive, it'll look slightly worse than HDMI, but way better than these adapters.

 

[nWo]

I use one, exactly the same as your picture. It's been about 4 years that I have it and it is good, it gets the job done. But yeah, it feels kinda cheap and maybe with a little bump it could get wrecked, but if you just plug it in and then don't mess around, it will last years.

As for the image quality, it gets the job done. Nothing more, nothing less. My Wii is hooked up with one of those and I like the result. I am not a "Those pixels look more pixelated" kinda guy.

 

[Jayro]

I have a Wii2HDMI from some company called AUTOUTLET, and it works fine for me. Takes down a lot of the blurry fuzziness, and that's ultimately what I was after more than anything.

 

[NinStar]

I had two of these, one for my Wii and another one for my old Wii U that had faulty HDMI output. Both could output native 720p and 1080i on the Wii U just like any component cable.

The only problem I had is that one of them had a perceptible bluish noise when I set the resolution to 480p, so it wasn't a good option for me the use on my Wii, the other one looked fine on any resolution.

 

[eSocrates]

Hey I know this is a bit late but I ended up posting a whole diatribe on a different thread I landed on from a DuckDuckGo search that was even older so I’ll edit and repost what I wrote there because it pertains exactly to your situation.

“Mayflash Wii2HDMI is your best bet. It’s the only one I’ve seen that looks physically different than all the others that seem to be clones of each other. It’s about half as long too so it doesn’t stick out the back nearly as far which is nice.

I bought it for my Wii or to maybe try and hack into an Xbox2HDMI so I was interested to know if it could do HD well. And I realized I could test for that on the multi out of my Wii U. And what I found was that it looked just about as good as my Nintendo brand component cables did at all the different resolutions all the way up to 1080p.

But importantly for your use case I also found that even with official Nintendo brand Component Cables Wii U at 1080p from the multi out has some unstable fuzziness and faint double imaging easily visible. You can see ghost images of the text on the menus for instance. The Mayflash adapter exhibits the same issue and it’s visible on my TV as well as my Benq Projector. its possible an even higher quality component cable could solve the ghosting but I suspect it’s inherent to the Wii U analog output.

Interestingly 1080i looks tack sharp with both cables while 720 is a bit less so which could be partially partially due to scaling to my 1080p displays but I did notice a bit of the same unstable noisy-ness in 720p as I saw in 1080p mode compared to the rock solid image quality of 1080i mode. None of the faint doubling of the image like 1080p though.

If you are stuck using the multiout you shouldn’t use 1080i though even if it is nice and crisp. Unless your using a 1080i CRT your TV will have to deinterlace the image which in most cases adds a ton of lag.

And there’s a chance your Wii U doesn’t have the same issues mine has at 1080p from the multi out so you should try that first and then try 720p to see if it looks cleaner to you.

480p looks pretty blurry ofc and actually it’s worse than the 480p output of my regular Wii. I believe the poor quality 480p of Wii U has been analyzed and noted before and I’m sure you’d prefer to play in HD anyways so again 720p or 1080p if it looks good to you.

To the original question I can say the Mayflash Wii2HDMI having a completely different design than all the others you are avoiding the “lottery” of getting one of the Portholic, eBay, Amazon clone “good ones” and I’ve personally tested 2 for HD support which it does so it’s my recommendation for anyone who wants HDMI out of their Wii. And now I guess anyone who needs HDMI out of the multi out on their Wii U.

They’re only $14 when in stock on Amazon and output excellent quality video with no “defects” other than maybe a slightly different color temperature than actual component cables. And the brightness setting on your tv might need to be adjusted a bit to dial in correct black levels.”

 

[liquidgykill]

I think you will get a better picture with componet cables on wii/wii u rather than using those cheap hdmi adapters.

 

[eyeliner]

If you have a fornicated hdmi output encoder, how will a hdmi adapter help in this case?

Only a RCA composite video could be remotely useful, as if the hdmi chip is caca, no hdmi converters should work.

Like....

Qué és esso, puercos compadres de zanahorias desnudas?

 

[ExperiencersInternational]

So I Just found out that My Wii U no longer outputs a signal through HDMI anymore. I think I know why. I had it hooked up to a 3-port HDMI switch box where one of the ports was busted (effectively making it a 2 port switch) before now. I originally thought there was just physical damage to the faulty HDMI port and avoided using it but now I think they whole box was faulty, and somehow fried the HDMI IC chip in my console.

Thankfully I was replacing it with a brand new 5 way switch, so the other device I had hooked up to the faulty switch didn't get fried. That's how I found out the Wii U HDMI wasn't working in the first place.

Any way, I tried different cables, tried connecting directly to my TV. Unplug it, all the basic troubleshooting. Nothing. HDMI is just dead. I know it's not the HDMI port on the console because the thing hasn't moved since I last used it, nor had the HDMI cable gotten yanked or bent. It worked like 4 months ago when I last used it, and then POOF it's just dead.

I know I could try and replace the IC, they seem easy enough to obtain, but while I have some experience repairing electronics, I simply don't trust myself enough to not destroy even more components, and sending it to someone who could do it for me would probably be FAR too expensive.

Bearing that in mind, I was wondering if maybe the better route would be to get one of those adapters that just plugs into the Wii(U)'s standard AV output and converts it into HDMI, upscaling it to 1080p and such. Might not be Native, but upscaled HD is better than Standard Def, and it would let me connect to the new not faulty HDMI switch instead of hogging up my only Composite input on my TV for something that should have never been broken in the first place (I should have pitched the old switch box and got a new one when I saw the one port was gone, that's my screw up) Of course there are plenty of other Component/Composite to HDMI adapters, but those require more cables and such, having the purpose built dongle is cleaner.

To get to the actual question: Has anyone used one of these little dongle things before? Are they any good? Is there any perceivable input lag, or anything that might make these a less than stellar route to getting around the fried HDMI in my console?

I've personally used it on a Wii but not a Wii U, and first of all: they don't output at 1080p, they'll just output at the original resolution. Secondly, just try and find an AV female to HDMI male port (some sellers may label this as from device to TV), it was impossible for me to find one that works, but it would be a better move.

I haven't really been able to use mine much because it's practically only used for like Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

Post automatically merged: Nov 15, 2022

I've personally used it on a Wii but not a Wii U, and first of all: they don't output at 1080p, they'll just output at the original resolution. Secondly, just try and find an AV female to HDMI male port (some sellers may label this as from device to TV), it was impossible for me to find one that works, but it would be a better move.

I haven't really been able to use mine much because it's practically only used for like Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

Also, the Wii U is already natively in 1080p, so it wouldn't matter even if they do actually upscale, which they don't.