Hardware Wii & LCD Monitor Solution

[djda]

Hey everybody so i have spent the past week or so doing research on how i can play my wii on my new LCD monitor, its a good size 24 inches and built speakers (the reason for this is i am going to be living in residence and theres a no TV policy) but my problem is that so many of the cables seemed so expensive and i would need to buy a converter box but this all seemed so unnecessary.

So i stumbled across a site based out of Hong Kong called Neoya.com and i found that they were sold out of there cord and they had a link to a small dongle called "Wii2HDMI" So i got to reading information on this product as well as the reviews and as i assumed, there is no way that this dongle can possibly turn wii into 1080p and this is clearly stated on the website so there honest and there are no false claims.

What it can do is let me run my wii into my LCD monitor with one simple HDMI cable which is perfect and easy to do
It has been reviewed by Cnet and many other places and it seems great. All those Vga to wii cables only display in 480p so you cannot play VC games and such but with this it outputs 480i, 480p as well as 576i for those rare wiis.

Heres the link
http://www.neoya.com/shop/wii2hdmi.html

And i am currently just waiting for it to arrive. I will let everyone know how it goes.

 

[Arm73]

Looks good, I've been looking for something like this for quite some time now.
Please keep us updated and post your impressions when it arrives.
I'm actually concerned about the quality of the output in 480i ( which looks horrible on my HD lcd TV ) for VC games and Wiiware.

 

[djda]

Yea ill be sure to put up my thoughts im hoping for the best it was a pretty small investment but it would be a shame to waste any money at all

 

[Raiser]

Ah, I remember looking at this.

If you saw some of my threads before, I was looking to do the exact same as you.
However, I needed a new monitor anyway so I got a 24 inch with TV tuner inputs (composite, component, HDMI) so it saved me the trouble.

However, the most popular solutions I found were component cables + HDBox Pro / High-Box.
I read that there is the odd graphical issue (green screens, etc) so I figured I could just get the new monitor.

Please let us know how the Wii2HDMI is! (:

 

[Arm73]

I've been reading a few reviews out there but none of them tell me what I 'd like to know.
It's clear that there is no obvious improvement over the component/480p output of the Wii, but how does it perform with games not capable of 480p ?
Is the digital 480i better then the analog one via component or is it the same more or less ?
I'm asking because my Sharp Aquos 37" HD TV does a terrible job at upscaling 480i, I sort of get ghosting artifacts and blurry, dark image with it.
I tried the same game on an older 14" LCD 4:3 TV not even HD and the game looked as good as other stuff on the Wii !
So if this digital signal makes it easier for the TV to properly upscale, I'm all for it, plus it'll be nice to use my PC monitor with the Wii late at night .............

 

[djda]

In regards to the popular solution i saw how expensive HD Box Pro was so i needed to find an altrentive i was really close to ordering VD-W2 Wii VGA cable's but i stumbled upon the HDMI dongle and it was the same price and less cords flying around seemed like the better option to me. Also with the above cable it wouldn't let me use 480i ever so there was no option to play VC games and such.

Well i have no solid facts but i do have some first hand experience i used to play it on my 42" inch before i moved away and anything 480i stretched out on such big screens just looks crappy i see where your coming from.

However how i understand you problem is hdmi automatically does some upscaling and from the reviews i have read it looks mildly better than analog 480i. But this is all speculation until it arrives i cant say for sure. should not be that much longer till i can give it a try though and will definately try it on my monitor and 42" with some vc games as well.
Are there any games in particular that aren't coming out very well i wouldn't mind trying them specifically?

 

[Arm73]

Well Obscure: the aftermath comes to mind, since it's a survivor horror game it's very dark and it doesn't support 480p nor wide screen.
So when I play it on my TV , some of the graphics become virtually indistinguishable with the dark background and I get a blurry, ghostly image on screen.
The same game plays fine on an older 4:3 TV.
Also Blaster Master overdrive ( Wiiware ) suffers from the same blurry / dark images problem.
Like I said , it could be a problem with my TV, but other stuff looks good ( in 480P , or even my PC at 720p and 1080p looks really good on it ), so it's the internal upscaler that sucks when dealing with a 480i analog signal.
I've got the feeling that if I would feed a 480i digital signal, the TV would do a better job at upscaling, but I guess it needs to be tried first, so yes, when you get your adapter let us know how it goes.
Thanks for the info and the link by the way.

 

[ahtin]

some wii to hdmi like VD-W3 have a "no signal" problem when the wii game have a "full black screen" video for some computer use LCD monitor, for example: it will show no signal when switching mini game at resort or changeing world at new super mario bros, and of course some game play will have same problem too

 

[trumpet-205]

I typically don't recommend something like Wii2HDMI. This is because it has to convert analog signal to digital signal (as HDMI standard calls for digital signal). You are prone to lose quality during conversion.

Wii2HDMI will do no such thing as upscaling. That requires special boxes. Some people posted some results about upscaling. They concluded that benefits of upscaling is minimal for Wii game.

To me, it will be better off if you get a VGA cable instead. Also VGA output it at least 480i. It may also output 480p but I don't know about that. If you have DVI but not VGA then just buy an adapter and attach it to your cable.

VC games do work with 480p. I have some and they work well with my component cable in 480p mode.

 

[djda]

I typically don't recommend something like Wii2HDMI. This is because it has to convert analog signal to digital signal (as HDMI standard calls for digital signal). You are prone to lose quality during conversion.

Wii2HDMI will do no such thing as upscaling. That requires special boxes. Some people posted some results about upscaling. They concluded that benefits of upscaling is minimal for Wii game.

To me, it will be better off if you get a VGA cable instead. Also VGA output it at least 480i. It may also output 480p but I don't know about that. If you have DVI but not VGA then just buy an adapter and attach it to your cable.

VC games do work with 480p. I have some and they work well with my component cable in 480p mode.

So shipping from China does take a while still have not received it.
in response to your statement if you had done research you would have found that the Wii to VGA cables only output at 480p and not 480i which makes many things unusable for example some vc games and im sure there could be some homebrew as well. And if im not mistaken when you play a VC game it automatically switches back to Standard TV settings (or 480i) even with component cables plugged in. I could be mistaken hell i dont know much but after looking around for quite a while i know some if not all Wii>VGA cables do not output 480i.


QUOTE(ahtin @ Sep 3 2010, 09:10 PM) wii2hdmi have a "no signal" problem when the wii game have a "full black screen" video for some computer use LCD monitor, for example: it will show no signal when switching mini game at resort or changeing world at new super mario bros, and of course some game play will have same problem too

Hmm that is pretty interesting and unfortunate ill post my personal experience as soon as i can.

 

[ahtin]

I have make a mistake, it should be "Wii to HDMI" product "VD-W3" have the above problem

 

[djda]

Hey everybody so it finally arrived in the mail and well i have only played a couple games on it and while the experience of playing on a tv is not quite there (possibly because i am using my LCD monitors speakers which are utter garbage as opposed to my external ones)
But everything works as it should the quality is nothing fabulous even on 480p but meh just being able to play it is fine with me, i mean comon its wii who is expecting good graphics anyway.

So all in all I recommend this product it does everything it is advertised to do and the option to connect external speakers is a major win for me
If you do have a TV that you can hook it up to with VGA or component cables go for that but this is a great way to play it on LCD monitors or if you have a spare HDMI port on your TV.

 

[x_r3ap3r_x]

Here is a great solution for you: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.28534
I purchased this myself and i can say it works excellently on my ASUS VW220 22" LCD. I have two of these screen both hooked up on my pc via dvi ( dual screen

). I tested my PS2, Gamecube and Wii on this with great picture quality with no dark screening or jumpyness. It took a week to get here ( Australia ) and i'm very happy with it.