Is there a way to display Wii games in their original 4:3 aspect ratio on the Wii U's internal Wii/vWii?

[SureCandle]

Wii games natively support both 4:3 and 16:9, the latter actually having the same number of pixels. All content gets horizontally squished. Then setting your TV monitor to stretch the screen to 16:9 makes it look "normal" again. But I'm not a fan of this since this kinda makes the video quality look a bit bad. I'd just rather play them in normal 4:3 (either with black bars or stretched, but that's up to my TV monitor's settings).

Anyway, the internal Wii or vWii removed the aspect ratio setting, so right now it's stuck to 16:9. Does the vWii technically still support the 4:3 mode? Is there a way (my Wii U has been homebrewed) to play my Wii games in 4:3 mode?

4:3


16:9

 

[appleburger]

I'm guessing this is what you're looking for: https://gbatemp.net/threads/forcing-4-3-display-in-wii-retail-vc-injections.575768/

 

[emcintosh]

Wii games natively support both 4:3 and 16:9, the latter actually having the same number of pixels. All content gets horizontally squished. Then setting your TV monitor to stretch the screen to 16:9 makes it look "normal" again. But I'm not a fan of this since this kinda makes the video quality look a bit bad. I'd just rather play them in normal 4:3 (either with black bars or stretched, but that's up to my TV monitor's settings).

Anyway, the internal Wii or vWii removed the aspect ratio setting, so right now it's stuck to 16:9. Does the vWii technically still support the 4:3 mode? Is there a way (my Wii U has been homebrewed) to play my Wii games in 4:3 mode?

4:3
View attachment 297582

16:9
View attachment 297583

In the first paragraph of the page appleburger linked to, VagueRant possibly has the key to your problem:

As a general rule, when you are running Wii mode software on the Wii U, it is displayed on your TV and GamePad using the aspect ratio configured in the Wii U settings. Wii BC modes inherit their aspect ratio from the Wii U, so if your Wii U is set to 16:9, then so is your vWii, and the Wii U knows to stretch the image output by the Wii to 16:9 to match.

I.e. to get 4:3 output you need to go into the Wii *U* system settings and set your output to 480p and 4:3 / non-widescreen. Then your vWii games should output in 4:3.

The Wii U does a fairly mediocre job of converting the 480p signal of Wii games to 720p/1080p, so if anything your picture quality may improve with this setting, as the scaling will be handled by your TV.

 

[SureCandle]

The Wii U does a fairly mediocre job of converting the 480p signal of Wii games to 720p/1080p, so if anything your picture quality may improve with this setting, as the scaling will be handled by your TV.

Damn, that sucks. Could that be the reason why NSMBWii looks kinda ugly and a little pixelated (the 3D models) currently? It wasn't like that on my Wii. I guess TVs are generally better at converting 480p to 1080p than the Wii U. I wasn't expecting that. I was actually expecting Wii games to look better on the Wii U than on the Wii because of the HDMI cable support - as I think or thought that was better than what the Wii used. Or maybe that will apply if I set my Wii U to 480p?

Btw, not sure if this is important to mention, but I live in the Western Europe/PAL region, where at least for DVDs and such, 576p used to be the standard (before 1080p), and not 480p.

 

[emcintosh]

Damn, that sucks. Could that be the reason why NSMBWii looks kinda ugly and a little pixelated (the 3D models) currently? It wasn't like that on my Wii. I guess TVs are generally better at converting 480p to 1080p than the Wii U. I wasn't expecting that. I was actually expecting Wii games to look better on the Wii U than on the Wii because of the HDMI cable support - as I think or thought that was better than what the Wii used. Or maybe that will apply if I set my Wii U to 480p?

Btw, not sure if this is important to mention, but I live in the Western Europe/PAL region, where at least for DVDs and such, 576p used to be the standard (before 1080p), and not 480p.

I'm in PAL-land too, but HD consoles have now standardised on 480/720/1080 &c. The 576 lines was TV broadcasts, and they were interlaced (that's the i in 1080i - meaning that odd lines and even lines of pixels got updated alternately. AFAIK scanlines were a result of older consoles only sending signal on one of these fields).

Someone did look at a 480p Test Suite on vWii and found that the picture was worse than the Wii at its best (Scart/RGB rather than composite or RF). But having HDMI is very convenient for connecting to newer monitors.