Hacking Wii vs vWii: image quality?

[naddel81]

Hi @ all,

I use my Wiis to emulate and play almost everything Nintendo based (even GameCube thanks to Nintendont). I have a component cable to get the best quality possible.

Now I'd like to know: Does hacking my vWii on Wii U improve image quality significantly? Is it worth hacking just for that?

best wishes.

 

[T-Law]

the difference between Vwii and Wii in terms of rendering quality is almost 0, there will be no difference.

 

[Ryccardo]

In my opinion, on my 720p tv, Vwii over hdmi looks much better than a real Wii over composite, my component cables are... somewhere so I can't do a direct comparison now

As for your second question, considering how simple it is to install the HBC and even Cios on both a real Wii and a Vwii, I'm going to say that yes it's worth the effort!

 

[naddel81]

then I would only have to install WiiFlow and have every game I play on my HDD already (two partitions. one for WBFS and one for Nintendont)?

 

[lafleche]

The ease of use of hdmi also helps a lot. :-)

 

[T-Law]

@naddel81
If I understand your question correctly, once you have the homebrew channel & needed IOS installed, you can use your old Wii setup simply by using the same HDD and SD Card, so that's nothing to worry about.

 

[naddel81]

yes, that is what I wanted to know. has anyone made a comparison between Wii (component) and vWii (HDMI), yet?

 

[[Truth]]

yes, that is what I wanted to know. has anyone made a comparison between Wii (component) and vWii (HDMI), yet?

Component is still an analog signal, where as HDMI is complete digital.
Digital is always superior.
But in the end it depends on your TV set, if it has good component processing it might look nearly identical, but on 99% of mainstream LCD TVs HDMI will look better.

I have a Samsung LCD from 2015 and the colors via vWii look much better then Wii over component.

 

[naddel81]

Component is still an analog signal, where as HDMI is complete digital.
Digital is always superior.
But in the end it depends on your TV set, if it has good component processing it might look nearly identical, but on 99% of mainstream LCD TVs HDMI will look better.

I have a Samsung LCD from 2015 and the colors via vWii look much better then Wii over component.

So how do I setup vWii for HBL and stuff the easy way?

 

[[Truth]]

So how do I setup vWii for HBL and stuff the easy way?

http://gbatemp.net/threads/simple-guide-to-install-cios-on-vwii-backup-nand-and-keys.339890/

 

[T-Law]

just in case you have no homebrew channel installed in your VWii, use this great tool created by fix94, it's a Wii U homebrew app that turns your Mii Channel into a homebrew installer easily (you can undo that after you install the homebrew channel)

https://gbatemp.net/threads/wuphax-v1-1-hacking-vwii-from-wiiu-mode.446786/

if you do have the homebrew channel installed, then you can go ahead with the guide posted in the comment above. Otherwise, you will have to install the homebrew channel first.

 

[kb7cxWMSrPwL]

Wii has poorer component that the GC, this is well known (go look at the prices of GC component cables). It's essentially a 640 wide pixel image but with the color mashed down to 320.
vWii can't do 1:1 pixel mapping even when set to 480p, you lose a few lines at the top and bottom regardless of resolution. Full horizontal color resolution seems to be preserved in HD modes though.
Pal video modes will set the system to 50Hz, a 480p Wii U will even change to 576p which is not an option in the U tv setup.

Experiment with 240p test suite if your curious.

 

[naddel81]

Wii has poorer component that the GC, this is well known (go look at the prices of GC component cables). It's essentially a 640 wide pixel image but with the color mashed down to 320.
vWii can't do 1:1 pixel mapping even when set to 480p, you lose a few lines at the top and bottom regardless of resolution. Full horizontal color resolution seems to be preserved in HD modes though.
Pal video modes will set the system to 50Hz, a 480p Wii U will even change to 576p which is not an option in the U tv setup.

Experiment with 240p test suite if your curious.

so the Wii U hacking is not a solution to better image quality at all?
is Wii component even worse than Wii RGB scart cable?

 

[TeconMoon]

Does hacking my vWii on Wii U improve image quality significantly?

Is the quality improved significantly? No. Is it improved at all? Yes, but it's not night-and-day different.

The Wii outputs 480p over component which is an analog signal. Your TV then converts it to a digital signal and scales it up to the maximum resolution of your TV (Usually 1080p). There is some quality loss when converting from analog to digital, but the higher the source resolution, the less noticeable the quality loss is. For example, you may not see hardly any difference at all when using a PS3 at 1080p Component vs 1080p HDMI.

The Wii U primarily outputs over HDMI, which is a digital signal. The vWii is rendered at 480p in a digital format, and then the Wii U upscales it to whatever resolution you have set your Wii U to. There's no analog conversion that takes place here, which cuts out the quality drop that would occur there, and the TV doesn't have to do any upscaling, which reduces the potential for input delay.

So will you get a cleaner higher-quality signal from the vWii over HDMI? Absolutely. Will you even notice? That depends on how much a videophile you are Most people won't notice the difference.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

I've found vWii to be a bit blurrier, at least in my own personal experience. It's one of the primary reasons why my old Wii still has a place of honor on my shelf.

 

[Ryccardo]

http://imgur.com/a/dYXbA

A/B test if you really care...

Which of course is also influenced by cable length and quality, and TV quality

 

[miiuwiiu]

Thank you for this thorough investigation. I am a videophile. I love to play retro consoles with Rgb cables on PVMs/BVMs. I was hoping that the WiiU was the solution for a lot of my Nintendo needs. It is a fabulous console since you can play WiiU, Wii and GameCube games on a HDTV. However, when I played some Wii games on the Virtual Wii, I noticed that the picture quality wasn’t as sharp as I remembered the Wii Games to be running on a Wii console through component cables. I still want to go with the WiiU. I don’t want to spend more money on a Dual Wii. Has anyone run the WiiU through an upscaler/line doubler such as the Framemeister or OSSC? How does the image quality look?

 

[kisamesama]

so vwii is basically wii ? no additional anti aliasing or post processing added? not like dolphin emulator? which btw make wii games look freaking awesome .. even better than wii u games

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Surprised that that my life in gaming youtube channel hasn't put up a video about wii video output.

 

[MUDD_BR]

http://imgur.com/a/dYXbA

A/B test if you really care...

Which of course is also influenced by cable length and quality, and TV quality

WiiU is the top image?