I set up my wii today on a 4:3 TV, so did all the settings accordingly and began playing Zelda. I then wanted to see what it was like on my widescreen TV, so I changed the setting to 16:9 (and 60 Hz) in the dashboard. However, I'm pretty sure it's still in 4:3. For one thing, the wii isn't sending the signal to my TV to automatically adjust to widescreen. When I look at the TV adjust options in the zelda options, the middle box is a narrow rectangle, while the outer two are square. When I Z-Target my TV adjusts, and cuts off the top and bottom borders you get, but this looks wrong and the switching is very annoying. Is it because I started playing the game in 4:3, or is my TV/Wii crap?
My widescreen looks fine on my 56" and 42" TV's. But is your tv a true wide screen? I would say get a better TV and component cables and enjoy Zelda to its fullest
I have selected 16:9 on the Wii dashboard settings. My TV is an 8 year old panasonic. There is no manual widescreen option. I just have to change the aspect to automatic. All my other products, including DVD players, send a signal that tells my TV it's a widescreen signal. This allows my TV to adjust automatically and is confirmed when the "WIDE" logo appears on the TV briefly. I guess the Wii doesn't send this signal.
The panasonic sets have a display mode called JUST. This mode is designed to display 4:3 pictures in a 16:9 mode and looks reasonably accurate (and it works rather well 98% of the time, usually only failing when the camera pans sideways and you see the algorithm in action). It acheives this by leaving the centre of the image natural, and slowly stretching out the sides. This is why the centre square looks squashed (as this part of the image is unchanged) and the edge squares look adjusted. It also removes a bit of the top and bottom of the images to make the picture look correct. I'm surprised your tv doesn't allow you to select. Both these sets allow you to select from AUTO (4:3/JUST), 4:3, JUST, ZOOM, S-ZOOM, 16:9 and 14:9 (yes, 14:9, is pretty much 4:3 with the top and bottom cropped slightly and less black bars at the side) if my memory serves correctly. You are definitely going to need to get your set to know its in 16:9 to get the image displayed correctly. EDIT: 16:9 should work fine over any cables because the image is still 640x480 (or 720x576 for us PAL users), all they do is modifiy the pixel aspect ratio.
Thanks Lukeage, that was very informative. It made me wonder why my TV didn't have a 16:9 setting. So I took another look, and scanned through the aspect options while on the Zelda TV settings to see how the squares were affected. Turns out that it does have one, but panasonic decided to call it "FULL" instead of 16:9. My excuse is that I've always used the automatic setting, and have never had a problem. Thanks again for your help, and sorry for the bother.
While we're on the topic. Can you tell me whether PAL TVs and Wiis support progreesive scan? On wikipedia it said that the wii could only support 480i, 480p and 576i but I really hope it's wrong.
If your PAL tv supports progressive input, I can assure you that it will hand 480p perfectly. In fact, it seems less likely that a devices can do 576p even when they are sold in PAL regions.
I have in my 19"Samsung Widescreen Monitor 16:9 without component cables.... just an A/V capture card...
