You have to set the Wii AND your TV to 16:9.

 

Don't worry. Z-targeting does that. It's part of the game.

 

Someone should tell my Wii and plasma tv that.


16:9 works fine on composite cables.

 

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.

 

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.