XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

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theclaw
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by theclaw »

CRTGAMER wrote:For my 4:3 HDCRT with a component hookup, I set my console to 4:3 and 480p and all games use of the entire screen estate. No issues with any games including the mentioned Skyward Sword, Kirby Dreamland and Xeonoblade.


I hope you don't mean that literally. Those lack 4:3 support, the entire screen entails being squashed from 16:9.

Jamisonia wrote:Good enough that if I can't get this figured out quickly, I'm forgoing using the Mini to upscale it. Its always been my hope to find an upscaler that makes Skyward Sword not look like utter shit. I think Dolphin may be the only solution.


The XRGB option labeled aspect ratio. If that doesn't work then your TV is set to pillarbox 1080p into 4:3 size.

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ninjainspandex
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by ninjainspandex »

lol wow Lum is a baller, he just has a pile of XRGB-minis
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Ziggy
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

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ninjainspandex wrote:lol wow Lum is a baller, he just has a pile of XRGB-minis


Yeah, wtf. Share the love! :wink:
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by s1mplehumar »

^ I thought I recognized that Regza. :)
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Jamisonia
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by Jamisonia »

@theclaw

I don't think that is quite right. I turned my TV's pillarbox bars grey so I could see exactly when my TV is pillarboxing. The TV is definitely not pillarboxing when I turn the XRGB Mini to Wide. Yet the image does not quite reach the edges of the screen. The mini is placing a black box on all sides for some reason, almost like its assuming there will be overscan.

Anyway I did get it to work. If I turn the XRGB Mini to 4:3 it outs an anamorphically squeezed 16:9 frame in a 4:3 area. It still outputs this as "Widescreen" to my TV with black pillar boxes on the sides. Luckily my TV allows me the option to stretch out 1080p content like this. So my TV can then stretch the anamorphic image to the proper width thereby filling the entire 16:9 panel. Just like if I plugged it directly into my TV. Though doing it this way makes it look very good, my TV upscales it on its own just a little bit better. So looks like I won't be using the XRGB mini to upscale 480p content.

Here's what I'm seeing is wrong. The XRGB Mini does not stretch out anamorphic content correctly. When I turn on Wide screen mode it ought to make the Mini stretch out an anamorphic image horizontally to a 16:9 aspect ratio, without placing any sort of bars on it. Currently the Mini places bars on all sides of the image when doing this. I'm not sure why.
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theclaw
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by theclaw »

Nintendo designed the Wii assuming all TVs use overscan, and does not have an option to correct it. In fact they carried that annoyance over to Wii mode on Wii U. http://gbatemp.net/threads/vwii-mode-overscan-issue.340460/
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by k.vlaros »

theclaw wrote:Nothing you can do. The aspect ratio situation on Wii is a major **** to put it lightly.

There's five classes I can name off hand:
4:3 only games who ignore the Wii system option, and just stretch if the TV tells them to.
4:3 only games who pillarbox if the Wii is set widescreen
16:9 only games who letterbox if the Wii is set not widescreen
games that use only letterboxed 4:3, no widescreen option at all (GC version Resident Evil 4)
games with proper support for both


I've got to add to this with recent observations of my own. If anyone doesn't know the difference between pixel aspect ratios storage and display, google now. And that NTSC is defined as 720 dots of horizontal information.

I noticed right off the bat that my TV reports the WiiU running Wiimode to be outputting 720x480. Initially my Wii is set to 720p (implied widescreen). For the good Wii games, the image fills the screen correctly with only a very small black margin on all sides with my TV in "screen fit" (suggesting the WiiU is adding the black margin, not my TV). What I've found is that in addition to Claw's correct notes above, there are a few cheap Wii games that are ignoring or misinterpreting the 'widescreen' flag, and the only way to display them at the correct display aspect ratio is using a crop function on my TV that removes part of the top and bottom. Two examples are Pinball Williams Collection [edit: actually I think the Crave-published game I'm thinking of is not Pinball Williams but Mirra BMX Wii. I'll try to pull out the old Wii to compare it to the Wiiu Wii mode] and Phantom Brave. Both of these games display a horizontally squished image using "screen fit". It's like they are trying to display an anamorphic widescreen image, but the WiiU is insisting on adding pillar boxes to them. I'll call this class of game "badly behaved widescreen".

* (I'm well aware that the Phantom Brave port has a funny issue of either having correctly proportioned backgrounds with stretched sprites, or correctly proportioned sprites with squished backgrounds, depending on if you're set to 16:9 or 4:3, respectively. I've repeatedly compared the presentation between the WiiU set to 720p in Wii mode for the above example games - and a couple others - to an original Wii set in 16:9, and there is something off about their implementation/interaction with the WiiU in Wii mode)
Last edited by k.vlaros on Thu Dec 18, 2014 1:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
ninjainspandex
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by ninjainspandex »

honestly if you want to play Wii games on an HDTV don't bother with an upscaler and just get a Wii U
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Re: XRGB Mini Question Wii Aspect Ratio Headaches

Post by Ziggy »

I forget his handle, but that guy that seems to be the most knowledgeable when it comes to the XRGB and upscalers in general, recommends just using a Wii HDMI thing. Specifically the kind that outputs 480p. That way, no (cheap) scaling is being done. Just converting 480p YPbPr to 480p HDMI.

Me personally, I put my Wii through the XRGB mini, but I set the output to 480p, so I'm really just using it to convert to HDMI. I don't notice any added delay, if there is any, and I don't mind the way the Wii looks on my HDTV when the TV does the scaling. I would just use the above mentioned 480p HDMI converter thing, but I'm fresh out of HDMI inputs. Long story short, I don't have to worry about aspect ratio issues.

Using the U for Wii games really isn't bad advice. I just have this thing with wear and tear on consoles, I'm frantic about keeping it at a minimum to prolong console life as much as possible. I use my U only for U games.
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