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Wii Confirmed at 480p
Eurogamer is reconfirming that the Wii only outputs at 480p, after the official Nintendo magazine mistakenly said otherwise. From the article: "Nintendo UK also recently said that it had every intention of releasing peripherals like the component cable — used to achieve the 480p resolution — at retail, despite suggestions that you'd have to buy the cables through online shops in the US. The interest in Wii's high-resolution options is of course spurred on by Microsoft and Sony's battling over the higher end. Both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generally offer games in 720p, with 1080p now possible for developers who want to go the extra mile (well, the extra 1,152,000 pixels, anyway)."
02/11/06 in Europe is 11/02/06 in the U.S.
You are correct sir. The Wii will support widescreen at 480p.
I have unwittingly spewed FUD and must apologize.
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
Which leads me to answer: "Of course it fucking matters!"
Look, I get the argument. A lot of people don't have HDTVs yet. But this is a resolution that has been with us since the 50s people. It is positively ancient.
Not to mention, the inherent artifacts of NTSC (Never The Same Colour). 29.97 frames per second, not 30. No real reds (balanced to make caucasian skin look palatable). Interlaced. Its bullshit. And we all know it.
The Wii solves one problem - its progressive, so no interlacing. That's nice. But you still need to make considerations for: action-safe area on the TV (overscan), gigantic fonts (because the resolution is so bad), obscure broadcast-design limitations around aliasing and gradients, moire effect... I could go on and on.
480p, in my humble opinion, is the PS2 and GameCube and Xbox. It is yesteryear. I've been playing games in that resolution for over ten years. Its time for something that would not look like a postage stamp on my computer monitor. 720p would have been a nice boost.
Did I miss anything?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
After researching on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD All DVD video in NTSC is restricted to 480 lines of resolution and there are several horizontal pixel ratings (eg: 720x480, 352x480, etc.) and some DVDs are only 240 lines of resolution. Anyone out there that says "Wii suxx0rz for only being 480 I want my games to look as good as my rented DVDs on my high def TV" are deluding themselves. :)
All video on (professionally mastered) DVDs is presented as a 720x480 picture. If its a widescreen video, the pixels are perfectly square. If its a standard-size video, the pixels are squished so that the 720 pixels per line fit in the screen. When a widescreen video is played on a standard-size screen, the DVD player is responsible for removing lines from the video so that the aspect ratio of the original video is maintained.
And to the GP, the "pillar-boxing" you get when displaying a standard-size picture on a widescreen TV actually only takes up 11% of your screen's real-estate. If the pillar-boxing is taking up more than that, there's a problem with your setup.
The parent post was right. The "480p" on the Wii means 720x480 (or maybe 852x480). Not 480 by something else. That's typical of how TV resolutions are referred to - the vertical resolution, not the horizontal.