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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)."
It's a fact that the 360 works with a regular TV and it can be assumed (quite confidently) that the PS3 will, too.
Although, one problem that the 360 has is that many of the games are designed with HDTVs in mind. That leads to developers creating HUDs with text that is unreadably small on regular TVs. So far, I've noticed that problem in FEAR (the only unreadable text so far has been the name of the talking person in the upper left corner, which doesn't really matter), Dead Rising (the name of the weapon and some other misc. text, but it's not a HUGE deal... but that one gets annoying), and Madden. I primarily stick to playing Lumines, Geometry Wars and Fight Night, so I haven't seen every game in depth, but my roommate has complained about small type in other games.
There is an advantage with nintendo only supporting 480p which is basically that all developers are targeting the same resolution and things will be consistent.
although, I think the Wii will be far more fun on those huge TVs which are high-def and it would look beautiful if they supported the 1080 resolution.
anyway, I seriously doubt Nintendo would release the wii if it looked terrible. they do have some sense.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I'm a big geek and I'd love to say "1080P ROXXORZ! ALL!! 4TW!!" but sadly, it isn't the case. Yes, a big-screen high-definition teleivision playing HDTV definately looks better than Channel 2 on your old 13". But that isn't an accurate comparison for most of the market.
I sold TVs for 8 years. I had big banks of them - Standard, ED, HD - even some exotic 1080p stuff that didn't run anything except a special demo disk in a special machine.
One particular corner was a perfect test area. We had a 480P, 720P, and 1080I television of the same make and line (it was an LG set of televisions). Of the hundreds (if not thousands) of customers I showed these sets to, running HD PBS 1080 feed via Satellite (beautiful show, btw) - 8 out of 10 people pointed at the 480P set and said it was superior quality. When pressed for why they made that choice, they usually said "it was a hunch" and that they couldn't really tell between the three.
All three TVs had v-high quality cables, and my "test subjects" were sitting approximately 8 feet away from these 42" sets, which were all hung in equal lighting at eye level.
Then I'd move the test subjects up close - 2 feet away or so - and we could easily count the physical pixels on the 480 screen, wheras you'd have to move your head much closer to count the pixels on the 1080 screen. We could all see that, yes, upon inspection we *know* that 1080 is better...
But then I pointed at the pricetags. $1000 for the 480, $1800 for the 720, and $2500 for the 1080. Guess which one I sold the most of. (most of my data culled from 1-2-3 years ago so pricing/details may vary).
I have a 50" LCD Projection TV, 720p, that is widescreen (as all new TV's appear to be). I really don't care too much about resolution, but rather about dimensions. The only thing that is really a negative in my mind about the Wii is whether or not games will be square, or rectangular. Will I get to use all of the screen real-estate on my new TV, or will I have a square box in the middle, wasting at least 1/2 of my TV's display space?
That's the big question in my mind.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
progressive scan is used over interlacing because interlacing leaves artifacts and flickering particularly with fast moving pictures (like sports). Not to mention most HDTV are progressing meaning they'd have to deinterlace the incoming signal which can create breakup and more artifacting along the edges of fast moving objects on screen (again like sports).
In terms of the video game space there is no difference in programing 1080i and 1080p. While 1080i might only have 540 lines actually displayed they have to render the whole frame in 1080 frame to keep it in sync. If you were to specifically program your game to output in an interlaced format (meaning you only had to render 540 lines per frame) you'd be doing what's called "field rendering" which is almost universally avoided because it requires you to ensure a rock solid 60FPS and if you miss a frame you run the risk of loosing sync placing the odd lines where the evens should go and the even lines where the odds should go.
Collector's Edition
So there will be some commotion about that issue when the Wii is first released. All Wii games will probably run 60fps, and I'll take 480i@60 on a CRT over 720p@30 on a HDTV anyday.