Wii in 480p vs 480i, 16:9 vs 4:3 with Pics of Monkey Ball

Via Gamescentral

I finally received my component cables from Nintendo and I am going to tell you all about my results.

First, for all of you that don't have the component cables yet the wii is capable of working with widescreen settings in 480i but 480i is natively a 4:3 ratio (640x480). So how does this work. Basically the wii sends out a (640x480) image that it knows your TV is going to stretch so the image it sends out is kind of squished and ready to be stretched by your widescreen TV.

What does this mean? This means if you don't have your component cable and you run your wii in 480i Widescreen things will lose clarity. Try running it 4:3 and you will see the difference.

Once you get your component cables there is good news! The Wii outputs anamorphic, EDTV 16:9 DVD Quality at 480p (720x480). 480p is not natively a 16:9 ratio it's a 4.5/3 ratio and has 12.5% more pixels than 480i. Most DVD players will output 480p in 16:9 by stretching it and then sending the image to the display. Instead the Wii outputs the full (720x480) resolution and lets the TV handle it. Luckily 480p (720x480) is easily converted to a 16:9 ratio by your screen with no resolution loss.

Let's take a look at a couple of pics I snapped that really capture this. 480i with rca cables first, then 480p, click to see full scale:

One thing that I was not expecting was how much brighter the colors looked as well. Makes sense since component cable has separate wire for red blue and green. You can easily see this in the pictures. The other benefit of course is less jaggies and more detail that I was expecting. In my personal opinion the 480p looks very hi def and I am no longer worried about the wii's graphic capabilities. Some of the levels in monkey ball are amazing and I am sure Super Smash Brothers and Super Mario Galaxy are going to look fantastic. We are talking about a system that is still twice as powerful as the GameCube.

Screens at the link above.