I recently tried connecting my Wii to my LCD TV, and it works well for the most part. However, I've noticed in some Wii games, and all Gamecube games, there are black bars to the sides of the screen. These bars do not make the picture 4:3 though, the picture seems to be somewhere in between 4:3 and 16:9. It doesn't make any difference whether the game is supposed to run in 4:3 or 16:9, either. I don't have this problem with any other video source. However, newer games seem to display correctly. For example, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Sports Resort display correctly, but MiniCopter: Adventure Flight and WarioWare Smooth Moves do not. The Wii menu also displays correctly. I've tried many different settings on my TV, but none of them will make the picture display correctly. I've also tried messing around with the settings on the Wii to no avail. Any idea how to fix this?
I know that Smooth Moves isn't widescreen.. All Gamecube games are 4:3 unless theres an option in the menu for Widescreen. So it must be an issue with how the TV is handling a 4:3 image. can you provide some photos? What brand of TV is it?
I know what you mean too. Some games are widescreen supported, but due to coming through an analog component cable output and possibly imperfect/lazy coding by the developer, aren't fully 16:9 wide.. although they can be if stretched right enough. This is most noticeable with RE4 Wii Edition..
I've never had odd proportions? Wii is 16:9, TV is set to 16:9, it has always displayed in 16:9 exactly. With Smooth Moves/Cube games, this produces a a 4:3 stretched to full 16:9. I'll manually set my TV to 16:10 in this case, as it makes the stretch less noticable. Setting to 4:3 maintains the original ratio. I'd place the blame on the TV. Photos would help of the offending games.
We don't get on the wii much here, but i've noticed when playing out of region games (pal ones) they don't reach the very edges of my screen as you describe.. i don't think that i have seen any ntsc one do this to me though.
I see. I think I know what the problem is. The Wii is adding bars to the sides to make the image 4:3, but my TV is stupid and is overscanning somewhat. Not sure how to fix this, though.
Odds are that unless it's an HDTV, it's not 16:9. All the TVs I have around here under 25 inches (about 6) are 'EDTV' and although they can only really take 4:3 input the screen itself tends to be 5-10% wider to give the impression of widescreen. Could this be what you're experiencing?
I think when the Wii is set to 16:9, it ALWAYS outputs at 16:9, even on 4:3 games. That would need to be confirmed though- mines not currently connected to my HDTV so I can't check, but I seem to remember believing the contrary, and then someone proving me wrong- my TV was telling me the resolution was widescreen even though it was a 4:3 game.
It's very dependent on how it's hooked up. Unlike our more foreign brethren, we have gorged on the fact SCART gives us auto-switching between 4:3 and 16:9. However, like everyone else in the world, if you have it hooked up on Composite or Component, your TV isn't told to switch ratios. As such, it'll stay in the same ratio until you manually tell it otherwise.
As I seem to gather, you play on a NTSC-Wii. I know, I know. But check your Display settings in the Wii Menu (Widescreen & EDTV). You say the Wii Menu runs fully stretched? As much as I know, the Wii Menu runs in VGA (640*480), Games with HD and Widescreen support run in 480p (720*480). Games without Widescreen run in 640*480. And games without HD run in 480i. The Wii does not scale. If you have some Virtual Console Titles, try to run them. But it's your TV, maybe it can't handle VGA correctly.
The Wii menu runs in 16:9 if you are set to 16:9 in the Settings. I use component on my HDTV and RGB SCART on my CRT. The CRT has an auto-detect feature where it will change the picture mode depending on the signal- so it will change willy nilly between 4:3, Wide, 'Cinema', etc, regardless of the input source. Yknow what, I'll nab my Wii and do some testing.
WIi is set to 16:9. Component. Wii Menu is 720x480. Even when forcing 4:3 on TV, it reports the same res. It reports Smooth Moves as 720x480. I set the Wii to 4:3. The TV still reports 720x480. How odd. All the menus are def 4:3 though (stretched in Widescreen). Still reports Smooth Moves as 720 x 480. Gamecube game. TV reports 720x576 (PAL game..) So, I'm even more confused now.
I think I've seen the issue you're describing. If it's what I think it is, it's not limited to just the Wii. PS2 "widescreen games" will have the same issue when output through a PS3. Most newer games fully fill the screen (newer Nintendo pulblished games, and Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity for whatever reason) while "lesser quality" games and older PS2 titles such as the Yakuza series do not. Not sure what causes this, but I'd guess it would have to do with overscan and the expectation that older displays wouldn't be showing the "black area".
I think I've solved it. There's an option on my TV that will let you manually resize the image. I was having the same problem described here with my Dreamcast connected via VGA. It should work for the Wii as well, though I haven't had a chance to try it yet. The only problem with this is that newer games won't display correctly, which means that I'll have to manually switch back and forth depending on the game. There's an option to do this automatically on the HDMI connection, but not on component for some reason. Oh well.
Well, it turns out I can't do what I just described because the option is only available for the VGA input. I looked around the internet a bit and it seems like what I'm talking about might be a common problem. Which games it affects and to what extent seems to vary, though. Yakumo: are you sure MiniCopter displays in 4:3? Does anyone know if there's a list somewhere of games for the Wii that aren't in widescreen?
Wii ALWAYS outputs a 640x480 image; 16:9 mode doesn't change the video timing at all, what it does is transform game coordinates into 640x360. The TV's widescreen mode should detect the letterboxing and scale to the proper size (like an anamorphic DVD). This is where people's problems lie, their TVs don't do this correctly. (BTW: 720x480 is NOT widescreen, it's 4:3 with non-square pixels. 16 of the 720 pixels aren't active video, 704 = necessary resolution to sample full chrominance bandwidth.)
Yup. Sounds like an issue with the TV being incapable of axing the letterboxing automatically... or that we're talking about very specific games that either features an overscan compensation zone or has 4:3 preservation when the Wii is set to Widescreen.
