I bought an HDMI 720/1080P upscaler for my Wii!

[TurtleCrusher]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o00_s00_i01

I wrote a review on amazon about it, and I'll add a bit more to it.

Pros:
Actually does upscale. Seems to be quite similar to MLAA, for you enthusiasts out there.
Colors are more vibrant.
Audio isn't as loud as component, and sounds a bit better.
720P and 1080P button-switch does make a difference!
Netflix while on optimum bit-rate looks very good. Much better than my comcast SD box and rivals high-quality 480P and low bit-rate 720P rips.
No more "noise" on the video channels. I don't see fuzzy or alternating pixels like I would with componet cables. Especially for Virtual Console games it looks GREAT!

Cons:
Image was a bit darker than component, however, adjusting TV settings made it perfect.
Running on a modded Wii, the adapter seems confused on loading Backup GameCube games via DIOS MIOS. It works well once past the GC screen, and it is really a non-issue.
Takes a needle to change the 720P/1080P button-switch.

I had the component cables and playing WWE 13, and while on pause i memorized a group of pixels around the turnbuckle (lots of jagged edges), and then swapped it out for 720P via HDMI and immediately the jagged edges were smoothed out while retaining most, if not all of the sharpness in the image. Watching it in motion on my LG 32" 720P TV was where the differences are noticed. All the jagged edges from the ropes, ring and most of the characters on screen were gone. I used WWE 13 as a good test for this due to the aliasing that occurs.

The ability to hook up to modern devices (monitors, HDTV's, etc) make the value even more outstanding in case I ever need to retire the Wii for a while. Overall with the increase in quality my wife is watching a TON more netflix now that it looks slightly better.

For those that play their Wii often, this is worth the money. 5 Stars!

 

[p_monks33]

I have the vdigi wii2hdmi and it does work well, but once you play your games on dolphin, you won't go back.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I have the vdigi wii2hdmi and it does work well, but once you play your games on dolphin, you won't go back.

I spent weeks, literally at least an hour each day trying to get dolphin to work well enough. Didn't happen. With likely rough ATI driver support and my CPU not being the fastest for single threaded tasks, it wasn't pretty in most games. I went with the real experience.

 

[gorcorps]

I spent weeks, literally at least an hour each day trying to get dolphin to work well enough. Didn't happen. With likely rough ATI driver support and my CPU not being the fastest for single threaded tasks, it wasn't pretty in most games. I went with the real experience.

Agreed. I got dolphin to run fine but every game I tried had a game breaking bug that wasn't fixed. Wasn't worth it.

That said, the wii looks pretty awful on an HD tv so I might try this. Honestly it looks bad enough that I don't even play the games I like for it.

 

[ghost recon88]

So 1080p actually looks better than 720p? Or just not as stretched as 720p?

 

[purbeast0]

ive had one of these for years because the monitor excepts only vga and hdmi (and dvi). has worked well and games do look nice, for a wii.

going to play some dkcr tonight for the first time on my 120" screen. pretty sure it is going to look like complete ass, even with the hdmi adapter.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

It looks better at 720P than 1080P on my 32" 720P HDTV. 1080P looks stretched, upscaled an then smashed. 720P looks pretty good.

Don't expect miracles, but if you play your wii a lot, it well worth it. It will not improve 3D textures or anything like that, but it will "clean up" the image considerably.

 

[Ferzerp]

Now measure your display lag

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Now measure your display lag

There's no perceivable lag at all. I was worried about this as well. I play Guitar Hero 3 and it has the same timing that it did with RCA and component.

If the hardware is specialized for one task, you'd be amazed at how fast and efficient it is. This can really be seen most commonly from software vs hardware capture cards, which this is the latter. Software has a massive lag even on the fastest computers, while dedicated hardware can do the same task up to millions (yes, millions) of times faster due to not having to wait for calls, fetching, interrupts and secondary instructions from backgrounds tasks.

Microprocessors are incredibly efficient at many tasks, but still very slow at any given specific tasks as compared to a dedicated piece of silicon with a single purpose.

 

[Crow550]

I got one from Monoprice. Pretty sure it's the same too.

Here is a copy & paste of the mini review on gave it in the Monoprice 20% off hot deals thread: While this won't make it true 1080P it will upconvert it like you can with DVDs. So it looks sharper. It will also take 480i games and convert them to progressive too. Monoprice failed to mention it but there is a small pin hole button that with a paperclip will change it from 720P to 1080P with the Wii on. It will add some junk to the Wiis trunk so use a light HDMI cable.) ($21.12 after 20% coupon which is still good)

Which yes even classic games will look sharper too. It will stretch 4:3 content unless that content has a 16:9 correction like some of the Homebrew apps do. Maybe your TV may have a setting too.