Wii Component Video
My Wii
We finally got a Wii a few weeks back. We were planning on getting one this summer, probably for my birthday, but I’ve made it a habit to always check whether there are any Wiis in stock whenever I go into a department store like Fred Meyer or Wal-Mart. I made a late run to our local Target just before closing time to see if they had something in stock and when it wasn’t, I wandered over to Electronics to look at the empty space they allocate to the Wii price tag. Imagine my surprise to find that the space was actually occupied by Wiis. And not just one, but three! I phoned my wife to tell her they were out of what she had wanted and mentioned the Wiis. When she didn’t talk me out of it and coyly hinted I should get one, I decided to take advantage of my good fortune and got one just as the store closed. (I continue to check and I haven’t seen one since.) The next day we got our tax refund, so the timing was perfect.
Once you go component…
So now I had a Wii. Next was hooking it up to my TV. It comes with a standard composite video out cable because everyone has one. I was disappointed it wasn’t at least S-Video, but my PS2 and GameCube both connect the same way and I have an old CRT TV, so I figured I wasn’t missing much. However, when plugging in the cables, I discovered that my TV actually had a component video in. Cool, but would it really make much of a difference on a CRT, interlaced TV?
Component cables are cheap and I reasoned I’d need one eventually anyway whenever we decided to upgrade our TV, so I picked one up. When I got home, I hooked it up and left the composite cable on another input so I could compare them.
Wow! It makes an amazing difference. I might try to take a couple of before and after pictures, but it mainly eliminates dot crawl. That gives you a before picture, but after is left to your imagination.
The bottom line is that if your TV can use component video, no matter what the TV is, get a component video cable. It’s the best $15 you’ll spend on your Wii. I’m very curious to try my GameCube games on my Wii now.
I’ll grab some basic screenshots (I have to use my camera, so they won’t be perfect) and put them up to demonstrate the difference.