KingOfHyrule

I’ve decided to make a thread dedicated to explaining all the jargon surrounding the Wii’s video display capabilities because it seems some people either aren’t sure of how it works or what the hell it all means, and some probably don’t care either – so this thread’s for you. 1. REFRESH RATES 2. COMPOSITE, RGB, S-VIDEO, COMPONENT – Which cable do I use? 3. 16:9 WIDESCREEN 4. PROGRESSIVE SCAN 1 - REFRESH RATES -- 50Hz By default, PAL games run at a refresh rate of 50Hz, which means that the image refreshes itself 50 times in a second. What are the benefits? PAL media has superior resolution over NTSC, having 576 lines instead of 480 displayed onscreen, so staying with 50Hz means a more flickery display, but a richer, more stable colour palette. -- 60Hz NTSC games run at 60Hz by default, but in PAL regions most current-gen games had the option to select 60Hz, and if your TV could support 60Hz (you’ll rarely find a new TV these days that doesn’t, even the cheapest of TVs) pressing B at the bootup of most PAL GameCube games allowed the option to select either 50Hz or 60Hz. Some PAL games actually only ran in 60Hz (Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, The Legend Of Zelda Collector’s Edition), so the people with TVs unable to support it couldn’t play them properly – time to upgrade that ould banger! What are the benefits? Selecting 60Hz means that the display would flicker less and motion would be cleaner and smoother (albeit inferior to 50Hz in terms of colour), refreshing 60 times a second instead of 50. -- PAL60 PAL games produced in PAL60 basically have the benefits of both 50Hz and 60Hz displays – the same richness from PAL and the 60Hz speed from NTSC. Who knows, maybe Wii games will be produced in PAL60? All in all it’s a personal preference whether to run 50Hz or 60Hz. Most people select 60Hz because it’s noticeably smoother and the difference in colour is not overly apparent. 2 - COMPOSITE, S-VIDEO, RGB, COMPONENT – Which cable do I use? -- COMPOSITE Composite cables were the standard cables included with GameCube in all regions, and will probably be included with Wii too. The video signal is carried on the yellow cable, and L & R audio signals on the red and white respectively. The majority of users probably used composite for the simple reason that the cable was included with the machine and it meant not having to go and buy another cable for the sake of improved display quality. Most DVD players, VCRs and other video devices include RCA (composite) jacks, but in Europe SCART connectors are just as widespread, which can carry RGB signals. -- S-VIDEO While S-Video was not supported in PAL GameCubes, NTSC ones did support it. S-Video is technically also a type of component signal because it splits brightness and colour signals, but it is the most inferior if included in that bracket. It is an improvement over composite, but not over RGB. Wii officially supports S-Video, presumably in all regions this time. -- RGB The Nintendo RGB cable for GameCube was somewhat difficult to come across in Europe, but those who wanted it badly enough sought it and found it! RGB is a component signal, splitting the display into red/green/blue, giving a far superior colour display and richer visuals. Because RGB is carried via a SCART connection, the audio signal was also included as one, annoying home theatre owners since they could not connect the audio to their surround sound system. Wii will support RGB and will be readily available at launch, since its predecessor did and proved successful. Unfortunately the Wii RGB cable will also not include separate audio jacks. -- COMPONENT The daddyo of video signals available to GameCube and Wii. Component cables again split the video signal into three, and are most commonly transferred using RCA connectors, which look similar to composite connectors. The quality is far superior to all of the video signals available to the console, and importantly allows games to run in Progressive Scan where available, and also HDTV where available, albeit not on Nintendo’s consoles. 4 - 16:9 WIDESCREEN Games running in widescreen basically are made to fit the entire width of a widescreen TV without stretching the image. More of the onscreen action is displayed making use of the wider frame. As an example, most GameCube games such as The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker were produced in 4:3 for optimum display on a square shaped TV screen, whereas The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii (and all other first party Wii games) will display in 16:9 wth the option of 4:3 as well. As you can see, 4:3 games are intended for a square TV and look stretched and disfigured on a widescreen. Widescreen TVs usually include the option to display in 4:3 to keep the proper resolution unstretched, but this results in black bars being displayed to the left and right of the action. It's also worth noting that while 16:9 games are very likely to include a 4:3 option to cater for people without a widscreen TV, running the game in 16:9 on a square TV will result in black bars being displayed above and below the frame, much like running a widescreen DVD on a square TV. It's a much of a muchness for square TV owners; whether you want a full-frame display with less of the action onscreen, or all of the action with black bars, it's up to you. 5 - PROGRESSIVE SCAN As a standard, games run in interlaced mode, which means that every other horizontal line on the screen is displayed in sequence – odd lines first, then even lines, resulting in onscreen flicker. Most upmarket TVs and monitors have a "natural" display mode or 100Hz mode, which is designed to make the image more stable, but it's not progressive scan, as the display is still interlaced. In NTSC regions, because of the 480 lines displayed onscreen, interlaced display is known as 480i, and in PAL regions because of the 576 lines, 576i (i for interlaced). Progressive scan means that the odd lines and even lines are displayed together, giving a much richer, stable image and much less flicker. This is known as 480p/576p for obvious reasons. Again, NTSC regions are 60Hz and PAL are 50Hz by default, so this can be addressed as 480i60/480p60 and 576i50/576p50 respectively. Jesus, what a mouthful! Here's an exaggerated diagram from Wikipedia to explain the difference. The refresh rate is at 10Hz to slow things down enough to make the flicker obvious, but the same idea applies to anything in interlaced mode and at any refresh rate. As you can see, progressive is much smoother and sharper. It is false to say that PAL GameCubes did not support progressive scan – they actually did, it’s just that PAL games did not include the option to display in progressive. If one connected the Nintendo Component Cable to a TV capable of displaying in 480p, bought an NTSC game capable of the progressive display and ran it on a PAL GameCube using Freeloader, progressive scan is entirely possible. 480 interlaced and progressive is the highest resolution that Wii will be able to display. As a comparison, Xbox360 can display 720p (720 horizontal lines resolution in progressive) which is considered High Definition. 480i and 576i are what are known as SDTV (Standard Definition TV) and while 480p/576p is not High Def, it's what's known as EDTV (Enhanced Definition TV). Not every TV supports anything higher than 576i. If there are component connectors on your TV, it’s likely that you’ll be able to run Wii in progressive scan, but double check your TV’s manual before buying the cables. If you own a HDTV, you’re all set anyway. Hope this all helped - if anything appears to be incorrect, please let me know and I'll happily amend it!

Does anyone have a specific thing that they really miss, like a TV program or certain food or drink, that was once available but now isn't? I have two: Anyone remember HP All Sauce? It was the nicest sauce ever to come from a bottle, tasted a bit like ketchup, HP and mayonnaise mixed together! I don't know where it went or why... And fans of Pot Noodles - anyone remember the Pots Of The World range? Absolutely fantastic snacks, they stopped making them too!

I actually miss the Irish punt too, even though I mainly spend money up north with the good oul British pound, God bless it lol Wispa, great call, I miss those, and I also really miss Sesame Street. Another one for the Irish crowd - anyone remember Bosco?? Or Cadbury's Olympic bars?

I was born on the Falls and lived there for the first half of my life, living just outside the West now in Dunmurry!

I'm really sorry, I just don't like the sound of the Antrim accents, they don't fall easy on my ears at all. But you're right, it wasn't very nice, was just getting into the whole accent discussion a bit much! I even made sure to put my own Belfast accent down in the same post, it's a disgusting sound to a lot of people too. Each to their own! Remind me if I ever meet you to apologise again :

Éire go deo!

I was absolutely waiting on someone noticing that lol she doesn't look pleased.

What accent do you have? Belfast ("bealfawst")! If you could have any accent, what would you have? I'm actually quite happy with this one. Maybe the Aussie accent, it's cool. And of course, Which is your favorite accent? And are there any you just can't stand? I like the south Armagh (Ireland) accent, Glasgow accent, Geordie accent and Liverpool accent. I can't stand the Bangor accent or any snobby Northern Irish accent, they turn the fuckin stomach of me. And (apologies to Ballymena residents on the forum!) I really don't like the Ballymena or north Antrim accents in general lol when Ballymena/Antrim/Cullybackey people get on the train I feel like shooting myself. What is the deal with adding "hi!" to every sentence? "Ya roond up the cyattle hi?" "Naw nut yit hi." See??? Ok. [/rant] Here's me, weh? Am fokin tellin ye nigh, see the fokin Bealfawst aksint, bit fokin hard on the lugs after a wayle leik! And every orr fokin word is "fok"! Ae leik it tho, fank fok ae don't speak leik iss tho! Mine's iddn as hawrd as iss heer. Fok me.

Don't think I've posted myself yet, so here we go - this was me two years ago at my school formal. I pretty much look the same now lol - notice the obligatory Irish flag and pint of Guinness...

Crucial's scanner is great, I wouldn't have had a clue between what RAM format to buy before using this just invested in 2gb RAM on top of my 1gb already - looking forward to the result!

...I've managed to delete the actual entry of Sound, video and game controllers in Device Manager after messing around in the registry. I mean it's not even there in the list of devices anymore. Has anyone any ideas on how to get it back?? I've lost all audio and all video capabilities and there's no point in installing new device drivers until I get this back.

You'd think so! Windows wouldn't let me restore to any point (that was the first thing I tried) and I knew I wasn't going to get it back easily so I just backed up and reset to factory settings. Much better now just bought 2 extra gigs of RAM so she's on the mend now lol thanks for the help lads.

I'm a walt, should have known better than to toy about with the registry. How do I go about doing a repair install?

I can't get my head around this one so decided to beg for help on the boards! I've just bought a USB MIDI cable and want to set up my Yamaha MIDI keyboard to use with music programs in Windows XP, but I made the foolish choice of initially letting Windows install the device using its own shitty generic USB MIDI drivers, when really I should have researched and used Yamaha's own in the first place. So at the minute, my music software doesn't see the USB MIDI device and I can't choose it, and Windows won't even let me update the drivers to use Yamaha's, telling me that it couldn't find a better setup even though I'm directly browsing the Yamaha driver folder. What I need to be able to do is uninstall Windows' generic drivers and start from scratch, but everytime I uninstall the "USB Audio device" in Device Manager and re-connect, Windows automatically sets the same bastard thing up again! Any ideas on how to prevent Windows from doing this? Thanks for the help!

The cable came with absolutely nothing; after doing some Googling it seems that I'm not the only one having this problem. I finally managed to figure out how to reset things to start from scratch after some dodgy editing of the registry, but strangely Yamaha's installation instructions don't even work after this - tells me there's no fuckin .inf file lol I'm losing the will to live, never simple is it! Thanks for the help anyway, I'll see if I can come up with a workaround...

How do I install the Yamaha drivers manually? There's no setup.exe file or anything in the driver download, just a few folders full of system files.

TVersity works for me but video is so jumpy, even when I reduce the resolution etc. Such a good idea, just wish it worked better for me. Any suggestions?

Jesus it's been quite a while since I posted in here...anyway I'd like to ask about using an LCD HDTV as a PC monitor - for anyone using that setup, what's the quality like? Is it as sharp and defined as it would be using a dedicated TFT monitor? My TFT recently collapsed and no one seems to wants to attempt to repair it so I'm considering killing two birds with the one stone and going for a new 32" LCD HDTV with PC input to replace my current large RPHDTV while doubling up as a new PC monitor. Any thoughts or advice from the tech heads? Is it worth considering?

I'm not a big rugby fan, but I do go out to watch every Ireland match during the Six Nations - loyal to the country so I'll let the big rugby men and women on the board take over for the real discussions about it. Anyone else looking forward to it? What country is everyone going for? EDIT: Official fixtures SIX NATIONS 2007 OFFICIAL FIXTURES All times are GMT Saturday 3 February Italy v France @ 13.30 (Result 3-39) England v Scotland @ 16.00 (Result 42-20) Sunday 4 February Wales v Ireland @ 15.00 (Result 9-19) Saturday 10 February England v Italy @ 13.30 (Result 20-7) Scotland v Wales @ 15.30 (Result 21-9) Sunday 11 February Ireland v France @ 15.00 (Result 20-17) Saturday 24 February Scotland v Italy @ 15.00 (Result 17-37) Ireland v England @ 17.30 (Result 43-13) France v Wales @ 20.00 (Result 32-21) Saturday 10 March Scotland v Ireland @ 13.30 Italy v Wales @ 15.30 Sunday 11 March England v France @ 15.00 Saturday 17 March (St Patrick's Day) Italy v Ireland @ 13.30 France v Scotland @ 15.30 Wales v England @ 17.30

Superb, loved the first post

True Brit on our hands here lol

I'm an acoustic fingerstyle player myself (shameless advertising - http://www.ghostofadeaddog.com), so any advice I could give you is limited DCK! I'd recommend an instructional DVD or going for lessons from a reputable guitarist in your area. There's only so much you can teach yourself, and you'll end up stuck in a rut eventually without some sort of instruction.

I feel bad for reviving this thread so much - ah well, fuck yis. Who's going to watch the triple dunt tomorrow then? Predictions? I'd go for Scotland, Ireland and France myself.

Going out to get ballixed, like this:

Alcoholic 10 char