jawa2 wrote:Connecting up a Wii to a modern TV screenI bought a Wii2HDMI adaptor -
this one - so that I can use my Wii with my new TV. Ideally I'd continue using a component cable but fewer modern TVs cater for these now.
+ It works well; the picture is a lot sharper than I'd imagined although this will defend upon your TV's capabilities
+ I'm running it in 480p mode and my Wii games and N64 Virtual Console games work great with the adapter
- ... but lower-res games (anything below 480i, such as Master System, Mega Drive and SNES Virtual Console games) do not work; the screen goes blank (I've tried 480i and 576i modes, too)
I understand that these lower resolutions don't work well over HDMI with most modern TVs. I'm wondering if a
a component-to-HDMI device such as this one would work?
Have any of you retro gaming folks used one of these; or maybe other similar devices?
That's won't do you any good in this case Jawa.
Most modern TVs won't even have SCART inputs, though they may still have some form of Composite/Component input.
The Wii HDMI adapter you have is fine for Wii software which runs at 480p or higher, but as you found it can have issues with the older 240p VC systems.
This is because all it is doing is taking that Component signal and converting it to HDMI. It's not altering the resolution at all, it's just turning the signal into something the TV recognises as HDMI. So 480i Component becomes 480i HDMI, 240p Component becomes 240p HDMI etc.
The vast majority of new TV's aren't designed to handle the old 240p or 480i signals that most older systems would output. So when you try to send it one of these lower resolutions it doesn't know how to interpret it and will either just go black, or say it can't find a signal or something similar. That will be what is happening here.
So, in order to use these resolutions (either through Wii VC, or through original hardware) on new TV's you need some form of upscaler.
An upscaler takes that original 240p signal and "Upscales" it to something that the TV can recognise. A common way of doing that is to line-double it, because 2x 240p is 480p and most TVs still recognise 480p, though different upscalers can do different things.
What you have linked to on Amazon there isn't an upscaler, simply another signal convertor. Reading the details on it, it does say that it won't work with anything below 480i anyway, so you would have the same issue in any case
Unforunately you then end up looking at upscalers. Most upscalers are not designed for games systems and will usually introduce some input lag which can make them near unplayable in the worst cases.
Upscalers specifically designed for games aren't especially cheap (OSSC is £144), but they look excellent and know exactly how to properly handle older systems.
EDIT:
jawa2 wrote:Ding Dong Merrily on Hide wrote:I think that second adapter would have the same problem as the description seems to suggest anything below 480i is incompatible.
Ah, yeah, true, Ironhide. I'm kinda thinking that the only solution would be some kind of (expensive!) upscaling kit; maybe the type of tech that some of the more hardcore retro gamers here use.
Yeah, you would need to go down that road I think.
luckily my Mega Drive plug works with it perfectly fine so I'm able to use that as the plug. I did come with 8 games also. I think most are considered shite, though. Like The Goonies and The Goonies 2.