720p upscaling for the Wii

I was wondering, is it possible to change the output signaling of the wii, so that the tv thinks that it is a 720p signal (even though it would be still 480p), and displays the Wii's output in 720p? It would not change anything to the resolution of the games, but the Wii's output would be "upscaled" by the tv.

It would probably get rig of the blurriness of the 480p resolution...

Is it possible? Could it be added to an app like Gecko os?

I highly doubt it. The video encoder on the Wii would have to support HD speeds I think 720p is 74.25Mhz.

I don't think you'd get any improvement anyway, it's your TV that's up-scaling and causing the blur. I assume you're using the component into your TV?

Yes indeed, I have my wii connected with component cables directly to my tv.

Well, i thought of this upscaling possibility while I was thinking about my dvd player, which is hooked by component also, and how it can switch from widescreen to standard 4:3 depending on the dvd, and my tv would adjust perfecly to the aspect ratio.

I've made some research on the internet and came upon this description of upscaling:

Upscaling is a process that mathematically matches the pixel count of the output of the DVD signal to the physical pixel count on an HDTV(Source)

I don't really understand what is HD frequencies, but my tv is a 60hz lcd and can do 1080p, also on wikipedia there is no mention of the 74.25mhz (Wikipedia on 720p)

So upscaling is just a mathematical process to match the native pixel count of the hdtv... So I tjought it might be possible to upscale with a homebrew app which would trick the tv to think that the signal is 720p.

What do you think?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2010 07:10PM by groupedix.

74.25mhz is the pixel clock frequency, how fast chroma and luma are sent to the TV. The speed is faster than 480p because there's more pixels to send, 720p expects 1280x720.

Like I said you're only ever going to get 720x480 resolution from the Wii so the scaling is done on your TV. I'm really not sure what you could do to improve the blur, other than a better TV.

The DVD format is 720p thus you're getting HD from it, if you have an older TV it's actually down-scaling to 480i/p.

Btw, Wikipedia's pages for TV formats is horrid.

Well we've got no luck I guess... I've made some research on chroma and luma frequency, and Iunderstand now why it is impossible, since 480p's frequency is 27mhz... So even if we trick the tv to think that the signal is 720p, nothing will be displayed..

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groupedix
Well we've got no luck I guess... I've made some research on chroma and luma frequency, and Iunderstand now why it is impossible, since 480p's frequency is 27mhz... So even if we trick the tv to think that the signal is 720p, nothing will be displayed..

You could buy the HD Wii whenever it's released :)

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scanff

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groupedix
Well we've got no luck I guess... I've made some research on chroma and luma frequency, and Iunderstand now why it is impossible, since 480p's frequency is 27mhz... So even if we trick the tv to think that the signal is 720p, nothing will be displayed..

You could buy the HD Wii whenever it's released :)

Est. Release Date: Dec. 22, 2012 =p

Whoever said DVD Video is 720p, it isn't. The highest horizontal resolution supported is 720, but the highest vertical resolution is 576, giving a maximum resolution of 576p.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2010 04:10PM by WikiFSX.

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WikiFSX
Whoever said DVD Video is 720p, it isn't. The highest horizontal resolution supported is 720, but the highest vertical resolution is 576, giving a maximum resolution of 576p.

Twas me. I stand corrected. Here's a pretty good break down for someone interested,

[www.videotapestock.com]

For those of you who are curious...

Pixel data is rendered into the Embedded Frame Buffer (EFB), then copied to the External Frame Buffer (XFB); vertical scaling occurs during this copy process. Horizontal scaling is handled by the Video Interface (VI). Thus, the resolution that can be rendered in any one pass is limited by the size of the EFB, which is 2,072,520 bytes. When the pixel format is 48-bit, the maximum resolution is 640x528; the maximum resolution for 96-bit format is 640x264. You can achieve higher resolutions by drawing the top and bottom half of the screen in separate passes, but that entails an obvious performance penalty.

The XFB data is sent to the VI, which handles sending the image to your TV. Unfortunately, the VI limits the maximum screen space as follows:
720x480 for NTSC, EURGB60 and M/PAL
720x574 for PAL

At this point any further scaling is handled by the TV itself. Just like a good DVD player, a good TV should be able to apply a filtering algorithm while upscaling the image from 480p to 720p or 1080p, and thus produce a crisp image. If your TV handles this poorly, you can either buy a new TV or buy an external video scaler. See:
video scaler