OK I finally took some photos.
The Wii’s video output is really soft (most games seem to do a blurry scale as part of the framebuffer copy to handle aspect correction) and I had a hard time finding decent stuff to take photos of in Xenoblade. Hopefully it comes through; my favorite part about this setup for 480p it is that it looks crisp while also not looking razer sharp.
That looks on par with native non-scaled 480p. Amazing stuff.
I got Xenoblade Chronicles when it released, but at the time I did not own an HDTV yet, only a 19" SD CRT. I found Xenoblade somewhat unplayable on that TV – after those black bars were put on the top and bottom of the screen the actual image was really small! The problem is that the game has a lot of text, and it’s often very small. Too small to be particularly legible when running with black bars on a smallish 4:3 screen. Seriously, they should have designed the game to work with 4:3 screens, I know by the time it released a lot of people had HDTVs, but it was the Wii, not an HD console or something!
When I finally got an HDTV in early 2013, I was actually able to play Xenoblade Chronicles. The text really was too small to be legible before that. So yeah, I’d recommend playing Xenoblade on a large 16:9 screen, or sitting really close to the screen, if you want to be able to actually read anything. I wish all Wii games supported 4:3, instead of some games being 4:3 only and others being 16:9 only and you need to just know which is which because it won’t auto-resize your screen, you’ll need to adjust it with your TVs’ screen size adjustment options (regular, zoom, etc)…
I have similar text-size problems with some Xbox One games, because my old HDTV only can run the X1 at up to 720p, and a lot of these games are designed for 1080p and thus have really small text at 720p. Small text plus 720p plus I;m sitting 10 feet from the screen equals a few games really do have way-too-small text problems. I presume having a 1080p screen would fix this issue… or 4K of course.
A wild ABF appears!
It has used wall of text! IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE!
I see a widescreen Sony xbr 34 inch CRT near Toronto(Richmond hill) on kijiji. I’m semi interested in it. It’s $175 which doesn’t seem all that bad. If anyone else wants to go for it, feel free to.
It’s supposedly like 200lbs. Not sure if the seller will help lift it but if anyone needs an extra set of hands I’m down to come help
Welcome!
Yes, I actually posted in the forum instead of only on the Discord.
That will be right up there at about 275-300 lbs.
I think that price is a little high. I’ve seen several 34" widescreen CRTs around here (Alberta) for free or less than $50.
I want one 
.
I saw one widescreen BVM once that could handle Wii games natively for 300 bucks. I passed like a sucker because I thought it was too high… a few months later and CRT monitors sky rocketed in price. Live and learn
I had a Toshiba 34" before I got a Sony SD set, and while I can see the draw of having a widescreen CRT for Xbox, Wii, etc… I can’t justify the space for a couple consoles.
They are pretty cool though, and if I had unlimited space, I’d get another one.
So here’s something I just learned. If you play Wii on a 4:3 screen capable of 480p like a PVM or BVM, it’s better to set the Wii to Widescreen in the settings, then smush the picture down using the CRT’s 16:9 setting, rather than leaving it in 4:3 and allowing the Wii to letterbox it.
By letting the Wii letterbox, you are actually playing at a much lower resolution. Letting the Wii use the full 480p frame buffer (resulting in a horizontally squished image) then allowing the CRT to letterbox it down to 16:9 will utilize the full resolution framebuffer that the Wii can output.
Doing this was revelatory because details that were easier to make out on my big screen seemed so much tougher to see on my CRT. I thought it was due to size, but it was actually due to leaving the Wii in 4:3 mode on the CRT and having it letterbox (effectively cropping a 480p image to an even lower resolution).
Now that I’ve allowed the CRT to do the letterboxing on the full 480p widescreen image, it looks much better.
I second this approach in fact I think some of youe screenshots might have been what inspired me to get an OSSC. Now I like to force widescreen on some 4:3 games that support it well enough too, pretty nice to be able to switch back and forth.
Twilight Princess 4:3 to my CRT Monitor at 480p:
OSSC passthrough to 4K TV with light scanlines:
Line 2x OSSC with scanlines:
Twilight Princess HD Remake 4K TV:
Peltz, thanks for this idea. I’ll give it a shot. Granted my tv is 480i but I’m still down with using the widescreen mode if it’s going to make things clearer even a bit. That sounds like the best compromise for games that will automatically letterbox
Hey don’t forget the PS3’s 480p is impacted the same as well.
If the display has a 16:9 mode, make use of it.
Loaded up Godfather Blackhand Edition and it’s Widescreen only (unless I missed an option somewhere, sigh)
Found a better list, see further up the thread.
List of 4:3 only games, thanks to Dolphin Emu
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/search?q=SuggestedAspectRatio
Because Nintendo included this list in vWii mode on Wii U 
edit: more readable page with lists of Disc, VC and WiiWare games here
https://wiki.mariocube.xyz/index.php/43DB
Very informative, thanks for sharing this! I was always wondering how the Wii U was so clever at detecting which games to output at a correct aspect ratio via HDMI, since Wii’s analogue output required user intervention.
I’ve used a Gecko code to play Xenoblade Chronicles in 4:3 and it appears to add extra viewable area to the top and the bottom of the screen instead of chopping off the sides.
I found that out myself as well.
Sometimes though the image appears oddly clearer for small text in 480i mode over 480p mode to my eyes at least.
That’s awesome! Got any images of what this looks like? I’m curious as to how the UI fits in, especially in battle.
