Wii Portable

[tomegemcity]

Hi. I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this but I'm about to start a Wii portable in a few weeks and I was wondering if I could, for video and audio, just solder a Wii2HDMI to the thing and use HDMI to the screen I have? Would that work?

 

[Prog]

Do you already have a screen that takes HDMI? If so, I'd like to know where you found it. If not, I'm not sure you could find one.

Also, it may not work well. (Well, in this case, means reliably, or at all.) HDMI is complex, fast, and fickle. I don't even know if it's feasible to hand-solder it, with or without a connector.

Having said that, if it worked, it would look miles better than running poorly-planned (noisy) analog signals (composite, component) into a digital screen.

 

[GingerOfOz]

Wii2HDMI and similar products are not good for portables. I got a generic adapter for my portable, but when I tested it on my screen, it looked just as bad as composite, and far worse than component. They are also EXTREMELY difficult to solder to correctly, and they use up more power than it's worth. Also, most screens don't have speakers built into them, so you would still need another solution for audio.

At this point in time, component video is your best option. The issue with component is that the smallest display on the market that accepts component and isn't >$200 Is a 7 inch screen. If you plan on making a bigger portable, then it'll work fine for you. Here is a link to a bunch of screens that we like to use. The 7 inch component is the L7009.

There are several solutions to video quality that are being worked on right now (One of which being that one guy asked for a custom made 5 inch screen that accepted component, and they only charged him an extra $5 ). A good solution likely won't be available as you work on this, but I wish you luck!

 

[Prog]

I seem to recall the Dalian Good Displays, which Ashen used in his GameCubes, being good for that. However, I'm not sure if their driver board supports Y'PbPr or just RGB.

 

[Blargaman91]

I was wondering if I could, for video and audio, just solder a Wii2HDMI to the thing and use HDMI to the screen I have? Would that work?

Yes, you can do that. I did it for one portable and it looked really good, far better than composite video, but it may not if you don't get a good adapter as mentioned above. It does use an excessive amount of power.

The best HDMI option for Wii is GCVideo. There's information regarding that on the GitHub for GCVideo DVI, and it's far more difficult than using Wii2HDMI, but I think it's worth it.

I'm not sure if their driver board supports Y'PbPr or just RGB.

Just wanted to note that Dalian displays do not accept YPbPr. There are a lot of HDMI displays driven by the RTD2660H that looks fantastic using GCVideo or Wii2HDMI, which is why I believe HDMI is the best option for Wii. It will be until there is a publicly available analog GCVideo for Wii.

 

[Prog]

Again, I must stress that an electrical newbie shouldn't even try to solder an HDMI connection.

 

[Kickback]

Surely on a small screen, and with a console that can only push 480p anyway component would get the job done?

I can see the benefits of using HDMI on a real TV but on a small screen that takes component, I don't know why you wouldn't just use that. It still pushes a pretty decent picture.

 

[Prog]

The digital/analog/digital signal path introduces deeper issues than just pixel density. Keeping things digital would be ideal if it was viable, but with the Wii it is not viable at the moment.

edit: dumbass, Wii2HDMI is digital/analog/digital. Oh well, it's not like anybody reads my posts anyway.

 

[Shank]

Surely on a small screen, and with a console that can only push 480p anyway component would get the job done?

I can see the benefits of using HDMI on a real TV but on a small screen that takes component, I don't know why you wouldn't just use that. It still pushes a pretty decent picture.

If they existed, we would use them. But, for all intensive purposes, they do not exist in sizes smaller than 7". Yes, there are camera monitors that support it, but they incredibly expensive, and not well suited for portables. Its a huge problem portablizers are facing today.

when I tested it on my screen, it looked just as bad as composite, and far worse than component.

This is not a fair assessment of Wii2HDMI adapters. There are so many different adapters and clones that are all different on the inside. Well made ones, such as the sewell one, work pretty Dang well in terms of quality and latency, other than messing with the gama level, which can be corrected on most monitors. However, for portables, Wii2HDMIs are not a wise choice for portables. They are fine for just plugging into a wii and plugging in an HDMI cable, but the wiring required to put in a portable makes them not worth it at all.

 

[Kickback]

Yeah, I know what you mean actually. It's either composite only or HDMI

Nobody should be forced into using composite in 2017

 

[Prog]

I'm surprised you didn't say that the Wii graphics are so bad that it's irrelevant, KB

Also not all of us get the privilege of a 16khz RGB standard via SCART

 

[Kickback]

Composite never should of been the standard anyway.

S-Video exists, dunno why it was never that widespread. If you live in England for whatever weird reason up until the Xbox One (yes, this *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing generation) they seen fit to give you composite cables with a SCART adapter and make you buy the RGB SCART cable separately, because reasons.

Also yeah Wii graphics lol. No really they are better than Gamecube and Gamecube looked pretty Dang good for it's generation, not on par with Xbox but leagues ahead of PS2.

 

[laingsoft]

S video was never widely adopted because of the flaxty connector, plus it had no substantially better performance than composite.
The jump from composite to component was really noticeably better. Composite to S-video, not really, and those pins bent literally all the time.

 

[Kickback]

I've used S-Video like once, it was marginally better than composite and yeah, the connector isn't great. Component cables for older consoles are hard to get a hold of to