Has anyone successfully hooked Wii to a VGA or DVI monitor?

Like the question says, has anyone successfully hooked the Wii to a VGA or DVI PC monitor? And if so, how did you do it?

They don't seem to have a VGA cable available for it (even though Nintendo promised that), so is it possible (without a hack like those Gamebridges).

You can do it with component cables and a converter box. Whether you go with a cheapter Component to VGA box or splurge on a full featured upscaler like an XRGB.

Wii component cables (once they're available) plus a transcoder like the V-Digi would work just as well as a VGA cable.

Where do they sell a good transcoder?

I've got a Gamebridge, but it's obviously not nearly as good as a real VGA connection like the X-Box 360 has.

[quote name='Puppy']Where do they sell a good transcoder?

I've got a Gamebridge, but it's obviously not nearly as good as a real VGA connection like the X-Box 360 has.[/QUOTE]

There are several, but the Vdigi is the most well known one I believe and one of the cheapest.

http://www.vdigi.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=68

Actually, n/m, I believe
http://www.x2vga.com/
that the x2vga is the latest and greatest as far as transcoders go. It looks to be out of stock right now though.

[quote name='Fox5']Wii component cables (once they're available) plus a transcoder like the V-Digi would work just as well as a VGA cable.[/quote]
Minus the widescreen support, though.

Do you know if those are sold anywhere else, like Newegg, that kind of place?

[quote name='deekayex']Minus the widescreen support, though.[/QUOTE]

If your monitor has controls to adjust the image, I don't see why you couldn't just make it widescreen. When a console sends a widescreen image, all it does is use rectangular pixels instead of square(ish) pixels, so even if the monitor's auto adjust (if it even has one) is incapable of picking that up, generally monitors are capable of being manually adjusted to display the same rectangular pixels.

Do you know if those are sold anywhere else, like Newegg, that kind of place?

Click to expand...

Sorry, they're not. Transcoders have a very limited market. You can find ones for industrial use that are several times more expensive at a variety of sites, or you can get these ones made by startup companies hoping to capitalize on the desire to hook consoles up to monitors. That said, many people have ordered from both v-digi and x2vga with no problem.
*You may be able to find v-digi and x2vga at some import and specialty gaming shops, but no major retailer is going to carry them. The best you can hope for from a major retailer is a far more expensive video scaler, which has a good chance of not actually supporting hd resolutions and even if it does will probably look far worse than a transcoder unless you're paying in the thousands of dollars. A transcoder is just a simple circuit that directly converts component video to vga, since the two signals are mathematically equivalent and operate within the same frequency range.

Yeah, as for the Widescreen, the Wii will output widescreen to a regular tv. Everything is just squished to fit (try it out). It's really obvious on GT Pro because it has extra artwork on the sides of the screen in widescreen mode.

It's not really a 'support' thing. You can adjust the vertical settings on most monitors (VGA and DVI monitors is the thread topic) to the right aspect ratio.

It's a question of will it do it automatically. But the Wii will output it, whether the device is expecting it or not.

[quote name='Fox5']If your monitor has controls to adjust the image, I don't see why you couldn't just make it widescreen. When a console sends a widescreen image, all it does is use rectangular pixels instead of square(ish) pixels, so even if the monitor's auto adjust (if it even has one) is incapable of picking that up, generally monitors are capable of being manually adjusted to display the same rectangular pixels.[/quote] The Wii uses 480p widescreen, which is 854 * 480 pixels. Normal 480p is 640 * 480. The Vdigi specifications say that it accepts 480p, 720p, and 1080p input signals, so will it accept (and correctly output) Wii's 480p widescreen signal?

[quote name='deekayex']The Wii uses 480p widescreen, which is 854 * 480 pixels. Normal 480p is 640 * 480. The Vdigi specifications say that it accepts 480p, 720p, and 1080p input signals, so will it accept (and correctly output) Wii's 480p widescreen signal?[/QUOTE]

1. There is only one 480p. So whether that 480p is 854x480 or 640x480 when output, that's all the exists. And that's assuming TVs even output in a discrete resolution, the signal is analog and TV resolution is measured in lines and not pixels so it may not work the same as a PC.

2. The lowest res the vdigi accepts is 480p, so I think it will cope with the Wii's 480p just fine.

3. To go from widescreen to fullscreen, console games and dvd players don't change resolution like PC games do. Notice PC monitors change scan rates when you change resolution, a TV does not because it only supports 1 scan rate, and scales other resolutions accordingly. Even still, all consoles use whatever formats a dvd player supports, there was no console specific spec written.

4. There's been no word on what the internal resolution of the Wii is when doing widescreen. It could be 854x480, or it could be 640x480 with rectangular pixels. If the Wii still has only the 3MB embedded ram on its GPU that the Cube had, it doesn't have enough memory to fit an 854x480 frame with 24 bit color.

5. 480p is defined as a resolution of 720x480 with nonsquare pixels (for widescreen) and 640x480 for square pixels. The 854x480 res is just the internal res of the device required to do widescreen with square pixels, the output res is still the same, though I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it's somewhere inbetween 640x480 and 720x480.

So I would be able to play the Wii in widescreen mode on my LG L204WT using the VD-Z3?

[quote name='deekayex']So I would be able to play the Wii in widescreen mode on my LG L204WT using the VD-Z3?[/QUOTE]

If your monitor supports manual adjustment of the image, then yes. Due to the way component video operates, there's no way for the monitor to know you're inputting a widescreen image. However, if that's a widescreen monitor, it likely has a stretch to fit option that should work as well as manually adjusting the image, it may even default to stretch to fit. (it probably does actually)

Don't rule out a 'real' VGA cable - VGA is basically just progressive RGB, so if a US console can be set to output RGB instead of YPrPb it can be done. It's different to the Gamecube hack, but not totally.

Watch the hardware hackers closely. Once the Wii ships in Europe, expect to hear some news on if it's possible.

Silly fools you did not check the Almighty Cheapie Dizo Play Asia. They have a Nintendo branded Wii D-Terminal AV Cable. I think that is what you are looking for............................ If not please feel free to call me names.

[quote name='FuzyBaffy']Silly fools you did not check the Almighty Cheapie Dizo Play Asia. They have a Nintendo branded Wii D-Terminal AV Cable. I think that is what you are looking for............................ If not please feel free to call me names.[/quote]

You are names.

D-Terminal is a specific type of connection, like an analog DVI/HDMI.

You can most likely MAKE a VGA cable from a D Terminal cable (just like with the GameCube), but a VGA cable it is not.

Dang nabbit. I wish Nintendo and Sony would just release VGA cables like Microsoft did. That's seriously my favorite part about the 360.