OilFreak | 0 Posted January 21 Share Posted January 21 Apologies if this is in the wrong board, there's no general hardware board :v I'm a pretty big fan of the Wii. Anyone who grew up with it will tell you how magical the system is. Even in 2024 using a Wii takes me back to a time when people looked forward to what technology the future would bring. Alas, my TV is not very kind to analog signals, with just enough video delay to irritate me. I've been looking at solutions such as the RetroTINK, the OSSC, ect. but they're all rather pricey. I'm not interested in solutions outside of a real Wii and a digital signal. Feel free to share your thoughts! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gloves | 11,800 Administrator · Posted January 21 Share Posted January 21 Moved to the general hardware board. >_> https://www.videogamesage.com/forums/forum/212-modders-shop/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 4,924 Posted January 21 Share Posted January 21 The simplest answer is if you get what you pay for. There are plenty of cheap little converter boxes that can take a composite signal and output it to HDMI. However, the reasons why devices like the Retrotink exist is because gamers tend to want a higher quality output signal, or control of the signal than that individual who may just want to play some old VHS tapes, or keep using an old DVD player hooked up to their HD TV. The solution that's right for you will be what features do you want and what are you willing to pay for it. Regardless, the two main questions you may want to ask is how much lag are you willing to accept, and what do you want the scaled image to look like? A really good converter like a RetroTink will give you the option to take the input and scale it up on a fixed, integer scale. It may have shader options, which may or may not be your thing, but at a minimum, it will allow you to output using the simple, "Nearest Neighbor" output option which will give you nice, square(ish) pixels. I say Squarish pixels because depending on the input to output ratio, if the upscale isn't a perfect ratio, then your pixels will be of varying widths and heights, which results in flickering as a game scrolls past the pixels of various widths. The RetroTink lag is actually pretty low for a ADC. Regardless, any ADC (including plugging component, or composite cables directly into your TV) will have to have a bit of lag for the conversion. Regardless, these gamer devices are specifically design to minimize lag. Depending on the games you play, this can be a required feature. If you play very twitchy games, you'll want the lag to be below three frames. You won't get that with a cheap cable upscale option. And if you're considering that none of that really matters to you, just know that I've heard from reasonable sources that those cheap, Wii-to-HDMI cables with a converter on the cable are no different than directly plugging the Wii into the TV via the component input. IMHO, this are simply not worth buying, unless you don't mind that type of weak, trash output and you do NOT have a composite input already on your TV. I don't use these devices because for me I game 100% on analog when I'm gaming on an analog console. To each their own, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to play an old console on a new TV. That's completely each persons preference. Still, I keep up with this tech because occasionally I get the itch to play on a bigger TV and at some point I want to capture analog video on a clean signal (probably to rip old VHS tapes in my case.) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OilFreak | 0 Posted January 21 Author Share Posted January 21 (edited) Thanks for your advice. The most I'm willing to spend would be $150 which would land me a RetroTink 2x or an OSSC. I'm playing on a 1080p TV, so I'm not going to get an integer scale Which one has better interpolation? Edited January 21 by OilFreak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jfreakofkorn | 282 Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 i had the same problem at when i had an x one ( sold it a while ago ) and still wanted to use my tube tv its a converter box hooking up your rca cable s and connecting it to an hdmi hook up https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-rca-to-hdmi-converter-black/6134312.p?skuId=6134312 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OilFreak | 0 Posted January 22 Author Share Posted January 22 Alas, that won't be an option. I'm using component. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNESNESCUBE64 | 541 Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 I think retrotink is the way to go. But that's just my opinion. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TDIRunner | 2,744 Posted January 22 Share Posted January 22 Retrotink is probably your best option, but another option that I NEVER hear anyone talk about is using an A/V receiver to convert the signal. The only problem with using an A/V receiver, is that there are many brands and models on the market, and absolutely no database (that I'm aware of) that tracks how they perform with video game systems and input lag. The other major issue with A/V receivers is that you will almost certainly have to go with the second hand market because nearly all new A/V receivers on the market today have dropped component support. I can tell you that I use a Sony DA3400 ES as my primarily receiver. Everything in my game room that doesn't output 4K runs through this receiver which combines everything into a single 1080p HDMI signal out to my TV. That includes 28 video game consoles, VCR, DVD, and laserdisc along with all of my audio (CD, vinyl, cassette, MP3). Since this model A/V receiver only outputs 1080p, I have to run anything that outputs 4K directly to the TV and bypass the receiver. The TV sends an audio signal back to the receiver so that the 4K devices still send sound to the surround sound speakers. Anyway, that's probably more information than you wanted, but I can confirm that with this setup, I can play my Wii using component cables converted into HDMI on my 4K TV with no noticeable input lag and the image looks great. You should still probably get a Retrotink. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OilFreak | 0 Posted January 24 Author Share Posted January 24 A thought that just crossed my mind is will the RetroTink 2x be outdated in a few years. 4k is starting to become the norm and with some TV's having poor/laggy upscaling of 1080p content it could be a good idea to get a RetroTink 4k to futureproof my setup. Or I could get a better TV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drxandy | 3,235 Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 Get a crt for the Wii, maybe a widescreen HD one. Wii looks great on crt. If you want to burn your morals you could always go wii u for the modern setup without any extra work. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNESNESCUBE64 | 541 Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 23 hours ago, drxandy said: Get a crt for the Wii, maybe a widescreen HD one. Wii looks great on crt. Be careful with those widescreen tubes. I lot of them are HD televisions which means there is digital processing. That said, I love mine. It even has HDMI. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Link | 2,715 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 On 1/22/2024 at 10:29 AM, TDIRunner said: Everything in my game room that doesn't output 4K runs through this receiver which combines everything into a single 1080p HDMI signal out to my TV. That includes 28 video game consoles, VCR, DVD, and laserdisc along with all of my audio (CD, vinyl, cassette, MP3). Do you have a bunch of RCA switches going on there? I'd like to do this. I once had a setup where all sound on TV or computer went through the stereo speakers, it was cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TDIRunner | 2,744 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 5 hours ago, Link said: Do you have a bunch of RCA switches going on there? I'd like to do this. I once had a setup where all sound on TV or computer went through the stereo speakers, it was cool. Any system that connects with composite, s-video or component runs through an Extron matrix switcher which has 16 inputs and 8 outputs. For me this just happens to be 16 consoles which means my Extron is completely full on inputs, but I also only need one switch for consoles that don't use HD or coaxial. All other consoles run through HDMI except for my Atari 2600 and 5200 which I just run through coaxial. I believe I cover most of it here, but there are also several Extron matrix switcher discussions around here somewhere. I would need to search for them to find them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OilFreak | 0 Posted February 12 Author Share Posted February 12 For anyone reading up on this, here's the strategy I came up with: Assess how much input lag your TV suffers from when upscaling 480p content If the input lag is negligible, go thrifting for a reciever. If you can't find one, get a Retrotink. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Link | 2,715 Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 On 2/11/2024 at 12:40 AM, TDIRunner said: I remember those shelves. Very nice! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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