Component cable price gouge alert!

[Jess Ragan]

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=802520

 

Whoa, whoa, hold the phone just a second. Fifty dollars for a Wii component cable? And a GameStop brand cable, no less! Isn't that just a little ridiculous? And by "a little ridiculous" I mean a complete bend me over the barrel without lube rip-off. How can they possibly justify this price? HOW?!

 

JR

[+remowilliams]

Yeah, that's a wee bit much. I think the MadCatz crap was in the same price range though.

 

AFAIK Nintendo still has the component cables available online, which is the best way to get them.

[spongebue]

My local wal mart recently started selling some 3rd party component cables for $20. Maybe a teeny bit expensive, but I always think that cables are overpriced to begin with

[Jess Ragan]

Eh, twenty dollars is livable, although I did manage to beat that price by ordering some off-brand cables from The Electric Quarter. Hopefully, I'll have those by the end of next week, if not sooner.

 

JR

[Hyper_Eye]

I bought those cables only because I didn't want to wait. The guy mentioned that they are equal to Mad Catz cables and I noted that means they are overpriced crap. He didn't seem ammused. He then told me to enjoy my Wii (he pronounced it "why") cables.

[Jess Ragan]

I got the cables in the mail today... and boy am I ever glad I did! It makes playing both Wii and GameCube games a lot more pleasant. If you're wondering just how much of a difference a component cable can make, well... just take a look at this.

 

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20061218/ggl31.htm

 

The graphics are a tad course, but at least they're crystal clear. These screengrabs don't do the quality of component output justice, but it definitely demonstrates the difference between it and lesser output formats.

 

JR

[+remowilliams]

The graphics are a tad course, but at least they're crystal clear. These screengrabs don't do the quality of component output justice, but it definitely demonstrates the difference between it and lesser output formats.

Yeah, they definitely don't do it justice. The difference is like night and day, and I'll take the sharp clear picture any day (even if it does expose the flaws and limitations), over the blurry mess.

 

I really don't know what people are looking at when they say 'I can't see a difference'

[jbanes]

I really don't know what people are looking at when they say 'I can't see a difference'

It has got to be a difference between how the various televisions decode the composite signal. You saw my screenshot in the Wii Graphics thread, right? JPEG compression artifacts aside, it's much closer to the "clear" screenshot than the "blurry" screenshot. That's from a $30 TV Card. Yet others are reporting that their super-expensive HD sets are rendering with terrible quality. Depending on who you ask, you get a different answer.

 

And it doesn't appear to be people's imaginations. My teasing about your photography skills aside, it's not like your HD photograph appears to be extremely sharp. Yes, there's some artifacting from the way you took it, but nothing to explain why it looks so washed out. So it looks like for some Wii owners, the component cables are a must. For others, they're not going to notice much of a difference at all. (Save for the ability to up to 480p rather than 480i.)

[Hyper_Eye]

For HDTV's the scaler makes a big difference. You might find that 720p looks good on a set that is 720p native and that both 480i/p and 1080i/p look like ass. It isn't something people regularly think about when making a tv purchase but a crappy scaler can make watching anything non-native agonizing. At 480p it really makes a difference with the Wii. A non-hd CRT with composite cables can look better then a 720p set with component cables if the scaler on the hd set isn't any good. It can look a lot better. If you don't have component cables then you throw deinterlacing in the mix and seeing it on a 20 year old tv might upset you.

[Lord Helmet]

The Wii looks great on my 65- Mistsubishi HDTV. It is capable of 1080i. I noticed quite a difference when I hooked it up with the component cables. Much clearer and brighter picture in 480p than 480i. I noticed a HUGE difference in the clarity on GCN games, probqably because I had never played any of them in 480p. Obviously it doesn't look as good as my 360 in 1080i, but it is still pretty nice

[+remowilliams]

Yes, there's some artifacting from the way you took it, but nothing to explain why it looks so washed out.

It's because I took a whole five seconds to snap that pic, bring it down to a size the forum would accept, and post it. Had I cared enough I could have adjusted the light and camera settings.

 

For HDTV's the scaler makes a big difference.

That is very true, and most people don't even know to check. It took a long time before I went to LCD for my PC just for that reason. And a long time researching scalers in the plasmas at the time.

 

Much clearer and brighter picture in 480p than 480i. I noticed a HUGE difference in the clarity on GCN games, probqably because I had never played any of them in 480p. Obviously it doesn't look as good as my 360 in 1080i, but it is still pretty nice

One of the things about high res sets, is that they reveal the flaws of the source - and that's why composite generally looks like ass. Huge difference in 480p. My Wii sat on the shelf until the component cable arrived. It was offensive to look at in composite.

 

Problem with playing GC stuff is that the Wii does not upscale everything to 480p. Only titles that were 480p to begin with display that way. My PS3 on the other hand scales everything up, which is rather nice.

Edited February 1, 2007 by remowilliams

[Jess Ragan]

It's funny, though... there are more than a few GameCube games that run in 480p, even if they don't have the "progressive scan" logo on the back of the box. Alien Hominid was released after Nintendo took the digital video output jack from the back of the GameCube, and it still asks if you want to play the game in progressive scan mode when you first turn it on. I'm eternally grateful that it does, because now I won't have to go through the trouble of buying the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade version!

 

By the way, if you want a real fright from your high-def television set, try plugging in an RF signal from one of the older systems. It really demonstrates just how far TV technology has come in the past quarter century.

 

JR

[Hyper_Eye]

I believe almost all first-party games support 480p even after they took the digital port off.