Wii Confirmed at 480p

Eurogamer is reconfirming that the Wii only outputs at 480p, after the official Nintendo magazine mistakenly said otherwise. From the article: "Nintendo UK also recently said that it had every intention of releasing peripherals like the component cable — used to achieve the 480p resolution — at retail, despite suggestions that you'd have to buy the cables through online shops in the US. The interest in Wii's high-resolution options is of course spurred on by Microsoft and Sony's battling over the higher end. Both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generally offer games in 720p, with 1080p now possible for developers who want to go the extra mile (well, the extra 1,152,000 pixels, anyway)."

Does resolution matter?

[LehiNephi]

It would be interesting to know how much of the video game market consists of people with HDTVs that actually do 720p/1080whatever. This also leads me to ask: "Does resolution really matter?" For some games, I'm sure it makes a difference, but I'd be willing to bet that high resolution won't make any difference to a large majority of gamers in a large number of titles.

Keeping to 480p seems like a good move by Nintendo. Many (I'd even go so far as to say most) of their games will be just as fun, you don't need a fancy TV just to enjoy it, and (perhaps most importantly) it keeps part cost, size, and power requirements down.

I was watching my teenage brother-in-law play Zelda (I don't recall which) on his gamecube the other day. The graphical style of the game was very effective, and I think it would actually lose appeal going to higher resolution.

Now all you experts can respond and tell me why I'm totally wrong.

Re:

[HarvardFrankenstein]

Resolution itself isn't that important for me, but I do know that I get a lot more HD lag on my Samsung DLP when I'm running in interlaced mode than when I'm running in progressive.

Re:

[Kazzahdrane]

Happily, you're wrong. It was confirmed months ago by Nintendo that one of the main differences between the Cube and Wii versions of Twilight Princess was that the Wii version would have native widescreen support. I don't have a source but it's all over the 'net (yes I realise that's a cop-out, but it's been a long day).

Re:

[gt_mattex]

You are correct sir. The Wii will support widescreen at 480p.

I have unwittingly spewed FUD and must apologize.

Re:

[thatguywhoiam]

Happily, you're wrong. It was confirmed months ago by Nintendo that one of the main differences between the Cube and Wii versions of Twilight Princess was that the Wii version would have native widescreen support. I don't have a source but it's all over the 'net (yes I realise that's a cop-out, but it's been a long day).

Although, it is maybe worth noting, that this 'widescreen' is actually anamorphic display (i.e. squeezed into 4:3 frame then displayed stretched out by the display). It is not actually ren

Not accurate

[brunes69]

Widescreen DVDs have the actual frames at 720x480 pixels. If you have a DVD player hooked up to an HDTV you will see all of those 720 pixels, nothing is interpolated (unless you play on a 1080p display of course).

There is a big difference between that and the Wii which will only evrr be able to output 480 pixels.

Re:

[Grey Ninja]

That's one of the most moronic things I've ever read.

You're the one that's not accurate

[Optic7]

The parent post was right. The "480p" on the Wii means 720x480 (or maybe 852x480). Not 480 by something else. That's typical of how TV resolutions are referred to - the vertical resolution, not the horizontal.

Re:

[spinkham]

The market that is willing to spend $600 on a PS3 is the same market who probably has a HD TV. The market that would rather spend $250 on a game machine is the one that is likely to only have a standard def tv(mine can't even do 480p, 480i only)
They really are pointing at different markets.

Re:

[AuMatar]

Not really. I'd consider 600 for a console, if there were enough must have launch games and if the console itself was innovative. But I play a lot of games. I wouldn't consider an HDTV- I watch about 2-3 hours of TV a week, and most of that is just background noise (I'm not really watching it). If my old TV broke and an HD was only about 10 bucks more, I might get an HD one, but that would be the limit of what I'd pay.

A game console is always aimed at the gaming market, which is definitely not the same

Re:

[mgv]

I was watching my teenage brother-in-law play Zelda (I don't recall which) on his gamecube the other day. The graphical style of the game was very effective, and I think it would actually lose appeal going to higher resolution.

Now all you experts can respond and tell me why I'm totally wrong.

No, gameplay can be quite independent of resolution quality. In fact the earlier games were often good because they had to make the gameplay good. The graphics were never going to impress anyone.

All too often now a ga

Re:

[LoudMusic]

No, gameplay can be quite independent of resolution quality. In fact the earlier games were often good because they had to make the gameplay good. The graphics were never going to impress anyone.

Here's an interesting approach - hire a team to design a game for the original Playstation and when they're done hire another team to reskin it for the PS3. Maybe the first team will make something that's actually fun instead of just making an interactive movie.

Re:

[ElleyKitten]

I was watching my teenage brother-in-law play Zelda (I don't recall which) on his gamecube the other day. The graphical style of the game was very effective, and I think it would actually lose appeal going to higher resolution.

No, gameplay can be quite independent of resolution quality.

The GPP said graphical style, not gameplay. He's probably talking about Wind Waker, which had a unique cartoony look to it. A higher resolution really wouldn't help it, because it's not meant to look realistic, and it mi

Re:

[joggle]

It's nice having the higher resolution when playing with friends on a split screen. It's nice to actually be able to see what's going on, especially in racing games. For single-player, if you really want high resolution then you're best off with PC gaming since even 1080p can't touch what high-end cards and PC monitors are capable of.

Re:

[LehiNephi]

You make a very good point. I don't own a console of any sort (blasphemy, I know), and I've only once played Halo with four players on one TV, but it was pretty tough for my used-to-higher-resolution eyes to see much.

And since the Wii seems to be the only "next-gen" console that natively supports four players on one console, that extra resolution would come in handy.

Re:

[badboy_tw2002]

Last time I looked PS3 and 360 both have support for 4 controllers. What are you talking about? The Wii isn't coming with 4 controllers if that's what "natively" means.

Re:

[jZnat]

I think he's referring to the huge amount of games for Xbox 360 that are single player or online multiplayer only.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I have a 22" Sony that's Dell-branded and which I bought surplus for $250. It does 2048x something or other that's wider than full-HD at its maximum resolution. It's a fairly high end monitor but it didn't come with a high end price tag.

Re:

[batkiwi]

What video card do you have that will play new games in that resolution at 60fps?

Also, you could easily play xbox 360 on that in 1080p with the vga adapter.

Re:

[Aladrin]

Well, you have to define 'make the difference'.

Do you mean:

A) Game is unplayable at 480, and playable at 720
B) Game is boring at 480, fun at 720
C) Game is visually horrid at 480, beautiful at 720
D) Game is playable and fun at both, but 720 makes it crisp and clean, and more lifelike.

Would I like to see Elebits at 1080? Absolutely. Would I pay 3x the price for the console to do that? Heck no.

I still play PS2 games at 480. Why would I suddenly HAVE to have 1080 for all my gaming?

I'll admit, some of th

Real-time war simulations

[tepples]

I still play PS2 games at 480. Why would I suddenly HAVE to have 1080 for all my gaming?

Real-time war simulations would benefit from more pixels. Each step from 320x200 to 640x480 to 1024x768 allowed PC RTS games to show much more information about the player's buildings and units on the screen at once. It also allows the camera to be pulled out farther to show more units at once or multiple views so that the player can see what's going on at each front.

Re:

[Cereal Box]

Well, ask yourself this: do you think 640x480 is still an acceptable PC gaming resolution or do you see benefit in higher resolutions?

Another thing you should consider is that the Wii is going to stick around for what, five years or so? The 480p graphics will look absolutely primitive by then (I would argue they do right now), and the fact is that HDTV adoption is on the rise, and more and more households will have them in five year's time. Nintendo should've at least allowed the possibility of 720p/1080i

Re:

[7Prime]

Well, ask yourself this: do you think 640x480 is still an acceptable PC gaming resolution or do you see benefit in higher resolutions?

No, however, PC games are played by sitting right in front of your computer screen, so every pixel counts. Unless you're playing 3 feet away from your large-screen TV, NOONE plays console games with as big a field of view as with PC games, so NTSC/ED resolutions are fairly comperable to standard PC resolutions when you take into acount how large each pixel looks from the pl

Re:

[k_187]

Since the PS1 Hardware was in the PS2, you could argue that it was just an "update" for the PS1. Everything else was the same, it was just more powerful.

Re:

[eht]

But in 2-3 years the next Nintendo will still only be 250$(Nintendo has quite a long history of pricing at this point) and so adjusted for inflation cheaper than what you bought today. But a the Sony PS3 you bought for 700$ today will no longer be top of the line, will "only" do 1080P and will also have a replacement, guess how much it will cost.

Re:

[7Prime]

For one, 1080p isn't going anywhere, in fact, in 2-3 years, the common populace MIGHT just be ready for it by then. I fully expect that in 3 years, the Wii will be priced at around $100, and still be making a large profit. An HD compatable system will probably be priced at $150, not even at launch prices. The best the PS3 is going to pull, because of attempting to make up for lost profits, will probably not be lower than $250. Even if Nintendo has to require that game developers bundle DVDs and high definti

Re:

[xeaxes]

Well, ask yourself this: do you think 640x480 is still an acceptable PC gaming resolution or do you see benefit in higher resolutions?

Of course games benefit from higher resolutions. Where you are incorrect is that 480p is not 640x480. It is 852x480. DVD's are the same quality, and they look pretty good. Sure, 720p, 1080i, etc are better, but not mind blowingly better. I'd rather see perfectly lifelike graphics at 480p than cartoony graphics at 1080p at this point. 1080p wastes a lot of processing

Re:

[bazorg]

Resolution matters a lot for Microsoft vs. Sony pissing contest. Besides that, Sony gains from pushing Bravia screens, while MS gains from getting their DirectX toolkit to work nicely for companies developing for both console and PC games. Resolution matters less for Nintendo as they prefer to make money now with the Wii and live to fight another day when it is really convenient for them to make a HD console.

Re:

[thatguywhoiam]

It would be interesting to know how much of the video game market consists of people with HDTVs that actually do 720p/1080whatever. This also leads me to ask: "Does resolution really matter?"

Which leads me to answer: "Of course it fucking matters!"

Look, I get the argument. A lot of people don't have HDTVs yet. But this is a resolution that has been with us since the 50s people. It is positively ancient.

Not to mention, the inherent artifacts of NTSC (Never The Same Colour). 29.97 frames per second, not

Heh... Yesteryear...

[Svartalf]

1) 480p's actually MUCH better than most people have EVER seen (QCIF is what most people are typically used to- ever TRY using WebTV or any other internet set-top of that era on anything less than the highest end TV's?? If it were more like what everyone CLAIMS NTSC is capable of, I'd not have went through the last 6 years worth of pain that I have up to this point...)

2) HDTV's are not going to get mass adoption for at LEAST another year and a half to two.

3) Can you convince me that all that higher resolut

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"This also leads me to ask: "Does resolution really matter?" For some games, I'm sure it makes a difference, but I'd be willing to bet that high resolution won't make any difference to a large majority of gamers in a large number of titles."

I'm personally a little disappointed that they're using this generation to push HD. I have a ton of DVDs with visual FX in them that far exceed what's possible on a console/PC even at standard definition. Now they have 6x the pixels to fill... and we're still not comin

Re:

[pyite69]

The more accurate question is - how much is higher resolution worth?

A wide-screen 480p format would probably be 75% as cool as 720p, but at a significantly lower cost.

I think the coolness factor of the new controller is more important (or lameness if it turns out to not live up to the hype).

Re:

[twistedsymphony]

I agree... HD resolutions is one of those things that if you don't have it, you don't need, it but once you've lived with it for a while you'd have a very hard time going back... like upgrading from a ball mouse to an optical or laser. Or from a corded phone to a cordless. Or a wired controller to a wireless, etc. etc.

I don't watch tv, I don't have anything beyond basic cable for the news, and I certainly don't pay for HD service, I have an HDTV purely to play my games. IMO resolution might not add to th

Great!!

[phase_9]

I was busting for one!!! ;)

Not even capable of what the original XBOX can do?

[joggle]

I thought the Nintendo Wii was supposed to have similar capabilities as the original Xbox. There are many games that support 720p resolution on the old Xbox, with a few (simple) games supporting 1080i. So the new Nintendo isn't even up to the standard of the previous generation of game consoles?

Re:

[Paladine97]

Resolution wise, you are correct. In all other aspects, the Wii will tromp the original XBox.

Re:

[UbuntuDupe]

Yeah man, I guess we just shouldn't buy it now. The Wii may be the most innovative system in a long time, but hell, if it can't do 720p, I guess we're just going to have to shell out more for one of the other consolso we can get better eye candy in our sequels.

Re:

[joggle]

Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to buy a Wii. I'm just disapointed that it won't even support a higher resolution. It really is nice to be able to use the higher resolution when playing with friends on a split-screen. And since the Wii won't have any service like Microsoft's Live initially (and I don't think there will even be any local network games at first), this will be the only way to play with friends for a while on the Wii unless it is a turn-based or overlayed game of course.

Re:Not even capable of what the original XBOX can

[grumbel]

According to the Wii FAQ from IGN the Wii can technically do 720p and 1080i. Its only that due to the lack of CPU/GPU power using that resoluton wouldn't make much sense for real games.

Re:Not even capable of what the original XBOX can

[thatguywhoiam]

I thought the Nintendo Wii was supposed to have similar capabilities as the original Xbox. There are many games that support 720p resolution on the old Xbox, with a few (simple) games supporting 1080i.

Is that true? I've never heard this. Which games, if you don't mind me asking?

Re:

[Cereal Box]

You've neglected the horizontal resolution aspect. 1080i is 1920x1080 (interlaced), whereas 720p is 1280x720 (progressive). Do the math. Even 1920*540 > 1280*720. But you're also forgetting that 1080i contains two 1920x540 fields for every 1920x1080 frame. So remember to double the amount of data generated by the last calculation.

1080i is more taxing than 720p.

Not exactly

[joggle]

You are forgetting the horizontal resolution. 1080i still requires a higher throughput of pixels since it has a much higher horizontal resolution than 780p. The throughput required for each resolution is:

1. 1080p - 1080*1920=2073600 pixels/frame
2. 1080i - (1080/2)*1920=1036800 pixels/frame
3. 720p - 720*1280=921600 pixels/frame
4. 720i - (720/2)*1280=460800 pixels/frame
5. 480p - 480*720=345600 pixels/frame
6. 480i - (480/2)*720=172800 pixels/frame

So the 1080i needs about 15% more pixels/s than 720p.

Not true

[Funk_dat69]

Anyway, my point was, it would be much easier to supply a 1080i resolution (540 lines) verses a 720p (720 lines) from a graphics processing standpoint.

That's not true. You are correct in that 1080i sends less lines to the TV (or what have you), but graphics processors dont render interlaced images. Interlaced images are necessary for analog display devices so when your machine is connected to one, the controller only sends half the data because the display wants that. It still has the full resolution image

Re:

[ben there...]

That doesn't even make sense to me. When you're talking movies, they are shot on film at 24fps progressive. So say 720p24 for film. Then on DVD it is encoded as either 720p24 or telecined to 720i60, where 60 refers to fields (1/2 frames). NTSC TV is usually recorded at 720i60, which displays as 60 fields per second, which equals 30 frames per second.

HD movies would be sourced to film still, at 1080p24, and there is no reason to encode or display them at any higher frame rate. The data is not there. Every HD

Re:

[ben there...]

Replace all reference to 720p/720i with 480p/480i in my parent post, and it makes a lot more sense. ;-)

Basically what I'm saying is SDTV/DVD (in the US) is either:
480p24
480p30 or
480i60

p24 and i60 (telecined) for DVD or
p30 and i60 for SDTV
end up being the same amount of data (pixels x frames / sec)

HDTV/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD is the same:
720p24/1080p24
720p30/1080p30 or
720i60/1080i60

I just read the specs on Sony's Blu-Ray site, and Blu-Ray doesn't even support 1080p60. I'd be really surprised if games do.

Re:

[twistedsymphony]

progressive scan is used over interlacing because interlacing leaves artifacts and flickering particularly with fast moving pictures (like sports). Not to mention most HDTV are progressing meaning they'd have to deinterlace the incoming signal which can create breakup and more artifacting along the edges of fast moving objects on screen (again like sports).

In terms of the video game space there is no difference in programing 1080i and 1080p. While 1080i might only have 540 lines actually displayed they h

Re:

[AbRASiON]

Despite what the replies say, I couldn't agree with you more.
For gaming a progressive 60fps 720p image is quite damn nice.

Re:

[joggle]

From the article you linked to:

Leichtman's "HDTV: Awareness, Interest and Intent to Purchase 2005" study was based on a survey of 1,300 households throughout the United States, and the company said the number of households with HDTV-capable sets rose 7% in the third quarter of 2004 and 12% at the end of this year's third quarter.

And that was from over a year ago. More than 1 in 10 is more than zero. That's somewhat higher than the market penetration of the Gamecube. Most of my friends have HD sets now a

Good news!

[bunions]

I won't be paying for resolution I can't see.

Who cares?

[SuperKendall]

With an innovative motion controller and great gameplay, 480p is still really good.

Remember that 480p is more aong the lines of current DVD quality, and still better than the interlaced TV display we are all used to. It should still look better than last generation consoles from a detail persepctive.

Re:

[Erwos]

All the last-gen consoles rendered at 480p. In fact, the Xbox often did 720p/1080i, and even the PS2 has a 1080i game (GT4). So, no, based on resolution alone, the Wii's not going to look better - it'll actually look worse in some cases.

480p was not common though

[SuperKendall]

It's true the XBox had pretty good 480p + support. But the PS2 only had a handful of games that supported progressive scan, much less higher resolutions. I don't think the Gamecube had 480P support (but I may be wrong).

Re:480p was standard on GameCube (1st party)

[trdrstv]

The Gamecube had 480p support [hdtvarcade.com] for virtualy EVERY 1st party game (I have yet to come across a 1st party game that didn't), and many 3rd party even if it didn't have it labled on the back of the box. Even the Gameboy player supported progressive scan. What was increasingly scarce was 16:9 widescreen, but there were some Gems. Eternal Darkness, Starfox Adventures, and F-Zero GX were particularly nice (and supported both).

The issue was that the Gamecube used a non-standard digital port for component cabl [nintendo.com]

Re:

[SuperKendall]

Thanks, I had never heard that about the Gamecube. I hope that more people take advantage of this wtih the Wii, and will also explore some of teh Gamecube back library (which has always looked pretty interesting).

Re:

[trdrstv]

Eternal Darkness, RE4, and F-Zero GX all pwn, and you could get all 3 now for $40 or less (used) total. I would start with those. :)

Re:

[weasello]

DVDs can be 480i OR 480p, but considering the standard for 480p = 25 frames, and 480i=60 frames, and most televisions can't display more than 25 frames... Guess what format most discs use :) The superior quality 480P that matches most TV refresh rates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/480p [wikipedia.org]

VGA

[Echnin]

Oh well, at least it has progressive scan. What I'm wondering is whether progressive scan will work for Gamecube games, and also whether there will be a VGA adapter... poor college students without TVs need this kind of information! Geez.

Re:

[pjbass]

I own three Gamecube games (Zelda and both Metroids), and they both support progressive scan. Of course, you need to use the component video cables to a TV capable of 480p, but it currently exists on the Gamecube.

Re:

[twistedsymphony]

About 70% of all Gamecube games support 480p (if you have the component cables for it). Also if you've got a modchip in your Gamecube many of them allow you to force the non 480p games into displaying in 480p mode.

The Gamecube also had a VGA cable (albeit 3rd party). Even if the Wii doesn't support VGA, it does support component and there are a plethora of Component to VGA converters on the market for around $50... which is probably about what you'd pay for an official VGA cable anyway.

Re:

[Echnin]

Well that's good news! I hope then that the Wii will also be able to force Gamecube games to output in 480p. I was investigating the possibilites of connecting consoles to my display a few weeks ago, and from what I could tell there were no adapters that would allow me to plug a console with an interlaced component output to a display that doesn't support it - and a cheap LCD monitor wouldn't support that. Hope this will work, then. :)

Re:

[pembo13]

I'm a more college kid without a TV. A free OS (Linux/Fedora) + PVR (MythTV) + cheap tv car (Hauppauge WinTV FM - eBay) servers me just fine, a fraction of the cost.

If only they had done 720p

[thatguywhoiam]

It is basically my only real complaint about the Wii, but it is a huge one.

Most people don't have HDTVs. But I do. And the idea of buying a console that will never talk to it, never show me the full picture, is irritating. Particularly because I like the Wii.

If they had just managed to get it up to 720p, this whole discussion would be moot. 1080p is great and all, but as far as content is concerned (i.e. tv shows, films, games that can drive it) 1080p is basically science fiction right now. Won't be comm

Re:

[tji]

> Most people don't have HDTVs. But I do. And the idea of buying a console that will never talk to it, never show me the full picture, is irritating. Particularly because I like the Wii.

That's overstating it a bit, isn't it? An HDTV will still be able to display a 480p game much better than a 480i game. Standard 480i is 4:3, and interlaced so it's half the resolution. 480p will give it a widescreen capability at 720x480 resolution @ 60fps.

Which is not to say it's not disappointing.. I would also muc

Re: 480p is still plenty sharp.

[trdrstv]

I have an HDTV [bestbuy.com] and my Gamecube Games [hdtvarcade.com] look fantastic on it. Also with the Wii 480p and 16:9 is (at least for Nintendo 1st party) the standard.

Resolutions

[weasello]

I'm a big geek and I'd love to say "1080P ROXXORZ! ALL!! 4TW!!" but sadly, it isn't the case. Yes, a big-screen high-definition teleivision playing HDTV definately looks better than Channel 2 on your old 13". But that isn't an accurate comparison for most of the market.

I sold TVs for 8 years. I had big banks of them - Standard, ED, HD - even some exotic 1080p stuff that didn't run anything except a special demo disk in a special machine.

One particular corner was a perfect test area. We had a 480P, 720P, and 1080I television of the same make and line (it was an LG set of televisions). Of the hundreds (if not thousands) of customers I showed these sets to, running HD PBS 1080 feed via Satellite (beautiful show, btw) - 8 out of 10 people pointed at the 480P set and said it was superior quality. When pressed for why they made that choice, they usually said "it was a hunch" and that they couldn't really tell between the three.

All three TVs had v-high quality cables, and my "test subjects" were sitting approximately 8 feet away from these 42" sets, which were all hung in equal lighting at eye level.

Then I'd move the test subjects up close - 2 feet away or so - and we could easily count the physical pixels on the 480 screen, wheras you'd have to move your head much closer to count the pixels on the 1080 screen. We could all see that, yes, upon inspection we *know* that 1080 is better...

But then I pointed at the pricetags. $1000 for the 480, $1800 for the 720, and $2500 for the 1080. Guess which one I sold the most of. (most of my data culled from 1-2-3 years ago so pricing/details may vary).

Re:

[Aadain2001]

I wish I had mod points to give you a "+1 Real World Info" rating. Too many people fail to see past the numbers and look at how the device will be used in the real world.

Re:

[Swanktastic]

Yours is an interesting post. I would add one point though.

I tend to sit much closer to my television when I'm playing games than when I'm watching TV- the whole lean forward vs. lean back interaction... I'd estimate maybe 5 feet vs. 10 feet, respectively. I'm not sure if this is common or not, but it could explain why folks care more about resolution when gaming.

Re:

[weasello]

I frequently sat v-close to the sets and I could make out the pixels if I looked hard, but I'm convinced I wouldn't be able to tell if I was in the midst of combat in some fast-paced game. It may not be true, but it's true in my mind, and that's good enough for me :) On a side note though.. 5 feet is pretty damned close (obv. depending on the size of the TV). I'm often 5 or 6 feet away from my 27" CRT (which has an effective resolution of 320x240, which I game on all the time), but sitting that close to a

Re: Hi Resolution is more important on the PS3...

[trdrstv]

Since Sony has slower loading than any other system, it's more important that those load screens are in 1080p!

Re:

[Guppy06]

"You didn't show them video with text like many games would have though."

Video games is not the sole reason for purchasing a television. In fact, most televisions are not used for games.

"I'd rather have the cheaper simpler solution too, but at high res text can be smaller and still readable (like in a status box in the corner of an fps)."

Smaller == less readable. Or do you keep your dekstop setting at 1600x1200?

"You could have shown something that would have made the difference more obvious, but didn't."

W

Re:A little late?

[MeanMF]

02/11/06 in Europe is 11/02/06 in the U.S.

Re:

[Abreu]

Yeah, tell that to the people who still wont change to the decimal system... [rolls eyes]

Re:

[Orange Crush]

Yeah, tell that to the people who still wont change to the decimal system...

How archaic! You'd think we were back in 0x3E8 BC!

Re:

[bcat24]

Umm, do you mean the metric system. Most Americans I know use decimal.

Re:

[Abreu]

yup, sorry... meant to say "the Metric decimal system"

Re:

[geekster]

I use ie. "02 November 2006" when ever I write a date on a homepage or where ever. I think that minimizes confusion.

Re:

[Wdomburg]

It's not just a good idea, it's an international standard (ISO 8601)!

Re:

[Guppy06]

Feh, real men use Julian days! It's 2454041! And don't try none of that namby-pamby "modified" stuff, neither!

Re:

[chrisbtoo]

Namely dates and using the metric system for more than just 2 liter bottles of soda pop and science classes.

And if you could spell litre properly too, it'd be even better ;-)

Re:

[tomstdenis]

and centre, and favour, and rumour, and honour, and pronounce "roof" (not as ruff) and say "chimney" not as "chiminey", and pronounce freedom as "being alive and in the absence of tyranny" and ...

Wait a sec... I love America though. Where else can I get my Jack in the box and hollywood?

That and Canada sucks. Stupid fence sitting hypocrites. All they talk about on CSPAN is whom has to apologize to who. Instead of having real debate it just boils down to pointless name calling all day long. Christ, I'd d

Re:

[x-caiver]

and centre, and favour, and rumour, and honour, and pronounce "roof" (not as ruff) and say "chimney" not as "chiminey", and pronounce freedom as "being alive and in the absence of tyranny" and ...

The pronunciation of "roof" (ruff like a dog makes, or roof with 'oo' like in 'boot') is not an 'America-wide problem'. It is localized to different geographic regions. The US is pretty darn big, and have multiple main dialects, and even more localized versions.

"Chiminey" would be the same thing - though I've neve

Re:

[Wdomburg]

The ISO standard (yyyy-mm-dd, yyyymmdd, among other variations) are just an unambiguous, and adds the benefit of making date sorting trivial.

Re:

[burndive]

I have never seen the day before the month when the year is listed first. Ever.

Re:

[Wdomburg]

I've never seen yyyy-dd-mm used in the wild. I'm open to an example if you can find one.

Re:

[poot_rootbeer]

I always use ddMMMyyyy, where MMM are the first three letters of the month's name. So today would be 02NOV2006.

ISO standard yyyy-mm-dd is better because dates in that format can be sorted using string algorithms: 2006-10-15 is before 2006-11-02.

Plus it's region-aspecific. In English, the first month is January, hence JAN. But in Spanish, it's Enero -- so what does JAN stand for?

Re:

[Yvan256]

It's easy, the date is formatted as it is said in whatever language you are reading it:

US: November 2, 2006 --> 11/2/2006
EU: 2nd of November, 2006 --> 2/11/2006
Canada: In 2006, on November the 2nd --> 2006.11.6

Except that in Quebec, we talk in french, making today "le 2 novembre 2006", i.e. 02-11-2006.

Let's forget all that crap (especially 2-digit years) and switch to ISO date: today is 2006-11-02. Thank you.

Oops... disregard.

[dividedsky319]

...and I now realize that that is indeed today, I'm just a stupid American... ;-)

At first glance the 02/11/2006 made me think of Feb, not 11/2...

Apparently recently there was a report that the Wii would output in 720i/p... And this is just debunking that error.

Sorry, move along, nothing to see here ;-)

umm

[dolson]

Yes you would! You would have every invention, including all video game consoles.

Re:

[MyDixieWrecked]

It's a fact that the 360 works with a regular TV and it can be assumed (quite confidently) that the PS3 will, too.

Although, one problem that the 360 has is that many of the games are designed with HDTVs in mind. That leads to developers creating HUDs with text that is unreadably small on regular TVs. So far, I've noticed that problem in FEAR (the only unreadable text so far has been the name of the talking person in the upper left corner, which doesn't really matter), Dead Rising (the name of the weapon and

Re:

[thatguywhoiam]

Although, one problem that the 360 has is that many of the games are designed with HDTVs in mind. That leads to developers creating HUDs with text that is unreadably small on regular TVs. So far, I've noticed that problem in FEAR (the only unreadable text so far has been the name of the talking person in the upper left corner, which doesn't really matter), Dead Rising (the name of the weapon and some other misc. text, but it's not a HUGE deal... but that one gets annoying), and Madden. I primarily stick to

Re:

[MyDixieWrecked]

I'm really curious if anyone has created any kind of guidelines for on-screen readable text.

I've been dabbling with creating a tv-based interface frontend and I've had a really hard time deciding what sizes to make things. I started development with the idea that I'd be running at a pretty high resolution (my 19" monitor), but then I realized that I wouldn't be sitting as close to the TV when it's set up (I'd like to be able to see what I'm doing even from across the room) and the TV won't be as sharp.

I've

Re:

[thatguywhoiam]

I've been dabbling with creating a tv-based interface frontend and I've had a really hard time deciding what sizes to make things. I started development with the idea that I'd be running at a pretty high resolution (my 19" monitor), but then I realized that I wouldn't be sitting as close to the TV when it's set up (I'd like to be able to see what I'm doing even from across the room) and the TV won't be as sharp. I've been having a really hard time trying to determine sizes without extensive trial and error

Re:

[DragonWriter]

Does the PS3 or the XBox360 work with a current TV?

Yes, in both cases.

I guess because of the lower resolution the Games will run faster than on PS3 and XBox360, right?

Probably not: in addition to less resolution the Wii has less processing power. I wouldn't expect the lower resolution to result in faster speed than the more powerful consoles for similar games in most cases.

Re:

[justchris]

Sorry, no, that's not the way it works with consoles. Decreasing the resolution will not give you greater fps if the game was designed to a higher resolution as the standard. This may differ on the PS3, but for the 360, 720p is their minimum design specification, and whatever framerate you get there is the framerate you will get no matter what resolution you run it at.

That is something that will hopefully be fixed as developers get more used to designing games with multiple resolutions. A problem that

Re:

[weasello]

DVDs are *typically* 480 and show on widescreen 480/720/1080 screens without any of those black bars, so I suppose it depends on the actual game. The "480" is *lines* of resolution; I beleive width is variable? I could be wrong there.

Re:

[weasello]

After researching on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD [wikipedia.org] All DVD video in NTSC is restricted to 480 lines of resolution and there are several horizontal pixel ratings (eg: 720x480, 352x480, etc.) and some DVDs are only 240 lines of resolution. Anyone out there that says "Wii suxx0rz for only being 480 I want my games to look as good as my rented DVDs on my high def TV" are deluding themselves. :)

Re:

[Goose42]

All video on (professionally mastered) DVDs is presented as a 720x480 picture. If its a widescreen video, the pixels are perfectly square. If its a standard-size video, the pixels are squished so that the 720 pixels per line fit in the screen. When a widescreen video is played on a standard-size screen, the DVD player is responsible for removing lines from the video so that the aspect ratio of the original video is maintained.

And to the GP, the "pillar-boxing" you get when displaying a standard-size pict

Re:

[grumbel]

The only thing that is really a negative in my mind about the Wii is whether or not games will be square, or rectangular.

The Wii has an option in its system setting to switch between 4:3 and 16:9 display modes, so its likly that all or most games support the 16:9 format, at least the native Wii ones, old Gamecube titles and VirtualConsole are of course a different matter.

Re:

[PhoenixOne]

The grandparent post was a troll but you, you are something special.

Now if I could just find the "-1: Bigot" mod...

Re:

[MeanderingMind]

Not true, I have a 360 and an uber HDTV as well as the monetary resources required for a PS3. I'll diss them all openly, and my experience has been good.

Quite simply, the 360 and HD are fun, but the Wii looks like it will be better while being cheaper.