So, I got an old-fashioned projector with the YPbPr (component video) built into the VGA port. I finally got myself a YPbPr cable for the Wii, an unofficial one by Game since they – strangely – only sell their own peripherals and I couldn’t be assed to haul myself to another shop. Well, well, I thought. How shit can it be?
But that’s not all. Component lead securely in my possession, I went hunting for a YPbPr-to-VGA converter on eBay. I found one from Taiwan pretty quickly and on the cheap, figuring even the Taiwanese would be hard-pressed to fuck up something that’s supposed to be the exact same signal.
When I hook this mélange of unofficial cabling to my Wii, I can pick between three intriguing but ultimately unsatisfactory display screw-ups:
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I keep running in 576i, which results in weird twitching of a few dozen lines of pixels near the top of the image. It’s most visible on the main channel menu, almost disappearing in-game and in sub-menus. There’s also some really heavy shadowing or ghosting, with colors lighter than their surroundings dragging all the way to the far right end of the screen. Otherwise, the image is much clearer than on composite, and the colors are more vivid. Virtual console games continually swap between what my projector calls “YPbPr YUV 50” and “YPbPr Analog”.
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I switch to 480i, which results in the exact same issues as above.
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I switch to 480p, which results in the picture going terminally bright. I can see some contrast going on, but the image is extremely over-bright. Not even adjusting my projectors brightness, contrast or color temperature will bring it down to something approaching acceptable levels. The image does not appear to have the twitchy issues near the top anymore, but it seems like there’s more twitching along the centre of the picture now.
I’ve tried tightening the VGA adaptor as properly as I can. I had issues with my x360 VGA adaptor, with colors turning a bright green if I didn’t fasten it tight.
I’ve tried the cable setup on my PC monitor, which is supposed to support D-SUB on the VGA, which I’ve gathered also does YPbPr signal, and that does precisely dick.
Any good ideas as to what part of my spaghetti monster is faulty? Is it my projector simply refusing to accept the signal (weird, because why would it display “properly” in 576i and 480i if the signal was the problem? The projector gives the signal as being “YPbPr analog” in any case)? Is it the cheap-o converter screwing up the signal, causing both the over-brightness and the twitching, or could some of the problems be the converter and some the unofficial Wii component cable?
Fakeedit: I just went out and reconnected the x360. The x360 VGA signal is also fucked now. It seems like the projector is misinterpreting the signal, somehow, because the x360 suddenly displays the very same bright green that it did when I first had problems.
Which leads me to believe that me fastening those cables didn’t really solve any issues.
So … uh … Double halp?!!1