Wii, PS3, 360 - Do the majority of the games support Widescreen?

[Joe Redifer]

Pimpi, if you just let the PS3 do automatic connections via HDMI or just turn on all of the resolutions in the PS3 menu, the game will always play at its highest native resolution. Flower automatically plays in 1080i, Burnout Paradise will play in 720p, etc. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, is very difficult since you set it to one resolution and ALL games display at that resolution. Halo 3 isn't even 720p in native resolution, it's quite pathetic.

Although the CRT is nice, the TV has geometry issues as well as convergence issues. I want to replace this TV quite badly.

One thing that bothers me about the Wii is that I must tell my TV to go to widescreen mode. There is no 16:9 flag in the video. Even the original Xbox sent out the 16:9 flag.

[Knuckle Duster]

The thing that bothers me about the Xbox 360 is that when it's connected to an older standard CRT. The fonts for menus, especially in RPGs are absolutely horrible and tiny.

I don't want to 'NEED' to drop it on an HDTV all the time just for it to be playable.

[64k]

This is a common misconception for having knuckle duster, nobody NEEDS an HDTV to view these menus.

the worst being GTA IV and Dead rising.

I take it your using the crappy component lead that comes with it? if you have a CRT TV that supports full RGB over 27" you could purchase yourself a decent RGB SCART LEAD.

I used to have a phillips 52" 1080p LCD TV which never got used in the end and ended up selling, reason being is I bought for like £5 a full RGB scart and ended up using my old Panasonic 37" CRT TV with the lead.

If you using full RGB you will find a damn massive picture improvment, i MEAN huge to the point that some of my mates mistook the CRT for being HD.

you will be able to see all the menus, writing, fonts etc for little under a tenner, id recommend one muchly so.

yeah its not HD but its just as sharp! the CRT looked better on a side by side (albeit the CRT TV did have noticable stepping and minor detail loss but not too the huge level you think)

I actaully use an HDDVD player on the CRT and can still see a huge improvment over SD stuff on an SD TV.

just make sure your TV supports True RGB and has a decent dot pitch.

[gamevet]

Although the CRT is nice, the TV has geometry issues as well as convergence issues. I want to replace this TV quite badly.

Yeah!

I have a Sony Wega Hi Scan (480i/480p, 720p/1080i) that cuts off the left and right edges on the 16:9 content. It's a 4:3 television (it's perfect for 480p GC and Xbox games) that uses the black bars to make the 720p stuff widescreen. The picture is great, but it's still no match for the Samsung 52" 1080p LCD I have in the livingroom; It's nice to see the widescreen stuff with everything on screen.

I can see where Pimp is coming from though. I'd imagine those games that were intended for the Wii and PS2, and then blown up to a widescreen format, would suffer from the top and bottom edges being cropped. My LCD does that to the standard def television broadcast, when I expand it to 16:9.

[PimpUigi]

Pimpi, if you just let the PS3 do automatic connections via HDMI or just turn on all of the resolutions in the PS3 menu, the game will always play at its highest native resolution. Flower automatically plays in 1080i, Burnout Paradise will play in 720p, etc. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, is very difficult since you set it to one resolution and ALL games display at that resolution. Halo 3 isn't even 720p in native resolution, it's quite pathetic.

Although the CRT is nice, the TV has geometry issues as well as convergence issues. I want to replace this TV quite badly.

Well, letting the PS3 do it automatically just turns out terrible.
From day one I haven't done this...because if I leave it on auto, it forces SF2 HD Remix to 720p (where it looks best in 1080i, it just things p>i) and lets any game capable of 1080i be in 1080i (apart from HD Remix for whatever reason)
This is terrible in the case of Condemned 2 (weird pixelation and artifacts) and especially Sonic 2006 (horrible extra lag) and of course it's not going to just know that I wanted 480p 4:3 in Sonic Unleashed for the extra viewing area.

So yea, every time I get a new game for PS3 (which is rare TBH) I have to check every single video mode to see which is best.
It could be worse...I could imagine having no option for such things.
Like, there's no option for 4:3 1080i or 720p...that would just be nice to have that option. PC has that option after all. Would certainly help Sonic Unleashed and Street Fighter 4.

Regarding your XBR960, please try out the service menu.
On the remote, press display, 5, Volume up, Power, and when your TV turns on, you'll be in the service menu.

At the very least, for Genesis/Super NES/NES games, you'll want to go to entry for "TRAP" (there are two TRAP entries) and change it to 1, from 0. You'll be able to see for yourself that it makes a huge difference for the better.

You'll be able to control tons of sharpness, color, brightness, and contrast settings, and god knows how many geometry/screen size settings.

It's pretty tough though, you don't want to change anything you don't want to change.
You don't want to make any mistakes either.

It's very time consuming, but man oh man, having a properly service menu calibrated TV is beyond awesome.

[OldSchool]

I can't believe how good my Wii looks on my oooooooooold 27" Analog. This tv is 20 years old and the games look pretty damn good on it.


Can't wait to jump into this world of 'hi def' you all are speaking of
(whole new ballpark I'm sure)

[kool kitty89]

IMHO no game should offer full screen right now.

I know several people who still only have SDTVs and prefer fullscreen to anamorphic... I personally prefer anamorphic on SDTVs too, except for split screen games. (older/cheaper SDTVs don't support anamorphic though)
I don't like cropped for sure, it just lowers the resolution... Well, except in some cases where the cropping improves framerate. (I think that's the case with some N64 games)

Furthermore, there are cases of playing HD in 4:3, a nice VGA monitor for instance. My friend's 360 looked great in 1080p (and 720p) on our 20" VGA CRT, that's 1440x1080 or 960x720. We played all the way through Portal last summer that way, played MK vs DCU, Fallout 3, and a number of other games.

I could manually adjust the vertical scan to support 1280x720 or 1920x1080 in the proper aspect ratio, but honestly, then the screens getting a bit small.
A major reason for liking anamorphic on SDTVs is the tighter scanlines making a cleaner image, not the case with VGA.

Xbox 360 games on the other hand, every single one has looked better in 1080i over 720p so far.
That is, Halo 3, and Gears of War 2.

Is that in the dedicated 1080i setting, or 1080p converted to 1080i by your TV?

[PimpUigi]

1080i