How long have I had my Wii now? I bought it when I was living in that apartment in college, so it would have had to have been my junior or senior year. That would be somewhere between 2006-2008. I'm pretty sure it was just before Christmas of '07 that I bought it. So I've had this thing about 3 1/2 years. So why am I just now purchasing a component cable for it, now when my time spent playing games is at an all-time low? Because there was never reason for it before. It was just a few weeks back that we went ahead and spent part of our tax refund on a brand spankin' new HDTV (42" LG LED, 1080p, 120Hz in case you're interested).
Obviously, the Wii is not a fully HD console. Is it even accurate to say it's somewhat HD? I don't really think so. Sure, it can push some really great graphics when it tries, but the average Wii game doesn't hold a candle to what you typically see on the PS3 and Xbox360.
Don't worry, I'm not going to turn this into some diatribe about how the Wii's hardware sucks. I made peace with what the Wii is and isn't long ago. What I'm getting at (in an admittedly very roundabout way) is that the Wii can be made to look even better if you make the jump up to component cables. All this time I've simply been using the composite cables that came with the system, and they were fine for the longest time because of the TVs I was playing on. But the other day, I fired up the Wii for one of my rare gaming sessions, wanting to enjoy it on my new TV for the first time. Let me say, I was disappointed. It just wasn't pretty. I went into the system settings to see if I could ramp this thing up to take advantage of the new TV, and that was when I was reminded that I needed component cables. I went out and bought them the very next day. The resulting picture isn't on par with true HD graphics, but let me say, the difference with before and after is very discernable.
In case you are not familiar with composite and component cables, let me break it down in layman's terms. Composite cables are your typical, everyday red, white and yellow plugs. With that setup, red and white are your stereo sound, while yellow is your video signal. With component cables, red and white are still the audio signal. But the video signal is broken up into not one, but three cables: red, blue and green. The result is brighter, crisper colors and the difference is huge.
The drawback to this is that the Wii does not support all too high a max resolution, so with the enhanced colors, you will be able to detect more jagged lines than you could before. It's a little bit of a trade-off, but one that is well worth it in my opinion. Until the Wii 2 is released (which actually could be sooner than we think), this is as close to HD as Nintendo owners will get. If you're on the fence, I advise you to make the jump.