WiiLi.org

bnolsen · Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 7

Does the Wii use a Video Encoder Chip or is this directly embedded in the "Hollywood" GPU itself?

Reason for my question is that I believe that you need to have at least 720p output for the Wii to be useable as a light duty computer.

And of course also if nintendo went out of its way to make sure that this doesn't happen.

bluraven · Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 2

Not to be mean but what the hell are you talking about? LOL. What does a video encoder have to do with the wii being used as a light duty computer?! What the hell does 720p resolution have to do with that either??

Matt · Joined: 15 Nov 2006 Posts: 19

It has a lot of relevence really. If you were playing on a 480i tv, it could be hard to read some text, yet on a 720P display it would enable more stuff to be on screen. What he is also saying is that will the wii let a 720p output?

bnolsen · Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 7

If you do a bit of searching, just a little you'll find that the PS2 & XBox both use dedicated video encoder chips.

Conexant is one manufacturer of these chips, for which spec sheets can be found.

When I looked at the very first pics of the Wii undressed I honestly only saw 4 real chips on the Wii board: Wifi, hollywood, Broadway, the Broadcom wireless chip and a chip by the DVD ribbon cable (likely the controller for that). After reading the one BGA chip is 64MB GDDR3.

But knowing the video encoder used is the absolute first step to knowing what the true limitations of the video output is.

A lot of these other questions on the board, as to whether KDE, fluxbox, whatever manager is to be used is in very large part dependent on what the Wii can truly output. I'm sorry, but being limited to 640x480 only pretty much means the Wii will only truly ever be a simple toy.

Edit: found out about the encoder chip from another thread...it's on the backside of the board. Sadly there's no datasheets available for the part that can be found (for now)