A couple days ago we received our Wii component cable and it was just in time. Based on what we had read about what the cable does for Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess we didn't want to play the game until the cable arrived. Well we finally have it and wanted to share our experiences of it with you. First of all, if you are only reading this article to find out if you should buy the cable then stop reading and go buy it. Trust us.

Look how the goat comes to life. :-)

To start we took some comparison shots inside of Link's cabin. In particular there is a picture of those pesky goats hanging up on the wall. The picture on the left is obviously taken using default composite cable that comes with the Wii and the picture on the right is what the component cable looks like. Clearly you can see more definition in the component picture as well a more truer color. The composite image has a blue-ish tint while the component cable has a nice black color to it. The other obvious difference is the jaggies seen along the picture frame using the component cable while the composite input is blurred enough where you don't see them. However, the difference in the texture quality is night and day. The composite frame is a spectacled blur of brown and white smears while the more defined component frame is composed of well defined wooden specs. Basically the biggest difference you will notice when playing with the component cable is this difference in texture quality and clarity. It really does make a difference.

Don't be so sad little boy, you're in high-def now.

One last comparison shows how the jaggies become visible in the lower image when using the component cable whereas the top picture is more blurred and less detailed hence no jaggies. The right edge of the arm gives the best contrast in jaggies and the pupils of the eyes give the best contrast in texture quality. In the lower component picture the girl's eyes are a much brighter blue and her pupil is darker and more defined while the top image has a more washed out blue and her pupil definitely blends in with the rest of the blue iris.

While we were playing around with the cable we tried loading up a older Gamecube game that supports 480p output in the Wii to see if the Wii would in fact scale the game up to 480p. Watch the video above to see our trial in action. For those of you that can't or don't want to watch the video, the Wii did in fact scale the game up to 480p instead of 480i. When the game was first loaded it asked if we wanted to run it in 480p mode we said yes and the results were positive. There was certainly a difference although not quite as dramatic difference as LoZ: TP has when changing between component and composite but an improvement none-the-less.

Overall our experience with the cable has been nothing but positive and we recommned picking one up. The sooner you do the better as you will get to enjoy your games in 480p. At the time of writing this a 3rd party Wii component cable can be found online to buy for $60 here otherwise you can always order it off of Nintendo's online store.

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