Wii U Wii mode question

[Leo_A]

A while back, Nintendo patched in automatic aspect ratio detection for Wii mode. Where previously everything was indiscriminately stretched to 16:9, 4:3 titles like Virtual Console downloads are now correctly pillarboxed by the Wii U scaling chip.

Out of plain curiosity, does anyone know what the few 4:3 releases that were 16:9 enhanced on the Wii now do after this patch? Ideally, they'd be ran as 4:3 now that the Wii U's scaler itself will pillarbox them. If they're still ran as 16:9, that means that they're now needlessly wasting a bit of their resolution on their own pillarboxing which means the picture quality will consequentially be slightly less than it now could be.

I can't tell with the few I have that did this since they used plain black pillarboxing. So even if they do now run as if they were 4:3 only, they look the same more or less without an ability to do a direct comparison back & forth. But a good example would be Mario Party 8 (A game I don't own) with its custom borders to tell how these few games are now handled.

Does it still have its custom border framing the 4:3 game area? If so, the Wii U still considers a game such as this as a 16:9 release.

http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/article/792/792495/mario-party-8-20070529050422078.jpg

Or is the full 640x480 resolution that's being sent to the Wii U scaler being dedicated to just the 4:3 game area with the Wii U's scaler applying the typical black pillarboxing bars like it would on a 4:3 only Wii release? This would be ideal since it yields the best looking picture being upscaled.

http://s13.postimg.org/5xitgjk87/Mario.jpg

I suspect with so few games that did this, that they're treated as 16:9 and continue to pillarbox themselves?

[BlastProcessing402]

Don't have a Wii U, but couldn't you tell by running such a game and seeing if your TV needs to be set to 16:9 or 4:3 to look right?

[Leo_A]

It looks right automatically...

As I said in the first post, nothing has to be done at the HDTV end since the Wii U during the upscaling process applies stretching for 16:9 enabled releases or pillarboxes to maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio as necessary for each title. The question being asked has absolutely nothing to do with how to get the correct aspect ratio to be displayed, but how these few examples that had the ability to self pillarbox themselves are classified as by the Wii U.

Is a 16:9 enhanced 4:3 title such as Kirby's Dream Collection, which was able to pillarbox itself on the Wii so that it would still appear as pillarboxed 4:3 without disabling your tv's stretch mode, still tasked with self-pillarboxing itself after this Wii U firmware upgrade (with the resulting decrease in picture quality due to dedicating some of the Wii's limited 480p resolution to the pillarboxing)?

Or are these widescreen enhanced 4:3 Wii releases instead categorized as full 4:3 releases now, allowing them to render a borderless 480p image that's solely dedicated to the 4:3 visual themselves (With the Wii U's scaler instead now applying pillarboxing prior to being output to your tv, just as the Wii U does with full fledged 4:3 Wii releases that weren't setup originally to self-pillarbox)?

[Rickstilwell1]

If you prefer to stretch pillarboxed games to fill the screen is there an option on the Wii U's Wii mode to stretch it, or do you have to have a TV with the stretch option?

[Leo_A]

If you prefer to stretch pillarboxed games to fill the screen is there an option on the Wii U's Wii mode to stretch it, or do you have to have a TV with the stretch option?

If you haven't patched your firmware recently, you're in luck then since the Wii U indiscriminately stretched all of Wii mode to 16:9 originally.

But if you have the latest firmware where they fixed this and still want to play a 4:3 Wii release incorrectly stretched to 16:9 proportions, you have to revert your system settings to 480p and then utilize your HDTV's stretch mode (just like you did on the original Wii).

Essentially you have to do what those of us that prefer original aspect ratio were doing before this patch in order to enjoy their 4:3 Wii releases in 4:3 on their Wii U, except in this case you must enable stretch mode on your HDTV instead of disabling it.