Nintendo Wii combo Component/Composite Cable

The Nintendo Wii ships with a composite video cable that is capable of 480i resolution. Currently first party component cables, which allow for 480p resolution, are available through retailers and directly from Nintendo. However, when attaching the component cables, one loses the ability to output composite video. Why is this an issue? Well, it may be that you take your Wii over to friends houses frequently and would like to only have to take a single cable. Or, you may be like me, and use an LCD computer monitor for your Wii's display. My monitor has composite but no component in. To support high definition signals, I use a small transcoder box, the Mayflash YPbPr to RGB transcoder, that only supports progressive scan modes. However, many older games, such as GameCube games, and even some of the new Wii games, like Rayman Raving Rabbids, don't support progressive scan. In these cases I end up with a black screen and need to switch cables to play the game. What a pain.

Luckily, this cable does both component and composite output -- and it's selectable at the flick of a switch. We'll take a standard first party component cable, and a few bucks worth of parts from Radio Shack and put together a cable that is selectable between composite and component output

Step 1 Gather required parts

For this instructable, you'll need the following items:

Wii Component Cable
A small amount of wire
SPST Switch (about $2.00 for 2 at Radio Shack)
Phono RCA Jacks (about $2.00 for 4 at Radio Shack)
Composite video cable
Electrical Tape
Soldering Iron
Solder
Wire Stripper
Hot Glue (not pictured)
Butter Knife (not pictured)
Paperclip (not pictured)

Comments

[the_burrito_master]

would it be possible to make a composite splitter like this.

[knexsuperbuilderfreak]

you can buy a madcatz verson like that but it has more ports

[nintendo wii]

The Nintendo Wii has meet all my expectations!

[zaidkhalil]

I have a question, but i want to preface it all by saying that i am a tech n00b. I do not own a tv and just purchased a wii, component cables and a component vga box. However my I keep getting the following message on my Viewsonic VP191b monitor. "Out of Range" H. Frequency: 15 kHz V. Frequency: 57.8 kHz Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[f3l1x]

kick butt.. almost the same thing i did with 2 composite cables but backwards ;P

http://f3l1xthecat.blogspot.com/2006/12/making-practical-wii-component-cables.html

[LasVegas]

The reason you want the ground on the composite video cable is more for the purpose of RF (radio frequency) shielding than supplying the ground. This will keep RF noise from interfering with your play experience. It wouldn't hurt to wrap the composite wire pair once through a Ferrite Core to improve RF filtering as well.

[pridkett]

Good advice for any audio/video project. I'm not sure entirely how practical it would be in this case as you'd still have the ends of the wires that aren't around the core -- which in this case would be almost as long. I'm not sure if it's entirely clear in the writeup, but I trimmed the wires pretty significantly between the last two photos of the instructable -- largely to address just this issue. Another option that would lead to an improved result would be to use a better piece of wire. Ideally, you could use a piece of braided and shielded wire and tie the ground in right away. That's one less cable coming out of the plastic connector cap too. I just used some wire that I had left over from my undergraduate electrical engineering labs.

[zedomax]

nice!