Fixing Wii Screen Resolution

This post is to help anybody that needs to reset their Wii’s screen resolution, whether that is because they have changed cables, or put it into the wrong mode.

The reason I have to fix my Wii’s resolution, is I own a New Zealand Wii, which defaults to PAL, and I have a US TV that only supports NTSC. Thus when my Wii resets (due to no power) it goes back into PAL mode and thus is usable.

There are a number of solutions posted on the Internet for resetting resolutions. With my PAL Wii I can confirm a couple of methods reset to system default (for me PAL):

Powering down for 5 minutes

Power on Wii, give it a few seconds to boot
Hold DOWN on the directional pad of the Wii remote
While holding DOWN, press the RESET button on the Wii

However, given our US TV is NTSC resetting to PAL is of no use, thus I present the order of screens for my Australasian Wii. To help with future manual resets.

Incorrect signal looks like this or worse
Incorrect signal looks like this or worse

Wait until the screen looks like picture one, this can take 5-10 minutes

Home Screen
Home Screen
Wii Menu
Wii Menu
Settings Menu
Settings Menu
Screen Selection
Screen Selection
Resolution Option
Resolution Option

Then relying on the vibration feedback, and limited screen left/right feedback, follow the set of screens to turn your PAL Wii into 480p mode.

Some advice I found on the internet was to use only the green channel of the component cable to plug into the composite plug. This did work to allow seeing the picture (albeit black & white) it was equally scrolling badly, thus was not a better solving mode.

Comments:

Simeon 2010-10-01 11:51:42

I had to use this just the other week. We got a new-to-us TV for the basement (older non-wide screen).

I changed video mode while connected to the big TV, but choose PAL (576i) by mistake, and then the TV refused to show the picture. So I had to use the green channel plugged into the composite (yellow) input, to reset the device to NTSC (480i).