My component cables arrived for the Wii today. I finally was able to move off the incredibly lame composite connection and 480i to a nice crisp component connection and 480p. I know that this is a much better setup, and I eagerly plugged it in and decided to get my camera out and do some before/after comparisons. While I can tell the difference, it’s not as striking as I expected. These shots are all taken from the Wii menu screen. I took photos of the “disc” channel and of the Mii channel. I also took a photo of the Wii settings button on the lower left corner of the screen. See what you think.

480i composite of Wii logo in the Disc Channel

Close-up macro photo of the Wii logo displayed on a screen, showing individual RGB pixel columns in a striped pattern.

480p component of Wii logo in the Disc Channel

Close-up of the Nintendo Wii logo displayed on a screen, showing a purple-gray striped pixel pattern at high magnification.

You can tell that the progressive scan smooths out the fonts a bit.

480i composite of Mii Channel

Mii Channel logo displayed on a Wii menu screen, showing the word Mii with two smiley face dots above the letters on a gray background.

480p component of Mii Channel

Mii Channel logo displayed on a Wii screen, showing the word Mii in large teal outlined letters against a light grey background with small Mii character icons visible behind it.

Great example that when you are not “super-zoomed” into the image, you can’t really tell much of a difference.

480i composite of lower-left Wii settings button

Extreme close-up of a TV screen showing RGB pixel subpixels with wavy light and shadow patterns across the surface.

480p component of lower-left Wii settings button

Extreme close-up of an LCD screen showing pixelated dark diagonal shapes against a grid of red, green, and blue subpixels.

This extreme zoom shows the best the differences between the two settings.

There are other write-ups about the component cables that show the differences.