Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_gR7l1co80
Adding HDMI To The Nintendo Wii
Introduction
When the Nintendo Wii launched in 2006 it didn’t include HDMI - so let’s add it using the ElectronAVE, a kit that keeps it all digital for a nice crispy video output!
Script
Launched in 2006, the Nintendo Wii was very much a product of its time - a transitionary period between standard definition and high definition when a lot of gamers - myself included - were still gaming on CRT TVs and in a lot of cases, not even widescreen ones at that. In fact, the very first console to offer HDMI output was the Sony PlayStation 3 launched that very same year with the Xbox 360 catching up the following year in 2007 - but of course they were much higher end consoles aimed at a completely different target market - and actually when it came down to it, at the time, the lack of HDMI output didn’t really hold the Wii back. Most TVs didn’t support it anyway, and it was often purchased as a much lower cost second console as a companion to one of the more high-end offerings, or indeed a console for kids or even older people using those motion controls to stay active.
Now fast forward to 2025 and the Wii is a really fantastic buy - you can pick them up for next to nothing, they have a fantastic catalog of games available that again, you can pick up for next to nothing, and those motion controls have aged incredibly well. But one aspect of the Wii that hasn’t aged well, of course, is that video output.
Thankfully, there is a solution called the ElectronAVE or AVE-HDMI when I purchased it with my own money, well over a year ago. But first, let’s take a look at the different video output options to see how they compare - and first up, we have composite video, the good old yellow, red, and white connectors that we see here - and indeed the way that us CRT TV gamers enjoyed the Wii back in the day. Of course, this was perfectly fine sat across the other side of the room on A CRT TV in standard definition but as you can see by today’s standards, this is absolutely abysmal and it’s not really well supported by modern TVs - yes, they can accept it as an input - but generally the scalers built into these TVs, particularly lower end panels do leave a lot to be desired.
I mean, I am doing my absolute best here by running this through the RetroTINK 5X, which is one of the best upscalers you can get. But yeah, as you can see, this is not a pleasant experience at all by 2025 standards.
Next up we have component video, and this is again, via an official cable offered by Nintendo back in the day - and as you can see, it is an improvement on the composite video that we saw before: it’s 480P resolution this time, and the fact that it splits the colors off into separate channels does mean that we get a higher quality signal. This was supported by some higher end CRTs back in the day as well as rear projection TVs - if you remember those - and is generally still supported by a lot of flat panel displays, and it’s a pretty good option if that’s what you have available to you, but it is still an analog signal, which of course is going to result in a loss of quite a bit of quality.
Finally, we do have some unofficial HDMI options like this Wii2HDMI adapter here, and these are very, very common, they’re very low cost, they’re quite easy to pick up, and they’re a good solution to be fair, if you have a modern display with an HDMI input. The trouble with these is they take that component video output from the Wii and they convert it to digital and pipe it out over HDMI - so we’re still dealing with converting a digital signal to analog and then back again, which again does result in some loss of quality.
So as you’ve seen, the weakest link in the chain is always that digital to analog conversion - and unfortunately that’s always going to be the case with these early models of Wii, because Nintendo didn’t offer any kind of digital video output from them - a very perplexing decision indeed, considering they did with the Gamecube.
But anyway, that’s where this mod comes in because it takes the digital output from the Wii’s video chip, pipes it out over HDMI to your modern display, and keeps everything looking rather crispy. Now, this isn’t an install for the faint of heart - there is some very, very fine soldiering involved and the Wii is quite a complicated console to tear down and put back together, as you will see in this video.
You’ll also have to modify the case ever so slightly just to make a small hole for that Mini HDMI port - but to be honest that’s pretty much the least of your worries.
Now, this mod is based on a previous project called GCVideo - so big shout out to them - of course that was designed with the Gamecube in mind - and if you are going to tackle this project, you’ll also need a tri-wing screwdriver, of course, because this is a Nintendo console and the’re obsessed with tri-wing screws for some bizarre reason.
And finally to be able to access the onscreen menus for the GCVideo you will also need a Gamecube controller if you have an early model of Wii like this that supports those. If you don’t, there is an optional infrared module that you can install that works with a universal remote to allow you to go into that setup menu and configure the GCVideo.
Yeah, it’s a pretty involved mod, but as you’ll see from this video, I did get there in the end.
Sorry to interrupt, but if you are a fan of electronics tinkering like I am, you’ll no doubt appreciate the services of this channel’s sponsor PCBWay.com. PCBWay has over 10 years of experience in the PCB fabrication business, but did you know that they’ve also recently started offering complementary services including CNC machining, injection molding, and 3D printing?
If any of those are a requirement for your next project, please do check out the link to PCBWay down in the description.
Now on with the mod!
So here is our Nintendo Wii, and the first thing that we need to do is to determine which hardware revision it is, because that affects how we are actually going to be hooking up the kit.
Now it turns out that’s actually quite easy - all we need to do is take off this battery- take out this battery cover, and there should be a code inside here. Now, I must admit, I’ve never done this before, so hopefully it’s in there…
…and there we go - so that’s just a bog standard 2032 coin cell battery in there for the clock, and inside here there should be a code, which I can’t quite see.
Right - this is going to be impossible to show on camera but I will show you a photo. As you can see, there are a list of codes here, and mine is actually 20, so that makes it an RVL-CPU-20.
So the first couple of things we need to remove are these flaps on the top, and these are for the Gamecube backwards compatibility functionality - so these earlier models of Wii were actually backwards compatible with the Gamecube controllers and memory cards - and this is where they actually slot in, and they are covered by some nice tidy flaps here to keep everything nice and tidy - so just remove these screws in the top.
So hopefully, as you can see, and as previously mentioned, you will need a tri-wing screwdriver for a few of the screws in the Wii - it’s one of Nintendo’s favorite antitamper measures - of course, they’re quite widely available nowadays and thankfully my iFixit screwdriver does include them - so yeah, these are the next couple of screws to come out, I think there’s just four for this top panel.
…and apparently, according to the guide, some of the screws are under these rubber feet, although not all of the feet have screws under them. There we go - so that one has a tri-wing in there. I’m not quite sure if you can see that, it’s a tri-wing screw in there - so yeah, just to remove all of those - and my triwing screwdriver isn’t long enough! Great start!
There we go: Plan B!
…there doesn’t seem to be any kind of rhyme or reason as to which screws are Phillips and which are tri-wing.
Well, this one’s Phillips…
…Oh!
There’s another tri-wing.
A-ha…
Right, looks like we have our CPU and GPU under this heatsink here - and I probably didn’t need to actually remove this, I’m not quite sure, but either way, I will renew this thermal compound when I put this back together.
But it looks like our board is now free from the case, and I should point out, as mentioned right at the beginning of this teardown, this number here is just about visible through that battery compartment, but I couldn’t actually show it to you earlier because it was just really, really tight in there. But yeah, as predicted, that is a number 20 there - so that’s the motherboard revision that we are working with.
So let’s take a look at the kit itself - finally - and see what’s actually in here.
So we have these two components here: this is the Mini HDMI socket, which will be going in the back of the Wii, of course, and the ribbon cable to connect it to the actual mod itself. There’s also this infrared receiver mod, which can be installed in certain models of Wii but I don’t actually need that in mine because I have those Gamecube controller ports and a Gamecube controller - you will actually need a Gamecube controller to set this thing up.
That’s just an inspection thingy, I guess - and here it is, the actual AVE mod itself. Of course, mine is an earlier version, so it is branded AVE-HDMI that has now been renamed to ElectronAVE, but apparently it is exactly the same kit - and these are the actual vias that we’ll be using to connect this to the Wii itself - as you can see, they’re absolutely tiny - and that motherboard revision determines which vias we use to soldier this on - so yeah, this is gonna be fun!
So these tiny little things here are the vias that I’m going to need to sold to and yep, they’re pretty small. I mean, the the soldering doesn’t seem quite as fiddly as my Xbox HDMI kit installation was, but, yeah, it’s still gonna be quite the challenge, so forgive me if I don’t explain this step by step - there are images on the website which demonstrate exactly how you are supposed to hook this thing up. I’ll try to record it as best as I can, but I can’t make any promises because ultimately I think it’s more important that this actually works when I’m done - so wish me luck!
Right. That doesn’t seem to be taking - and to be fair, the guide does say that there might be solder mask on some revisions of these Nintendo Wiis so what I’m going to do is just go over this with a fiberglass pencil…
…I think that looks about right - although my USB microscope isn’t brilliant, but I think that’s covered all of the vias that we needed to do - so I’ll just clean this up with some IPA and allow that to evaporate.
I’ll just clean some of this off - and hopefully get this mod actually soldered on.
…I think that’s working…
Wow. Okay - so yeah, I mean, they don’t look super neat under the microscope, but bear in mind just how tiny these things are. I do think they are all securely connected now, so…
Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully that’s it.
That’s the video signals dealt with but of course, this mod also needs to be powered, and that is facilitated by these solder pads on the actual board itself: so we have 3.3 volts, ground, and 5 volts here, and these need to be hooked up to the test points on the Wii’s motherboard here - so we have a couple labeled “ground” that I can see here, one that’s labeled “5V” just there and one labeled “3.3V” just there - and there is a diagram showing where these are on the website as well - and that also cautions against crossing over any of these points of course, because this is where the screws come through that hold the Wii together.
Okay - so that’s the power side of things hooked up. I did struggle with this ground test point here for some reason, I’m not quite sure why the solder didn’t want to take to that, but I ended up using this one instead, so that’s perfectly fine - and there is one more solder pad on the mod board here that needs to be hooked up - and in my case, that needs to go to one of these-
You can’t see those on camera here… There they are!
…one of these Gamecube controller ports, one of these test points next to those, because as previously mentioned, you need to use a Gamecube controller to actually configure the the menu for the settings and things on the AVE mod. Now, if you have a Wii that doesn’t have these, there is this infrared board here, but mine does - so I’m not gonna be installing this in this video, but that is covered in the guide.
Finally - provided this all works, of course - we are going to need a way to actually connect this to the outside world, which is done via this Mini HDMI connector - and look at this, isn’t this a clever design? So this just solders on top of the existing USB ports just there - so yeah, hopefully easy peasy.
Hopefully - we’ll see…
…there’s just this ribbon cable - so that goes in there, lock it into place, it goes writing side up - so there’s a stiffener on the back, which needs to go on the back, on the bottom, and then that should fold over and then fold over again and lock into there.
…and the final step, as always, is to put all of this back together - somehow - and of course we have a new port that we need to take into account: this Mini HDMI port here, which wasn’t there before - and we can see that based on the way that this lines up with the outer case, we’re going to have to cut just a little bit away just here - there’s this RF shielding, so there’s a bit of metal that needs to be removed there, and just a bit of the plastic case as well - so I will sort that out, put this back together, and then hopefully next you hear from me this should all be buttoned up and ready to go.
…and believe it or not, it actually all worked first time, which has to be some kind of record for this channel - so yeah, go me! Even despite all that fine soldering and all of those hundreds of screws, I plugged it in and it just fired up with no problems at all.
However, speaking of things working first time the same can’t be said for this Nintendo Gamecube controller, which I bought on eBay, which I’ve had to strip down and clean out thoroughly with IPA to get into the configuration menu, and I’ve just fired it all up again to demo it to you - and the left trigger has stopped working again - so unfortunately I can’t show you that menu but to be honest with you, unless you’re interested in the scanline function or you’re having some kind of specific compatibility issue with your display, you don’t really need to go in there and change anything anyway.
The settings are all to do with compatibility and brightness and contrast and that kind of thing - so if you don’t own a GameCube controller, I probably wouldn’t go out of your way to acquire one unless you run into any specific issues. I mean, these are getting quite expensive nowadays after all.
Anyway, as previously mentioned, the mod itself is working fantastically well - so let’s have a look at some screen captures of some games. Now, of course, a lot of games at the time will have used pre-rendered full motion video, and it’s not going to improve the quality of those, they’re still gonna look a bit fuzzy and a bit blurry on your modern display, and there’s not really much we can do about that - and the same goes for some of the menus and things in some of the games and the Wii Menu as well - yes, there is a noticeable improvement here, but there’s only so far it can go without replacing all of those graphics assets and stuff - and if you are looking to play Wii games in super duper high resolution you’re going to have to look at modern emulators, but this is absolutely the best solution that I’ve come across for the original hardware.
I can highly recommend it - and of course, in addition to the graphical improvements, it’s also a fantastic thing for compatibility with modern displays as well. It doesn’t do any kind of upscaling other than a very basic scandoubler in some of the lower resolutions - but if your display supports 480P over HDMI - which it pretty much should do - this is going to work a lot better than the component video cables or one of those Wii2HDMI adapters. I’ve certainly found it to be a big improvement and I can highly, highly recommend this - and I say that as someone who spent all of his own money on it as well.
So there we have it: The ElectronAVE HDMI mod for the Nintendo Wii - a very worthwhile upgrade indeed - and if this video has whetted your appetite, there will be links to purchase the mod for yourself down in the description. I know in my case, it means I’m certainly going to be getting a lot more enjoyment out of my Wii and not have to worry about things like external upscales and the like.
So big thanks as always to my supporters on Ko-Fi, Patreon and indeed my YouTube channel members as well. They get videos early and ad-free - and that’s all I have for you for this video - so thank you ever so much for joining me, and hopefully I’ll see you in the next one.
Original Video Links
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Episode Links:
ElectronAVE (UK): https://electron-shepherd.com/collections/all/products/electronave-kit
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