A Series of Unfortunate Wii Adapters

After being gifted a “new” Wii from my girlfriend’s parents (thanks <3) I was excited to re-live my childhood memories by playing all the original games on the original hardware instead of emulating like I did for the PS2 (super easy btw check it out).

I wanted to share this experience w my friends and thought I’d challenge myself to configure this setup so I could livestream it.

A useless and overcomplicated setup would be best I think.

My goals were:
– Straight hardware, no emulation
– Play while being able to listen and talk over Discord
– Stream the contents of the Wii (video PLUS audio) to Discord
– No audio/visual delay
– No controller input delay

Getting the Wii onto Discord

The first step required converting the Wii’s audio/visual output to something readable to anyone other than a CRT television. For this I picked up a Nintendo Wii to HDMI adapter converter for $25 + shipping, this would be able to skip the existing analog adapter that comes with the Wii and plug directly into the ridiculous proprietary port. This also comes with a separate 3.5mm audio jack output which’ll come in handy later.

Next, I needed a video capture card to be able to take the HDMI output and put it into something my desktop PC can read as an input. This adapter I was most worried about as plenty forums online claim you either get an ‘Elgato’ branded card or don’t bother. I decided to chance it and cheaped out on a $19 Simplecom HDMI to USB Capture Card.

Using VLC media player, I can now stream this (admittedly low res) capture to Discord!
However sitting down to play this way had INSANE input delay between the controller and what I’d see on the monitor (also due to the cheap video card). To fix this, I decided that I would split my HDMI output from the Simplecom video card directly into my monitor. This way I would receive zero visual lag. I picked up yet another adapter then for $29 – Simplecom HDMI 1×2 Splitter with 2 Port HDMI Duplicator.

It’s already complicated, but its about to get worse cause we still have two problems.
1. My visual delay is fixed but now I’d be receiving a delay between my monitor and the audio in my PC-connected headphones as this is coming from the video card’s input to the PC
2. It’s super annoying having to unplug and re-plug the HDMI outputs of my PC monitor every time I want to use it for my normal desktop.

To fix these, I bought YET another adapter, and implemented an overengineered solution to a minor problem.

Utilising the 3.5mm audio jack from the Wii video adapter previously mentioned, I purchased a $6 USB-C to 3.5mm audio cable that plugged directly into the PC. Editing it’s configuration in control panel I was able to listen to this ‘audio input’ as part of my computer audio. Now there would be no audio delay from what I hear and what’s being put on my monitor.

To fix having to re-plug the HDMI every time, I whipped out my “new” 4-port KVM that I snagged as a steal from a second-hand store. With my PC on port 1 and the Wii on port 2, switching inputs now sends the monitor output to either my PC or the Wii’s HDMI splitter. Super simple solution, and I just happened to fix it using leftover old gear.

I thought I was finally done with adapters, until I found out the KVM doesn’t even take HDMI and only supports DisplayPort. No matter, I’ll just get a HDMI to DisplayPort adapter, they seem pretty dirt cheap like $9… wait… what’s this..?

NEVERMIND!! It turns out that you CANT just plug them in and it’ll work, you need an ‘active’ adapter that can carry the signal… nothing is easy… 🙁

After getting another adapter for $25 – Simplecom HDMI to DisplayPort Active Converter Cable I was finally ready. See below for the full setup.

Looks nice and neat on here, please don’t scroll any further to the IRL setup

I’m not gonna go through the other SD card and adapter I had to get to jailbreak the Wii because I may go thru it in another post. I’ll still include it in the breakdown below cause why not.

Price breakdown

All in all, we can work out how much I spent on this little project, when, technically I could’ve just emulated the Wii and called it a day.

$176??!?! what the hell I actually didn’t do the math until just now how the hell did I spend this much on useless crap. I have GOT to work this out before I start next time.