By Nelson Schneider - 12/18/11 at 05:59 PM CT

Wii owners have lamented for several years their console’s lack of “True HD” output, that is, either 720p or 1080p resolution. It is important to remember, however, that in 2005 when the Wii first came into the world, HDTVs of any variety were fairly rare, dwelling in the rec rooms and man caves of dedicated enthusiasts. The government-mandated HD switch-over was continually pushed back, extending standard definition resolution’s (480i/480p) lease on life.

In 2009, the old format was finally slain once and for all, ushering in a new era of digital beauty and fully-legible on-screen text. Of course, the Wii wasn’t ready for this, and as a console, its non-upgradeable nature meant that every Wii game, no matter how artistically rendered, now looked like poo. The once-unnecessary hardware in the PS3 and Xbox 360 that allowed them to output high resolution visuals at the cost of insane launch prices was suddenly necessary, and Wii were left out.

In my quest for improved Wii visuals on my 55” 1080p television, I have explored (on paper, at least) a variety of hardware upscalers that proclaim to offer full 1080p resolution. Considering how well the original 60GB model PlayStation 3 upscales PS1 and PS2 games, I knew such a thing was possible. Of course, most of these universal upscalers are insanely expensive, costing nearly as much as a brand new Wii itself. Six months ago, I chose to try out the Wii HDMiKey, a shady device made by a shady company and sold exclusively through shady mod-chip retailers whose clientele consists mostly of hackers and pirates (What could possibly go wrong?). This device is one of many look-alike products that have been released in the past year, all targeting the Wii and its newfound blurriness.

My main consideration in choosing the Wii HDMiKey was its strong feature to cost ratio. At the time I bought it, the price of $50 – the same as a single new Wii game – was quite low for a device that promises full support for resolutions ranging from 480i SD, to the bizarro-world 576i used by Europe’s PAL televisions, to full 1080p HD. All of this upscaling prowess requires no external power supply, just a single HDMI cable. Finally, the HDMiKey supports an in-Wii user interface that allows the user to configure it and perform updates without the need of a PC. Sounds good!

Upon receiving my HDMiKey in the mail, I plugged it into my Wii, then ran a cheap HDMI cable I had lying around from the HDMiKey to my TV.

I turned on the TV. “Retrieving Data,” it said.

After a few seconds, the normal Wii screen appeared… and looked exactly the same. Perplexed, I checked the input data provided by my TV… it said it was still outputting 480p. Before I could get the upscaling goodness, I had to configure the thing.

Configuring the HDMiKey requires navigating to a specific webpage via the Wii’s Opera Browser. Upon arriving at this page, I saw the option to change the output to 1080p (720p, which is what I really wanted, considering that upscaling 480p to 1080p seems to be pushing feasibility, was not an option – it is still listed as “coming soon” in a future firmware update that will probably never happen), which I selected. The screen jittered and suddenly I was presented with a glorious black-screen-with-white-text that looked like something an Atari 2600 could produce. The HDMiKey was downloading an update in order to change its resolution.

After the HDMiKey was done doing its thing, it reset itself (not the entire Wii). Soon, I found myself gazing at a screen that looked… slightly less horrible than it did before. Upon rechecking my TV’s input data, I found that I was indeed seeing Wii graphics in 1080p.

After playing six months’ worth of Wii games using the HDMiKey, I can say that it does make the Wii’s output look better, but not all the time. The System Menu doesn’t benefit at all from the HDMiKey, for some reason, and the improvement for games varies a bit by title. The overall quality boost, I would say, is about the same as what the original PS3 does for PS2 games, only without the added benefit of anti-aliasing (a.k.a., “smoothing”) that Sony’s machine provides. Aside from the lack of an update for 720p support (which was supposed to be available out of the box), the HDMiKey annoys me with how slow it is to start up, but it at least still works after half-a-year.

Ultimately, I would only recommend the HDMiKey to other Wii users because it’s the “devil I know.” While there are plenty of other alleged Wii upscalers out there, they all appear to be cut from the same cloth and their prices only vary a little. While the HDMiKey does offer some graphical improvement, it’s certainly not $50 worth, especially with its lack of promised functionality, lack of updates, and slow starts… perhaps $20 would be more appropriate. Hopefully Nintendo provides us with some REAL upscaling for Wii games with the WiiU.