Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Wii controller problems

by beelissa Aug 8, 2007 4:37AM PDT

I am the owner of a Wii. I say this because my sons fight over it, so I tell them I own it and that seems to settle the fights. But I don't play it very much so I have a tough time evaluating a problem my son says we're having.

We have 2 TVs (actually, we have 5 TVs, but only 2 that we have or will probably consider hooking the Wii up to. The TV in the Living room is larger and up on top of a tall piece of furniture. The bottom of the TV is probably almost 4 feet off the ground. The other TV is a bit smaller (but still at least 20") and is in my older son's bedroom; it sits on a small wooden TV stand so that the bottom of the TV is no more than 24" off the ground.

My son (the older one whose bedroom the other TV is in) tells me that when the Wii is hooked up to the TV in the living room, any games that use the Wii remote don't work that well. I have observed that the cursor jiggles and it's harder to be accurate with it than I'd like. I guess this seems to not be as much of an issue when the Wii is hooked up to the TV in my son's room, but I really don't have enough experience with it to be able to tell if this is really a true problem or if my son just wants the Wii in his room. He's been asking us to move the TV in the living room onto some piece of furniture that is lower to the ground, because he's convinced it's a height-of-the-TV issue. So I know it's not just that he wants it in his room, he really thinks moving the TV down will fix it.

Has anyone else had this issue? In both rooms, we have the little sensor bar on top of the TV -- so in the living room it's above my head, it's so high up. I just can't see why that would matter, though. The piece of furniture we have the TV on is an antique that I have no other place for, and I also like having the TV up high so we can see it in the kitchen. It's very heavy to move even to experiment with, so I thought I'd find out if anyone else had any ideas before I did anything else. Thanks in advance if anyone knows any tricks that might fix this, something else that might cause it besides the height of the TV, or if they can just confirm that it really might be an issue.

Discussion is locked

6 Posts
- Collapse + Expand Details
- Collapse -
Height may be an issue
by bevillan Aug 8, 2007 6:24AM PDT

You should make sure the sensor bar isn't blocked by anything and is flush with whatever surface you are mounting it on. I'd say you should try to take the TV that is 4 ft off the ground and temporarily put it like 2 or so feet off the ground and see how that helps.

- Collapse -
2 things that come to mind
by johnbuker Aug 9, 2007 6:12AM PDT

-Is the sensor bar on both TVs in the same position (i.e., above or below the TV in both rooms)? If there is a difference, then when the Wii gets moved, the settings on the Wii have to be changed to reflect the differences in location of the sensor bar.
-What type of TV is in the Living Room? I'm going to assume it's a larger TV than is in your son's room, but is it an HDTV? If so, what make and model? In some cases you have you play with the settings on an HDTV to get a video games system to work properly because the "upscaling" software on the TV might be causing a delay.

- Collapse -
answers
by beelissa Aug 10, 2007 3:06AM PDT

The TV in the living room is larger, but neither is HD. We're putting the sensor bar on top of the TV in both instances.

- Collapse -
It's the distance
by jjjonesy Aug 16, 2007 11:27AM PDT

I've had this same problem. I'm willing to bet that the living room TV is bigger than the other one. Thus, you tend to stand farther away from it. There is a limited range for the pointing function, while the accelerometer in the Wiimote allows you to play WiiSports from the other room!

- Collapse -
Move The Sensor Bar
by Dahlgren Aug 16, 2007 7:11PM PDT

Why not just try moving the sensor bar to the same surface upon which the living room TV is setting, in front of or to either side of the set? Seems that might be an easy way to determine if height is really the issue. It might also provide a more direct-on signal path from the remote to the sensor if incidence angle is a factor. If there's no change, then I doubt that sensor bar location is the problem and you have some other issue.

- Collapse -
it's a strange angle
by beelissa Aug 17, 2007 7:27AM PDT

Our living room TV is on a rectangular piece of furniture, but the TV is angled so we can see it in the kitchen (the piece of furniture it's on is in the corner of the room). So, if the sensor bar were put on the same surface the TV is on, it would be on the corner of this piece of furniture and for some reason we thought it wouldn't work there. But we'll try it (probably the boys already have and I just don't know it). One thing I noticed the other day, I was buying Wii points online and I had a hard time typing in the numbers and letters, the pointer was wiggling all around. I stood further back (the opposite corner of a 12 x 13 foot room) and held the Wiimote up higher (almost shoulder height) and that seemed to help, but it was uncomfortable at that height.

Do you all think it's mostly just the height of the sensor bar that matters or does the relation between it's height and that of the TV matter, too? It seems to be more or less of a problem, depending on what we're doing with it.

Back to Video Games & Consoles forum

CNET Forums

Operating Systems
Software
Electronics & Gadgets
Hardware
Tablets & Mobile Devices
General Help
Brand Forums
Roadshow Autos
Off Topic

Other Forums

Forum Info