I'd say a mix of both. The Wii offers both 480i SDTV (for CRTs and LCDs, through the pack-in composite video cable) and 480p EDTV (better for LCDs, but you had to buy a higher-quality component cable) output. Unfortunately 480p-compatible CRT TVs were rare and far between. Additionally 480p doesn't actually take advantage of the full resolution of 720p/1080p LCD TVs, resulting in a blurry image on-screen (but fortunately free of composite and interlacing artifacts, and deinterlacing latency on some TVs).
Did middle-class Americans commonly have 480p LCD EDTVs, or were they a rare transitional stage of television with little uptake? My family jumped straight from CRT (technically rear projection) to a 1080p HDTV.
Early Wii games were built to output in both resolutions, adjusting the camera width and HUD to match. I think System Menu actually looks better in 4:3, since the channel icons mostly add empty featureless left/right borders when stretched to 16:9. Some later games (NSMB Wii, Skyward Sword) only display in 16:9, adding a letterbox if the Wii is configured to play in 4:3. Interestingly, in NSMBW playing in 4:3 saves two seconds in one scrolling cutscene, because the game objects are actually loaded underneath the letter box, and appear "on screen" sooner, cutting the cutscene short (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkt8L3t1GEU).
> Did middle-class Americans commonly have 480p LCD EDTVs, or were they a rare transitional stage of television with little uptake? My family jumped straight from CRT (technically rear projection) to a 1080p HDTV.
Scottish and very much not "middle-class", but I had a 720p-capable CRT TV in the early-2000s or so. I only got rid of it in about 2010, and still kind of regret it, but it was huge. Secondhand it cost about 400 quid in 2002 money! You can imagine what it must have cost new.
Around about the same time I fitted a VGA input board to a spectacularly expensive Loewe TV for a local high-end home cinema shop.
Did middle-class Americans commonly have 480p LCD EDTVs, or were they a rare transitional stage of television with little uptake? My family jumped straight from CRT (technically rear projection) to a 1080p HDTV.
Early Wii games were built to output in both resolutions, adjusting the camera width and HUD to match. I think System Menu actually looks better in 4:3, since the channel icons mostly add empty featureless left/right borders when stretched to 16:9. Some later games (NSMB Wii, Skyward Sword) only display in 16:9, adding a letterbox if the Wii is configured to play in 4:3. Interestingly, in NSMBW playing in 4:3 saves two seconds in one scrolling cutscene, because the game objects are actually loaded underneath the letter box, and appear "on screen" sooner, cutting the cutscene short (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkt8L3t1GEU).