360 and VGA?

[ThoseOfTheUnlight]

I dont think you do..

[wod]

yes it has read

http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/hardware/x/xbox360vgahdcable/

[NeilMcRae]

there is atleast an optical socket on the connector that goes into the xbox, not sure if it comes with the cable

[Peet]

The cable coming out of the back of your monitor ends in a male connector. The 360 VGA cable ends in a female connector. Plug them together and you're good to go. Never seen a CRT monitor with just a VGA port in the back rather than a cable attached, but I suppose they might exist.

The widescreen HDTV resolutions (1280x720, 1360x768 etc) the 360 outputs are a bit odd for computer monitors, and some really cheap/old monitors might not support them properly, but then again you don't want to be using them on a regular 4:3 monitor anyway, as the picture will end up distorted pretty badly. For a regular CRT VGA monitor you'll most likely want to be using 1024x768 (a bit low really -- 1280x960 would've been nice) and for TFTs the native res, most likely 1280x1024.

[sj33]

Depends on user perference I guess... if I was using a PC monitor on the 360 (which I'm not anyway, got my TV), I'd prefer to play in 1280x720 and play letterboxed, but get more image. Down to the end user really.

[mr_sockochris]

There's a female > female connector (along with a phono connector for PC speakers) packed in with the 360's VGA cable. I didn't know the 360 had all these resolution settings for when you use the VGA. My Samsung DLP's native resolution is 1280 x 720, I assume that would be the best 360 VGA setting to use, yes?

[NeilMcRae]

yup.

[Peet]

There's a female > female connector (along with a phono connector for PC speakers) packed in with the 360's VGA cable. I didn't know the 360 had all these resolution settings for when you use the VGA. My Samsung DLP's native resolution is 1280 x 720, I assume that would be the best 360 VGA setting to use, yes?

Yeah. Can't believe there isn't a digital video cable for the 360 though. Your signal will be going digital -> analog -> digital, which is just WRONG!

[lostn]

Really? So is there a loss in picture quality running in VGA from the outset?

[sj33]

The 360 has an analogue scaler from what I gather.

VGA is analogue, so it would have to convert the digital to analogue - this is the same as every VGA-based graphics card you buy, so nothing to worry about.
But it would mean that another process - converting the analogue back into digital - would be required for DVI/HDMI. Most would argue not really worth it, though it would be nice for people with sets that only have DVI/HDMI.

[NeilMcRae]

no there is no loss in picture quality.

[Kotatsu Neko]

The problem being that 60hz on a crt will make your eyes bleed :/

True, that's why you need a TFT! Doesn't matter what the refresh rate is on a TFT, it will never flicker as the screen doesn't have to be 'drawn'.

[Gavin]

So if my plasma has a native res of 1024x768 but non square pixels (16:9 physical screen), what res would I pick? 1024x768 would give a stretched picture would it not? Presumably I should pick a higher 16:9 res and let the plasma scale it down?

[WazMeister]

Is 26ms on a HDTV too high to play xbox360 or am i screwed to just use my normal 14 inch tv?

Anyone know some online sellers who sell high res widescreen CRT monitors? so we can actually look into maybe buying one for 360 and then a 5.1 speaker setup can plug in the optical of the VGA unit right? or am I far wrong?

[wod]

that is abit high as you'd see ghosting and blurring, ideal is anything lower than that