best way to view xbox 360 games?

[rmoxon]

Ok just got a HDTV for the living room and being the un-technical person i am have just noticed it have only just realised it has no HDMI socket in the back... so im just wondering, how can I make my 360's picture look the best it can?

[Dirty Sanchez]

vga or component

[rmoxon]

i tried the component cable that came with my machine and it actualy seemed to look slightly worse that when i used the RGB, was i setting it up wrong or somthing?

[Daragon]

This might sound like an obvious question, but you remembered to flick the switch on the cable from SD to HDTV didn't you?

Failing that, have you checked out the display options from the dashboard?

[?L?w?]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I am intending to buy a full 1080p HDTV very soon; unfortunately I have an xbox 360 without the hdmi port on the back, so I am stuck to using component. So, is there a great difference between 720p and 1080p?

[EvilBoris]

All 360 games are 720p as standard, very few support proper 1080p, so you don't actually gain anything by having it set to 1080p.
The 360 will do 1080p over component anyway so you should be ok if the TV will accept it.

[?L?w?]

All 360 games are 720p as standard, very few support proper 1080p, so you don't actually gain anything by having it set to 1080p.
The 360 will do 1080p over component anyway so you should be ok if the TV will accept it.

cheers for the info. I look forward to playing dead rising properly.

[rmoxon]

Yeah sorry im just thick, i hadnt checked the options properly thats why it looked so bad (my PS3 did it automaticaly).

Sorry for a wasted thread.

To make this better though from what I understand it depends on your tv size wether you will notice much of a difference from 720 to 1080... I only have a 32 inch but both settings look pretty much the same to me.,,, but then i am quite obviously challenged in this area.

[EvilBoris]

Like I said, almost all games (PS3 also) run at 720p, so nothing happens when you set the consoles at 1080p (other than the XMB looking shaper on the PS3)

[?L?w?]

Finally got my tv and it does indeed do 1080p using the component cable. However, there is loads of screen tearing whilst playing Dead Rising; but this doesn't happen if I set the 360 to 720p.

Is this a result of using 1080p with component rather than an HDMI cable?

[JP]

Finally got my tv and it does indeed do 1080p using the component cable. However, there is loads of screen tearing whilst playing Dead Rising; but this doesn't happen if I set the 360 to 720p.

Is this a result of using 1080p with component rather than an HDMI cable?

You'll get a load of screen crap with Dead Rising what ever you do!!!

I had to get rid of the game after trying it for a couple of hours because it was so bad. I seem to remember that it's just as bad with Lost Planet too?

[MattyD]

Screen tearing is caused by the game. Ubisoft's Tom Clancy games tend to be big offenders for it. AFAIK it happens when the game can't redraw the picture fast enough to keep up with the TV refresh rate and has to just pump out whatever it managed up to that point, or you'll get no picture. Parts of the frame buffer get updated whereas others don't until maybe one or two frames later, which leads to the tearing effect.

I would assume that, if you put the game into 720p instead, the machine needs to do less work for each frame so the tearing should in theory disappear. I've certainly never noticed it.

[andrewfee]

The screen tearing in Dead Rising / Lost Planet only happens when the 360 is set to anything other than 720p. (1280x720 over VGA) Pretty much all other games are unaffected, and some (such as Halo 3) will look their best in 1080p even if the game isn't being rendered natively at that resolution.

[SmokeMeAKipper]

I've noticed some tearing in pretty much all of my 360 games to varying extents - Lost Planet and Dead Rising are definitely the worst offenders though (I'm using VGA 1366x768)

[EvilBoris]

Set it to 1280*720 if you TV supports it over VGa and that'll sort the problem