Sooo I realise I'm a bit late to the 360-via-HDMI party but I feel it's something worth bringing up, not least because I have a few issues to resolve. I know a lot of what I'm about to talk about depends on your TV but I'd be interested to hear what you all think - especially regarding how to tweak for optimal colours, performance etc for both.
I've been using VGA since just after they 'fixed' the black levels / colours problem with a dash update. However, having just taken delivery of a HDMI model 360 I decided to give that a whirl and now I'm not sure which to stick with. It's not really a like-for-like comparison because each seems to work slightly differently on my TV (A Samsung LE32-somethingorother bought in 2007).
VGA's biggest advantage is it lets me output in my TV's native resolution (1366x768) so it's razor-sharp and overscan free. My TV is also set up to not molest VGA input with any post-processing so it's as lag-free as possible. Unfortunately I've always had a problem with the colours - reds look kind of pink, most colours are pretty washed out and I'm losing a lot of detail in dark areas. Changing the 'reference levels' option in the dash only seems to affect how bright the blacks are rather than the colours per se. Bearing in mind I'm using an LCD it's a nightmare to get nice black levels without losing detail, or, at the other end of the scale, getting strong colours without making the blacks look grey.
As for HDMI, it only lets me output 'official' HD resolutions so I've been testing it in 720p, which is obviously having to be upscaled very slightly by my TV. I'm using Just Scan so it's overscan free and the TV is getting the biggest possible image to work with in upscaling. The overall effect is a barely noticeable loss of sharpness in things like menus and text, but also a prominent jagginess in angled lines. There's also a couple of wierd artefacts which I believe are related to this - firstly, heavily detailed textures (like Gears 2) take on a shimmering effect at mid-distance due to aliasing; and secondly, some in-game effects like motion blur (in say Gears 2 or The Orange Box) have become almost completely unnoticable.
At the moment I'm edging towards living with this though as the difference in colour is just jaw-dropping. All colours are noticeably more vibrant and rich. In games with muted pallettes like CoD4 there's barely any difference but Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead are like completely different games. In areas with strong lights in an otherwise dark environment like the Hollow in GoW2 and the Death Toll episode of Left 4 Dead the difference is astounding.
Something else I should mention is, I haven't noticed any significant difference between the two so far as picture lag is concerned - although VGA is probably technically better (exact resolution, no upscaling etc) I haven't noticed any meaningful difference with HDMI.
With both having advantages and disadvantages I'm interested to hear what other people have chosen and why. I'm also interested in hearing how people have tweaked the colours etc with VGA - if I can get good colours from VGA that would win hands down.
I've been using VGA since just after they 'fixed' the black levels / colours problem with a dash update. However, having just taken delivery of a HDMI model 360 I decided to give that a whirl and now I'm not sure which to stick with. It's not really a like-for-like comparison because each seems to work slightly differently on my TV (A Samsung LE32-somethingorother bought in 2007).
VGA's biggest advantage is it lets me output in my TV's native resolution (1366x768) so it's razor-sharp and overscan free. My TV is also set up to not molest VGA input with any post-processing so it's as lag-free as possible. Unfortunately I've always had a problem with the colours - reds look kind of pink, most colours are pretty washed out and I'm losing a lot of detail in dark areas. Changing the 'reference levels' option in the dash only seems to affect how bright the blacks are rather than the colours per se. Bearing in mind I'm using an LCD it's a nightmare to get nice black levels without losing detail, or, at the other end of the scale, getting strong colours without making the blacks look grey.
As for HDMI, it only lets me output 'official' HD resolutions so I've been testing it in 720p, which is obviously having to be upscaled very slightly by my TV. I'm using Just Scan so it's overscan free and the TV is getting the biggest possible image to work with in upscaling. The overall effect is a barely noticeable loss of sharpness in things like menus and text, but also a prominent jagginess in angled lines. There's also a couple of wierd artefacts which I believe are related to this - firstly, heavily detailed textures (like Gears 2) take on a shimmering effect at mid-distance due to aliasing; and secondly, some in-game effects like motion blur (in say Gears 2 or The Orange Box) have become almost completely unnoticable.
At the moment I'm edging towards living with this though as the difference in colour is just jaw-dropping. All colours are noticeably more vibrant and rich. In games with muted pallettes like CoD4 there's barely any difference but Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead are like completely different games. In areas with strong lights in an otherwise dark environment like the Hollow in GoW2 and the Death Toll episode of Left 4 Dead the difference is astounding.
Something else I should mention is, I haven't noticed any significant difference between the two so far as picture lag is concerned - although VGA is probably technically better (exact resolution, no upscaling etc) I haven't noticed any meaningful difference with HDMI.
With both having advantages and disadvantages I'm interested to hear what other people have chosen and why. I'm also interested in hearing how people have tweaked the colours etc with VGA - if I can get good colours from VGA that would win hands down.
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