360 Resolution Help

[Oh_Mutants]

I'm going to have to admit it - i've never really got my head around all these different resolutions since the move into HD

I have my 360 hooked up to my Toshiba WLT68 via VGA. Now the thing is, this TV doesn't accept standard 720p through VGA (as i understand) so i have the display settings of my 360 set to 1280x768. This however leads to some pretty bad tearing on Dead Rising (one of my fave games)
When i set the 360 display ratio to 1280x1024 however, my TV does seem to support this ratio ok, but i'm not sure the picture is quite so crisp, although this could just be my imagination.

My question is this - Which display setting would i be better off having enabled?? Would there be more/less scaling involved with 1280x1024, and would this lead to a poorer picture or vice versa? Woulod this solve the Dead Rising tearing issue? Any other things i need to consider?

This has been bugging me for a while so any help greatly appreciated

[egparadigm]

I take it this is an LCD?

LCDs have a "native" resolution; i.e. a resolution which will be displayed without any blurring. As far as I know, this will be the biggest resolution supported. A lot of older HDTVs support 1360x768 - anything smaller and the image will be slightly soft, the smaller the softer it will be.

The native resolution of your TV should be written in your manual.

I have heard people complaining about visual tearing, but I've never had the issue myself, so I can't advise you on that.

Older 360 games only supported a max resolution of 1280x720 (or 720p as it's known). Since a dash update last year, the dash has supported 1920x1080 (or 1080p) and newer games support said mode. Whether they are truly 1080p or simply upscaled will depend on whether the developer bothered with it. Famously, Halo 3 was in fact smaller than 720p and they upscaled in order to save system resources.

720p was the resolution of choice amongst early pioneers, but thanks to Sony, the PS3, and BluRay's format victory over HDDVD, there seems to be some weight behind "True" HD/1080p.

I think that's all fairly pertinent, and hopefully accurate, information.

[honeymustard]

My 360 defaults to 1360x768 (my TV resolution is 1366x768, like most TVs 30-40"). I get plenty of tearing from Dead Rising unfortunately.

Edit: this gives me nice 3 pixel borders on either side of the picture

[Oh_Mutants]

Cheers guys

After checking the TV manual, it's native res is indeed 1366x768. 1360x768, however, seems to give what appears to be a fair amount more than a 6 pixel border down the left hand side of the screen

Gonna stick with 1280x768 i guess as it at least fills the screen, plus i don't have an HDMI 360 and my component connection is otherwise engaged...

[lexmor]

My 3 year old LG (1366x768) does a better job upscaling 1280x720 to full screen than the 360 slightly blurry 1360x768 resolution. Even better, with the 360 set to 1280x720, there's no tearing at all.

EDIT

Oops, didn't realize my brother has a ntsc-uk account. Posted by instinct without checking.

<-------------------amorenod

[sj33]

Yeah, because graphics cards only supports multiples of 8, 1360x768 is the nearest resolution over VGA. It would be the same from a PC, and it'll come down to which does a better job of scaling - your TV or the 360. You'd get marginally more resolution from 1080 sources with 1360x768, but the 360 has very few of those anyway.

[smouty]

Toshibas are known for not supporting 1:1 mapping but as they usually have great scalers it is not normally a problem. 1280x720 is probably the best res on VGA and is what I use for my HTPC. My 360 is connected using HDMI and looks great on 720p and 1080i.

It's a WLT66 for info.

[Brad]

I have to set the 360 to 720p (1280 x 720) over HDMI otherwise my TV (Philips) overscans it. Seems ok though. Fallout 3 has some bad tearing in places though.