360 - setting display to 50hz to play BC games??

[JazzFunk]

Just a quick, possibly dumb question.

I've been playing my 360 on an LCD monitor over the last few weeks, via VGA (at 1680 x 1050).

Certain original XB games (like Manhunt, Thief etc.) won't play unless I set the display settings to PAL 50. And as I'm playing via VGA, the setting has vanished, so I'll need to re-hook my 360 back up to my old telly, via RGB/composite and change the option on the setting menus.

Now, what I'm worried about is - if I set my 360 to display PAL 50, will this affect the running speed of NORMAL 360 games, or will it just affect original XB titles?

Does the 50hz/60hz problem not matter when you're using VGA/HDMI etc.

Am I talking out of my bottom??

Also, is there an easy way to change the PAL 50/PAL 60 settings through VGA, or will I have to drag my old telly out and do it the hard way???

[fahrenheit]

All 360 titles are 60Hz. Its only some backwards compatible PAL titles that run in 50Hz. Having 50Hz set in the SD settings won't affect you playing 360 games with VGA.

You cannot enable/disable the PAL 50/60 settings (SD) while using VGA, you will need to use another cable/display to change it. But you shouldn't need to enable PAL 60 ever again (unless you switch to SD permanently).

You will not be able to play an of the PAL 50 backwards compatible titles using VGA so you will have to switch between displays/cables if you want to continue playing those titles.

[JazzFunk]

^Thanks for the quick reply.

Ah, so are you basically saying that the VGA output cannot let me play original XB games that only run at 50hz?

So, games like* Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Ninja Gaiden Black, Amped 2, P.D. Orta, Shenmue 2, OutRun 2, Street Fighter Anniversary play through VGA fine, because they are all 60hz as standard?

(*They all work fine, bar occasional BC issues that cause glitchy occurrences).

So, in yet another nutshell, 50hz ONLY BC games will ONLY run if I use my 360 via RGB/comp on my old CRT telly????

Forgive me, I am still getting my head around things, late adopter of new technology n' all that. And I like to "fully clarify" things in my head, cover all bases, it's a weird process.

[fahrenheit]

^ correct on all counts.

Edit: I won't comment on those games you listed since I simply don't know about individual titles that I've had no first hand experience with.

I'm pretty sure that things get messy when you run title updates for backwards compatible titles as the old dashboard it emulates is 50Hz.

[JazzFunk]

Fantastic! Cheers for the help.

(Brain has fully accepted and downloaded data.)

[sj33]

Things certainly do get messy when you try and download updates for games like Halo 2, because the dashboard page from which is tries to get the updates from is 50Hz.

You'd be very hard pressed to find a VGA monitor that supports 50Hz, that's why they don't allow it. That said, my old HDTV supported 50Hz over VGA, so I was rather miffed that I couldn't use it. Forcing 60Hz would have been nice, though it would have made the original Halo run too fast.

Shenmue II, Outrun 2 and Panzer Orta all run fine, bugs aside. Shenmue II runs perfectly bar some missing shadows, I actually think it looks very nice. Outrun 2 bizzarely runs with some framerate issues while Coast2Coast does not have these issues, and PAL Panzer Orta crashes on the cutscene to level 4. You might be able to get around this by leaving the game on for 20 hours and unlocking Pandora's Box, but I never tried it.

[JazzFunk]

^Thanks for the advice on Orta. I think I'll probably dig my crystal XBox out to play that (and all the others I can't play). Yeah, I noticed the stuttering framerate on OutRun 2, which isn't a game breaker but a tad irritating for it to occur in something that is usually so silky smooth.

Yeah, and San Andreas has textures that can take ages to arrive, or sometimes never arrive. Like some buildings that just have these smudgy markings instead of windows, and sometimes you get these sections of road that spookily spawn right in front of you(!)