XBox 360 'Best Resolution' question

[Oh_Mutants]

I imagine this question has been done to death elsewhere. but I can't seem to find a definitive answer so please bear with me...

I've recently upgraded to a Samsung series 5 1080p LCD screen, from an older Tosh 720p. Is it right that I should be setting my 360 (and PS3) to output 1080p to match the screen? Or due to the most games being designed at 720p max (or so I've heard) would I get better results leaving the console settings to 720p?

A leyman's explanation as to the reasoning behind it all would be gratefully appreciated to, so i don't have to ask similar questions down the road!

Thanks, Gav

[Baseley09]

Depends how your screen deals with it, see what looks best to you.

For Playstation 3 though, there is no scaling, if the game renders in 720p it will output it as thus, so select 1080p and that will cover you for games that actually use the full resolution.

[Sane]

The 360 scaling is decent enough, but I found that setting it to 1080p introduces tearing in some games that's not there when running in 720p. With my TV there doesn't seem to be any difference whether I let the TV or the XBOX do the scaling, so I usually leave it up to the tv to prevent the tearing.

[Super Monkey Balls]

What are the percentages these days? I leave the 360 on 1080p because I'm lazy but I have noticed the PS3 video output is generally better. I'm not sure how much of that is down to my TVs superior scaling and how much is down to PS3s 36bit colour.

[Psyduck]

There are virtually no games that will output at 1080p, so if you go for 1080p your 360 will do the scaling. If you go for 720p your TV will do the scaling. You certainly shouldn't go for any options other than those two.

Having done absolutely zero research, I'd imagine that your new LCD TV will do a better job at upscaling than a 5 year old xbox 360, so would let your TV do the work i.e. go for 720p. This avoids any problems with tearing etc too.

[JazzFunk]

I've got a newish 32" Sammy C530 and I just keep it set at 1080p. I don't quite know how it works but with a lot of games, I find setting the 360 at 720p seems to make minor details less easy to make out. It's like, I've played The Darkness and Fallout 3 and I much preferred them through 1080p, on 720p they felt more 'fudgy', visually, whereas in 1080p I could see outlines and depth in certain textures which I couldn't in 720p. A bad thing can be that subtle things can appear over-pixellated and RAW at times.

Problem is, maybe it's more my own thing, OCD, maybe they are supposed to look fudgy yet I kinda prefer seeing them pixels pure n' cold...? It's a bit of a conundrum, finding the perfect 360 picture, and I find 1080p offers the most satisfactory option for me, though in purity terms I may be handling things in perhaps the incorrect manner(?)

Haven't tried VGA yet with this current TV, mind, might be a happy medium for me, was good with my old monitor.

Also got a component cable - anyone getting happy results with one of them?

[Mayhem]

Yeah, component from 360 looks fine on my brother's TV, as it doesn't have an HDMI socket.

[JazzFunk]

^It's a bit of a minefield, especially as different TVs handle signals in. Tried the component on mine, looked a little more washed-out than HDMI but I guess this would be an advantage in certain games that look too overly defined and pixelly in 1080p (say...Saint's Row 2, for instance). Saint's Row 2 looked pretty nice with VGA, through HDMI the edges are more obvious and it looks less 'silky' and more rough-looking, though the Sammy is doing a great job as this looks miles better on this 32" than it did on my old crappy 24". Know it's not a game where visuals are king, but it's good for experimentation purposes.

Sorry for kind of 'hijacking' this thread Oh_Mutants (I'm more trying to build the knowledge of us novices here), is there a pure, OPTIMAL image we can get, or is it more about experimenting with different cable/resolution combos?

Any distinction between all three types of connection, personally I notice that HDMI is hard n' defined, VGA is slightly more 'romantic' but softer, not sure about component yet as I have not properly persisted with it.

Seems certain types of game benefit from certain types of display, it's just THERE ARE SO MANY DAMN PARAMETERS TO CHOOSE FROM!!!!

Is there some ubernerdy blog somewhere where some kindly, obsessed nerd has gone over this subject in great detail and has The Answer???

[sj33]

There is also the fact that some game engines, most notably Capcom's MT Framework engine, suffer from Vsync artifacts when not run at 720p.

In the real world, there's basically no difference between HDMI, VGA and Component. This isn't actually true, HDMI supports more colour encoding formats etc., but as far as games consoles go, the best one is whichever your TV prefers. My TV has a native resolution of 1366x768 and VGA looks incredible. For most people however, may as well stick with HDMI unless you need to free a port.