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XBOX 360 VGA cord

Adokimus

Adokimus

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 2, 2007
842
3
Boston, MA
Does anyone have any experience with the VGA adapter for the XBOX 360?

http://hardware.teamxbox.com/reviews...D-AV-Cable/p1/

I'm trying to decide between buying the VGA adapter and using it with my computer monitor, or just buying a small LCD TV. Does anyone have any input on the quality of the XBOX 360 on a monitor with this cable? I would be using my 22" HP w2207, which has a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. The review I read implied that I could pick the 1280 x 768 resolution and it should automatically stretch to the full size of the monitor. Does this work well? Anyone done it with the same w2207 monitor? Any experience would be helpful. Also, how do you connect your sound? I was planning on getting another adapter to plug in headphones.

My other option is buying an HDMI to DVI connector. Has anyone tried that? The only problem is that I don't know how I would get sound since sound I would lose that output in the conversion to DVI.

Thanks,

Ado
 
Just bought this cord about a month ago for my Samsung 22 syncMaster monitor till i can afford a HD tv, and the picture quality is amazingly sharp. When ever we have lan parties at my house everyone ends up wanting to play on my screen all the time instead of all the 50" HD tvs we rent which i think is pretty amazing. Plus after christmas, i think HD tvs will come down a bit but you might get a good deal on Black Friday.

For your audio you can find a pretty cheap adapter and get some 2.1 computer speakers and hook it up that away. I was lucky enough that the 40 dollar speakers i bough already came with the cord

Here is the kind of cable you are going to need http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=3007&sku=40236 but you can probably find it cheaper at you local audio store

Good Luck in making your dicision:)
 
B1RDFLU said:
Just bought this cord about a month ago for my Samsung 22 syncMaster monitor till i can afford a HD tv, and the picture quality is amazingly sharp. When ever we have lan parties at my house everyone ends up wanting to play on my screen all the time instead of all the 50" HD tvs we rent which i think is pretty amazing. Plus after christmas, i think HD tvs will come down a bit but you might get a good deal on Black Friday.

For your audio you can find a pretty cheap adapter and get some 2.1 computer speakers and hook it up that away. I was lucky enough that the 40 dollar speakers i bough already came with the cord

Here is the kind of cable you are going to need http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=3007&sku=40236 but you can probably find it cheaper at you local audio store

Good Luck in making your dicision:)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input! I think I might have to try this out now. I found a pretty cheap adapter for the sound at RadioShack too. This solution should at least hold me until I get a LCD TV. But, as for the TV I might get, it's already pretty cheap and I doubt the price will come down much in the next 6 months. It's the vizio VE26L ( http://www.vizio.com/products/detail.aspx?pid=24 ) for $448 US. I might ask for it for xmas, but even $448 is pushing what I might be able to get for a gift. I am excited about these dropping prices on HDTVs though. When the time comes for me to replace my primary TV, they should be pretty reasonable.

Thanks again for the response, I'm pretty excited about trying this.

-Ado
 
VGA works very well for 360 games, not so well for Xbox games. On ours Halo 1 and 2 are squashed to the left. It's a bit broke and I'm hoping MS will fix it.

But if you don't care for that then go for it. The quality is superb, no different to component or DVI.
 
raggedjimmi said:
VGA works very well for 360 games, not so well for Xbox games. On ours Halo 1 and 2 are squashed to the left. It's a bit broke and I'm hoping MS will fix it.
Click to expand...

As beautiful as the results are for the 360 titles, the Xbox "squashed" problem annoys me no end. I grow sick of having to readjust my monitor settings every time I want to play an original Xbox title - there's no good reason why Microsoft doesn't provide a simple fix for this issue.
 
IMHO the 360 was made to be played through VGA. Ever since I boght it a year ago I've been using it on my Samsung 17" monitor. For the first time last month I decided to hook it up to my 27" TV via the component cables and what a HUGE difference. All the crisp text turned to blurs. I couldn't believe how better it looked in VGA mode. Definitely get the cable.

Also, I have my Powermac attached to that same monitor. So I use an app called Line In, and connect the audio from the 360 to the mac so I can play it on my Soundsticks. Works great.
 
Thanks!

I just wanted to thank everyone for the advice. I went out and bought the VGA cable yesterday and it's great. Saved me a lot of money on a small TV I didn't need, and the picture is really nice. It even had the audio adapter I needed in the box. Woot.

Cheers,

Ado
 
^ You plug the cable into the 360 and the other end into the monitor :confused: How do you need directions of use for that ?
 
I assume he connects the sound into external speakers, if he is using a monitor without them, if he is using a monitor with, just connect it to the pc audio in port.
 
The VGA cable has stereo a stereo output. I connected it with something like this:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...032058.2032231.2032280&pg=7&parentPage=family

...which is included in the box. I don't know if that's the right one, but like I said, one is included. Then I used this coupler:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...32058.2032231.2032280&pg=13&parentPage=family

...and I plugged my headphones into that. The only problem is that it's not very loud with the headphones I own.

Hope that helps.

Ado
 
something I've noticed is that the VGA cable makes the image FAR sharper than with Component, basically because the VGA cable allows for 1:1 pixel mapping due to it outputting at exactly the resolution of the monitor/HDTV, whereas component is rendered at a slightly smaller resolution and upscaled. Colour saturation is much greater through component though, although I suppose VGA looks more natural.
 
^ It also depends on your TV / monitor though, but generally yeah VGA looks better than component (and it's the same as HDMI)
 
MacRumorUser said:
^ It also depends on your TV / monitor though, but generally yeah VGA looks better than component (and it's the same as HDMI)
Click to expand...

VGA is a step down from HDMI, don't kid yourself ;)

That would be like saying that VGA was better than Dual Link DVI-D when I plug in my 30" display.. oh wait, you can't do that with VGA... HDMI is pure digital, you will get much better quality from it than VGA which is analog.

You also need the display to be properly calibrated to get the best out of either, so I would start there since most people don't take the time to properly calibrate their displays. I would bet that a lot of people are actually running their displays at 100% contrast just how it came out of the box, torch mode I believe is what the term for it is.

Ed
 
^ Whilst technially correct Ed, lets remember for the 360 or PS3 for that matter, the highest your ever going to output on it is 1920x1080.

Having used both consoles on VGA and HDMI I can safely say that at that resolution there was no difference in quality on my 2407fpw or on my FullHD LCD TV.

Thats why I say they are the same...... 'CONSOLE WISE' ;) as last time I checked this was the console forum and not a nerd convention.... :p





who am I kidding most of us on here are nerds :D
 
Just a word of warning, some HDTVs (Samsung among others) don't process VGA signals like they do component or HDMI. This can cause odd black levels and washed out colors.

You won't know until you try.
 
jaw04005 said:
Just a word of warning, some HDTVs (Samsung among others) don't process VGA signals like they do component or HDMI. This can cause odd black levels and washed out colors.

You won't know until you try.
Click to expand...

I noticed my black levels were awful when I switched to VGA, however Microsoft fixed that by adding a setting to the Xbox 360's settings which corrected it (Samsung 40" LCD HDTV)
 
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