Official XBox 360 Thread III: Third Strike

[Tommy Tallarico]

How good does 1080p look on the 360? i heard it's not as good as PS3 1080p since on the 360 it's basically upconverting a 720p single, where as on the PS3 all games are made with 1080p in mind.

my bravia doesnt accept 1080p over component, so i was thinking of getting the Elite just for the HDMI port.....but deep down inside i don't think it's worth it.

thoughts?

STFU marwan.

[Cowdisease]

How good does 1080p look on the 360? i heard it's not as good as PS3 1080p since on the 360 it's basically upconverting a 720p single, where as on the PS3 all games are made with 1080p in mind.

my bravia doesnt accept 1080p over component, so i was thinking of getting the Elite just for the HDMI port.....but deep down inside i don't think it's worth it.

thoughts?

Not all PS3 games are 1080p. Most are developed as 720p or 1080i (Ninja Gaiden Sigma for example is only 720p) because it's difficult at this time to produce next-gen graphics with a smooth framerate at 1080p. Unless you have a static field like in Virtua Tennis 3, you won't be seeing a lot 1080p games so soon.

I've read that unless your set is over 42 inches, you're not going to see much difference between 720p and 1080p. If that's the case, save your money and don't splurge for the system just because you want a HDMI port.

[Tommy Tallarico]

Please don't answer marwan's questions.

[StriderKyo]

Can anyone recommend a decent (cheaper) alternative to the Microsoft-brand VGA cable?

Yeah, there's a madcatz one floating around for like $15, I picked it up, it works fine. I'll warn you though, VGA output on the 360 sucks. It's washed out & white looking.

[Cowdisease]

Yeah, there's a madcatz one floating around for like $15, I picked it up, it works fine. I'll warn you though, VGA output on the 360 sucks. It's washed out & white looking.

No it doesn't. It looks just as good as component (and it upscales DVDs). Granted, I'm using the official VGA cable and I used the Avia DVD to calibrate my set, so I don't know if the "white and washed out" look you have is because of the quality of the third-party cable or because you didn't calibrate your set for the VGA connection.

[Riptwo]

I second the VGA output looking fine. I calibrated with DVE, and it isn't washed out in the least.

[StriderKyo]

I've seen ALOT of people across the web offering the same impressions of 360 VGA output. I don't run it on a montor regularly, I only bought the cable for a one time use at a Christmas party so I couldn't speak to specific monitor calibrations at the time. It's good if you've had better results though, I've been looking at getting a gaming monitor, and VGA > component.

[Cowdisease]

I've seen ALOT of people across the web offering the same impressions of 360 VGA output. I don't run it on a montor regularly, I only bought the cable for a one time use at a Christmas party so I couldn't speak to specific monitor calibrations at the time. It's good if you've had better results though, I've been looking at getting a gaming monitor, and VGA > component.

One thing I noticed when I was comparing Xbox 360 component/VGA connections on my LCD set was that my calibrated settings for component and VGA were different. For VGA, I had to set my saturation level a little higher (also contrast way higher, brightness lower) than component. The issue with VGA is that it won't look great when you first plug it in; you have to tweak your monitor or set before you get the benefits of VGA.

[Rumpy]

VGA looks fantastic on my monitor. I didn't have to change any settings, worked perfect on the first shot.

[Nick]

VGA looks great on my monitor, too. I just use one of the presets and the colors are amazingly rich and saturated. I think some people just need to play around with a few settings.

One related question: Because my monitor needs a firmware upgrade, I'm running my 360 games at 1280x720 (720p) instead of 1920x1080 for now to avoid part of the picture being cut off at the bottom. When I switch between the two resolutions in Gears of War, I don't notice much of a difference, if any. Do you think running games at 720p instead of 1080p on a 24-inch widescreen monitor will ever be obviously inferior with any game or is the screen too small for it to matter? Extra points if you can explain why. I've looked around the Internet, but I've read conflicting answers, and most people are talking televisions anyway.