20.1" Gaming on 360 (1280X720p)

Booner! · 26 Mar 2006 at 23:59

so i have been reading about and decided that i would invest in a 20.1inch monitor for some widescreen gaming on the 360 and PC, however need to know if the monitor willl run High Def through VGA cables at 1280x720p :confused:

im lookin at the belinea 20.1" i know that the monitor outputs 1680 x 1050 (WUXGA) Optimum Resolution and wondered if this is capable of 360 high def through those seperate VGA cables? , im on a Viewsonic VX924 19" LCD Monitor at the moment...

help on this matter would be appreciated!

Cuchulain · 27 Mar 2006 at 00:07

Booner! said:
so i have been reading about and decided that i would invest in a 20.1inch monitor for some widescreen gaming on the 360 and PC, however need to know if the monitor willl run High Def through VGA cables at 1280x720p

im lookin at the belinea 20.1" i know that the monitor outputs 1680 x 1050 (WUXGA) Optimum Resolution and wondered if this is capable of 360 high def through those seperate VGA cables? , im on a Viewsonic VX924 19" LCD Monitor at the moment...

help on this matter would be appreciated!

Yes it will run 720p via VGA, but the screen upscales it.

Booner! · 27 Mar 2006 at 00:10

hmmmm, so this takes away the clarity and picture quality of the 1280X720p ? :confused:

Cuchulain · 27 Mar 2006 at 01:28

Booner! said:
hmmmm, so this takes away the clarity and picture quality of the 1280X720p ?

Yes, but it's not really that noticeable.

Booner! · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:42

cool, looks like i will be buying one of these babys!

Dutch Guy · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:46

Why not get a HD ready LCD TV for the XBox360?

That runs at the native resolution and will not up/downscale

Booner! · 27 Mar 2006 at 15:21

because i have this 19inch at the mo, if i can sell it for around £250ish (barely used) then i have the chance of spending like £50 on getting a monitor for both the PC and 360 for £300, unless there is a better option?

Cuchulain · 27 Mar 2006 at 15:35

Booner! said:
because i have this 19inch at the mo, if i can sell it for around £250ish (barely used) then i have the chance of spending like £50 on getting a monitor for both the PC and 360 for £300, unless there is a better option?

I run my PC and Xbox 360 on a Belinea 20.1" WS and it's perfect, slightly muted colours on the 360 via VGA though, but that could be down to the cable I'm using.

Booner! · 27 Mar 2006 at 16:31

is it a distinct lack in colour? or is it still better than regular 480i/p? cause there is no point moving to the monitor if i cant get the high def 720p picture quality

Cuchulain · 27 Mar 2006 at 16:36

Booner! said:
is it a distinct lack in colour? or is it still better than regular 480i/p? cause there is no point moving to the monitor if i cant get the high def 720p picture quality

It's nothing to do with the resolution, it'll do 720p no problem as the panel native res is 1680x1050, it's down to the VGA cable, some of the colours are just slightly bland looking, nothing major and definately liveable with.

Flanno · 28 Mar 2006 at 00:27

I 2nd that. The vga cable is known for slighly washed out colours but some people find it gives less aliasing then using the component cable (at least on the dell 2405fpw). By the way the res. options open to you with the vga cable are : 640x480,848x480,1024x768,1280x720,1280x768,1280x1024,1360x768. So you can actually run higher then 720p (1280x720), but since all the 360 games are rendered internally at 720p anyway, running it had 1360 would mean the 360 would scale it to 1360 before it it outputted to your LCD which would stretch it to 1680 or 1600 depending on which 20" model you got.

Flanno · 28 Mar 2006 at 00:31

Dutch Guy said:
Why not get a HD ready LCD TV for the XBox360?

That runs at the native resolution and will not up/downscale

Unfortunately that is not true on the vast majority of LCD TV's which have a native resolution of 1366x768, so the LCD panel actually scales it from 1280x720 which the 360 outputs. Not that noticeable really. You can also set your 360 to ouput 1080i as some people do (1920x1080). But this just results in the image being compressed back down to 1366x768 again on the TV. This sort of res. is really only useful if you are using a true 1080i or p LCD TV (very rare in these parts) or a Dell 2405 whose native res is 1920x1200, so there is very little stretching or you can run it in 1:1 mode for no stretching.

spud999 · 28 Mar 2006 at 00:46

Flanno, does this mean if i can afford the Dell 24 it would be probably the best compromise for running a pc and xbox 360 on the same screen?

Just always got the impression that 20/24 monitor would noticeably upscale the 360 and significantly reduce the 360 graphics quality.

Flanno · 28 Mar 2006 at 01:06

Yeah...the 24" is ace. I had one but sold it to get a large LCD TV. Sometimes I regret it as I am stuck on a crappy CRT now for my PC.

Anyway the Dell 24" is superb with the 360 - just plug in via the component leads, set your 360 to 1080i and you are laughing. This will give a much nicer picture then using the vga cable and allow you to run at 1920x1080. I used run everything at 1080i and pic was excellent. Also movement in games looked just as good as 720p, despite 1080i being interlaced. The 360 will take the 1280x720 image that the game is rendered in and output it at 1920x1080. Your monitor can then display that 1:1 or scale it slightly to 1920x1200 if you choose. Official Xbox mag a few months back commented that this screen was superb for the 360 and I agree. I also had the PC plugged in via dvi, and flipping between them was simple. Just make sure to set the 2405 OSD to either 1:1 or Aspect to get the most accurate picture and you only get tiny borders. Or you can leave it at stretch, and if fills the screen. Hardly noticable except in some driving games.

If you do decide to go ahead and get the 2405 for 360 gaming - be aware that there was some debate on various forums about whether the 2405 actually output a true hd signal to the screen via component leads. You might see some reports of this. Some 'experts' reckoned the LCD uses a scalar to downscale the 360 image to 480p internally and then upscale back up to 720p or 1080 before displaying it. Hence jaggies on the 2405 when playing 360 games. There was some credence to this at first, as Dell said the monitor does not support HD and only 480p max, but that was more then likely a marketing ploy to plug their upcoming 2407 which has HDCP support, and is part of the whole HD ready deal. Plus in the end on guru3d or one of those sites there was a fairly lengthy techy discussion, and finally someone compared a 1080i image of NFS Most wanted on the 360 plugged into the 2405 via component against the PC version of the game using their nvidia card which has the drivers set to 1080i and was outputting the image from the svideo output on the card to the component inputs on the 2405 - and the images were almost identical. So the general consensus was the 2405 does indeed support HD through component. The only negative I can point out is that if you are sitting close to the screen you will notice some jaggies due to most 360 games not supporting AA yet. People with HD LCD TV's or Plasmas will tell you they do not notice them, but that is down to the comb filter on those TV's which are also running at a max of 1366x768 or 1024x1024 on most plasmas, and people generally sit back a few feet as well so jaggies are not as noticeable.

Mud · 28 Mar 2006 at 02:56

I have a 2405FPW and XBOX360, but I personally recommend running in 720p...1080i is slightly sharper but ultimately you can't beat progressive scan. Just a preferential disagreement with Flanno, I agree with everything else. More recent 360 games are looking much nicer too.

spud999 · 28 Mar 2006 at 12:49

thx for the detailed info

Flanno · 28 Mar 2006 at 18:55

Just to add. 720p looks very nice too. But because it's 1280x720, the 2405 has to stretch it to 1920x1200 unless you use 1:1, but that gives a very small screen. With it stretched games like RR6 and PGR3 look a bit weird in my view. But both outputs are nice. Try 'em and see.