360 through VGA not as sharp as I thought

Raymond Lin · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:09

Connected my 360 to my 20" Phillips WS TFT via VGA (3rd party) and the picture is not as sharp as I expected, the colours are fine, the ratio are perfect but it seems a bit soft round the edges of ..... well everything. Is it because I am not using the offical lead or is it because the upscaling of the TFT isn't good enough ? As the Phillips can do 1680-1050 res standard.

Nexus · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:13

Third party VGA cables are reputed as being terrible, best stick to the official one (No problem with it personally).

NokkonWud · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:14

I know the official VGA cable is a LOT better than any of the 3rd party ones, I also know a lot of people prefer the smoother edges from VGA over the sharper edges from Component.

Raymond Lin · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:18

NokkonWud said:
I know the official VGA cable is a LOT better than any of the 3rd party ones, I also know a lot of people prefer the smoother edges from VGA over the sharper edges from Component.

So are you saying VGAs soft edges are a trait ?

NokkonWud · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:19

IT does give an almost anti-aliased effect to stuff.

Wyrdo · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:21

I must be going mad, I thought VGA gave sharper edges than component.

RuMp3l4$k1n · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:22

Any chance of some pics for us to see how bad the problem is? Its quite hard to judge from a description as everyone has different opinions of how things look.
Soft edges over vga sound odd to me personally.

Mlingard · 10 Oct 2007 at 18:41

wyrdo said:
I must be going mad, I thought VGA gave sharper edges than component.

If you setup your tv the component can be a lot sharper , example change brightness - contrast - sharpness , i do prefer vga on my samsung i have to say .

Trusty · 11 Oct 2007 at 18:56

I have a 26" sammy and the component graphics look so much different to the vga cable graphics. I have it with comonent at the mo.

NokkonWud · 11 Oct 2007 at 18:58

wyrdo said:
I must be going mad, I thought VGA gave sharper edges than component.

But you are mad.
VGA has always given a smoother (albeit, nice) look to the visuals, not only on mine but both of my close friends that have also tried it.

Metalface Mark · 11 Oct 2007 at 19:01

VGA is definetly much sharper on my 40" Sony Bravia 40D3000 than component, which is quite soft and kinda anti-aliased looking.

Wyrdo · 11 Oct 2007 at 19:09

InwardSinging said:
VGA is definetly much sharper on my 40" Sony Bravia 40D3000 than component, which is quite soft and kinda anti-aliased looking.

Same on my 2407, I think Nokkon is the madman in here!

VGA gives me a nice crisp, sharp image. Component gives me a bunch of crap

norm · 11 Oct 2007 at 19:55

Anybody with HDMI noticed an improvement over VGA?

RobertN · 11 Oct 2007 at 20:09

Vga here used to use component but some games the textures were very blotchy think it is to do withe tv's native res and the internal scaler

with vga you get closer to a 1.1 picture if your tv is 1366 768 like most tv's had to really turn the colour right up to get close to component colours

Desmo · 11 Oct 2007 at 20:11

I'd say it's the cable. I borrowed a Madcatz VGA lead from a mate and had ghosting all of the shop. Bought the MS one and it's spot on.

NokkonWud · 11 Oct 2007 at 20:15

Desmo said:
I'd say it's the cable. I borrowed a Madcatz VGA lead from a mate and had ghosting all of the shop. Bought the MS one and it's spot on.

Yep, it's well known that the official MS one is a lot superior to all the others.
Microsoft usually spend a lot of money on cables and peripherals anyway, so they are nearly always of a high quality. The only thing that isn't that comes to mind is the wired-headset.

lordrobs · 11 Oct 2007 at 21:02

Desmo said:
I'd say it's the cable. I borrowed a Madcatz VGA lead from a mate and had ghosting all of the shop. Bought the MS one and it's spot on.

I'm pretty sure it was a Madcatz that I had (was about 3 times longer than it needed to be

)

That ghosted BADLY, replaced it with another third party one (was back when they were like gold dust) and that was much better.

weringo · 11 Oct 2007 at 21:09

I would definately say the reason it looks "soft around the edges" is becuase you're running it below the native resolution of your monitor. I have the same problem on my 2007WFP, it looks fine when I'm using 1:1 pixel mapping but if I stretch it full screen it doesn't look anywhere near as good.

Cannaton · 11 Oct 2007 at 22:04

I would have thought (as mentioned) lack of 1:1 pixel mapping will reduce sharpness on a tft display, ie running at 1280x768 instead of 1680x1050 also most PC monitors ive worked with have had inferior scalers than LCD TVs (in my experience, some may be the same or better). Overscan can also reduce sharpness, however I can't see that being a problem on a PC monitor, I use VGA with my LG TV as i cannot resolve the 5% overscan on component. The official MS VGA cable may improve your IQ slightly also.

Needles · 11 Oct 2007 at 22:22

norm said:
Anybody with HDMI noticed an improvement over VGA?

Most certainly for me, I used both vga and compnent and I have to agree that I found vga to be sharper than component. HDMI I find is the middle ground between the razor sharpness of vga and the better colour reproduction of component.