VGA cables for 360

DaveyD · 12 Aug 2006 at 01:01

Can you please refrain from talking about competitors please sanofi and hairyhen. Especially the hinting in your post hairyhen. Thanks.

sanofi · 12 Aug 2006 at 13:43

Well after ordering one from online and paying for it, I turns out that the official 360 VGA cable comes with a phono to stereo adaptor.

sanofi · 12 Aug 2006 at 15:04

After trying the official one, and running at a res of 1380x768 on widescreen on my 19" widescreen TFT (with native res of 1440x900) it still looks rather horrible, like its still running on 640x480, very blurry textures and lots of aliasing.

Whats the best res for this monitor?

crunchman · 12 Aug 2006 at 15:11

sanofi said:
After trying the official one, and running at a res of 1380x768 on widescreen on my 19" widescreen TFT (with native res of 1440x900) it still looks rather horrible, like its still running on 640x480, very blurry textures and lots of aliasing.

Whats the best res for this monitor?

Have you tried using 1280*768 ?

That would give the correct aspect ratio.

memphisto · 12 Aug 2006 at 16:19

thats not a true widescreen ratio yer trying is it ?

try some of te other res and find out which one suits you best.

sanofi · 12 Aug 2006 at 16:36

Hmm, perhaps I am expecting too much, esepcially from PGR3 and perhaps I am sitting too close and noticing the jaggies.

hairyhen · 12 Aug 2006 at 17:17

Don't give up just yet!

Even though 1280x768 may be a better match (aspect-ratio wise) for your monitor, it is much better if you use 1280x1024. This way, your monitor has much more pixels to work with when it upscales to it's native resolution (it's gonna have to do this no matter what res you choose so you might as well).

Doing this will activate the option of standard or widescreen. Obviously, you should set it at widescreen.

This is how I have set-up my 360 using the official vga cable, albeit through a vga-dvi converter, and it looks just fantastic (21.1" Eizo Flexscan at 1680x1050).

sanofi · 12 Aug 2006 at 18:35

I've put it on 1280x1024 and it still looks about the same, again still much better looking on the 15" SDTV.

This is what it looks like at 1280x1024:

sanofi · 12 Aug 2006 at 18:48

Not sure if this is related or not but when I try to run the Top Spin 2 demo, it gives an error saying that it doesn't support PAL 50 and that I should change to PAL 60. This monitor is running at 60 Hz already.

hairyhen · 12 Aug 2006 at 19:02

Monitors don't have refresh rates so you can ignore that part

What it means is that your 360 is set at PAL-50 mode for connection to a CRT. To remedy this, you're gonna have to break out the composite cable, hook it up to a standard tele, and then set it to PAL-60 from within the system-blade.

Back to your orginal problem, what resolution does the monitor tell you its running at? Have you tried using Auto-Configure from your monitor settings?
Best to do it when the dashboard/blade is displayed, as I find it confuses the monitor a little when in a game

sanofi · 12 Aug 2006 at 19:14

When I'm in VGA mode, the res according to the on screen display is 1280x1024 which was set from within the dash.

In DVI mode its 1440x900 the native res of the monitor when the PC is connected.

Auto configure just re aligns the screen position.

sanofi · 13 Aug 2006 at 14:26

If you compare it to the image displayed on the screen in this thread:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17607979

It's pretty dim and blurry, shouldn't an LCD monitor look just as good?

green101 · 14 Aug 2006 at 18:47

Have you tried it on any other games? PGR3 is rendered at 500p and is known to cause problems when using a VGA cable.

Kainz · 14 Aug 2006 at 18:51

Nismo said:
I originally had a Joytech lead and it was significantly worse than the official one which I later bought.

I've been using the Joytech since they first became available. Got an official MS one arriving tommorow so it'll be interesting to see the difference.

sanofi · 14 Aug 2006 at 19:16

green101 said:
Have you tried it on any other games? PGR3 is rendered at 500p and is known to cause problems when using a VGA cable.

I've tried it with Madden 06, NBA 2K6 and Table Tennis. For them ost part they are ok, but again at times lots of jaggies and as always compared to my 15" SDTV, the display on the TFT pales in comparison when it comes to colour and crispness.

I'll try and post another pic from another game.

hairyhen · 14 Aug 2006 at 22:43

sanofi said:
...
I'll try and post another pic from another game.

Can you maybe try to include the monitor in the photo (the bezel at least) so we can have a good idea of the scaling involved? cheers!

sanofi · 14 Aug 2006 at 23:08

Couple of screenies from NBA 2K6:

green101 · 14 Aug 2006 at 23:31

Hmm, It does look a bit jaggy, perhaps ill go with the GNR TS902W, it uses the same panal as the acer AL1916WS but has speakers and a DVI input.

sanofi · 14 Aug 2006 at 23:53

green101 said:
Hmm, It does look a bit jaggy, perhaps ill go with the GNR TS902W, it uses the same panal as the acer AL1916WS but has speakers and a DVI input.

It's a great TFT for the price, but input from my 360 always looks really jaggy. Colours are fine most of the time.

The thing is, I'm just not sure if this is normal or not since I've read that connected to a monitor should produce good quality visuals akin to an HDTV.

Psymonkee · 15 Aug 2006 at 01:06

surely set the res to 1280*720 on that monitor?

1440*900 cannot display a 1280*1024 image surely?

Also NBA 2K6 looks fantastic on my 2407 (sorry to rub it in

)