Xbox 360 DVD Playback at 640x480??

lemm · 31 Jan 2006 at 11:47

Hi,

I've got my 360 hooked up to my 19 inch CRT monitor via the official Microsoft VGA Cable. I set the screen resolution to 1280x1024 in the settings menu and all games look mighty fine in HD. Today however, I decided to watch a DVD on my 360 and was gutted to see the 360 displays DVDS at 640x480.

Can this be changed in any way? After playing a game for a bit at 1280x it's just terrible to pop in a DVD and be forced to watch at 640x

Kainz · 31 Jan 2006 at 11:54

Same here for me, not sure what on earth is going on there. I really hope they sort out the dvd playback issues.

kkelly · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:08

i get a big black line down one side of the screen when using it to watch dvds, but its fine in games

pinkaardvark · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:12

The 360 doesn't upscale so I don't see how it will ever be fixed. Also not sure why you'd expect it to run at 1280 * 1024 as the DVD wasn't recorded at this and 1280*1024 isn't even a proper HD resolution either.

FeFiDoh · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:19

was just about to say that, dvds arent that res any way when u encode em its no where near that!

dirtydog · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:22

I don't see why the xbox360 shouldn't upscale it to 1280x1024 or whatever res you want. A PC DVD player does so there's no technical reason it shouldn't be done.

lemm · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:32

pinkaardvark said:
Also not sure why you'd expect it to run at 1280 * 1024 as the DVD wasn't recorded at this and 1280*1024 isn't even a proper HD resolution either.

I know that, and I wasnt expecting the DVD to be displayed at 1280*1024. But I was at least expecting proper DVD playback, the one I get when I watch dvds on a standalone player. Subtitles appear huge at 640x480, the screen is not sharp at all etc. I'm not complaining about the general image quality, I think it's fine, I just want it to be displayed at a higher resolution.

Why does the 360 revert to 640x480 for DVD playback anyway? It's just not 'right'.

cokecan · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:33

why exactly does it need to run at a higher res?? it doesnt really make any difference to the viewing quality does it????

lemm · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:35

cokecan72 said:
why exactly does it need to run at a higher res?? it doesnt really make any difference to the viewing quality does it????

Uhm it doess. At what resolution would you rather play a game at? 640x480 or 1024x768? What do you think looks better?

cokecan · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:38

yeah but thats games, not films. games on the 360 are high def (assuming hte correct cables of course). DVD's are not as far as i know(quick edit: hence HD-DVD). what resolutions are TV's at

??? (im talking old school crt here, not lcd)

lemm · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:45

I have no idea, go ahead and tell me

cokecan · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:48

lol i dont know the res, i know its somethin crap like 480 by something. my point is, film such as DVD look fine on these, with no upscaling needed etc and therefor no need to upscale to 1280 by whatever

lemm · 31 Jan 2006 at 12:55

But why is the image so much sharper when I playback dvds on a standalone player on the standard crt TV in the living room? Its not only the image, its also the subtitles, i can see little blocks on the subs, the subs also appear much bigger...

it's just like playing a game at 640x480, no sharp image, text on screen appears much larger, little blocks can be seen visible etc...

any tech heads on here who can enlighten me?

pinkaardvark · 31 Jan 2006 at 13:12

possibly because 640*480 is not the correct resolution for SD television and DVD. So your monitor is making a mess of it.

Joebob · 31 Jan 2006 at 13:12

For higher res films which will really take advantage of HDTV, you will just have to wait for either Blue-Ray or HD-DVD to take off. These have in excess of 50Gb storage capacity so will play movies at much higher res than DVD's.

dirtydog · 31 Jan 2006 at 13:15

cokecan72 said:
lol i dont know the res, i know its somethin crap like 480 by something. my point is, film such as DVD look fine on these, with no upscaling needed etc and therefor no need to upscale to 1280 by whatever

PAL DVDs are 720x576, which you'll notice is higher than 640x480.

Boogle · 31 Jan 2006 at 14:02

lemm said:
But why is the image so much sharper when I playback dvds on a standalone player on the standard crt TV in the living room? Its not only the image, its also the subtitles, i can see little blocks on the subs, the subs also appear much bigger...

it's just like playing a game at 640x480, no sharp image, text on screen appears much larger, little blocks can be seen visible etc...

any tech heads on here who can enlighten me?

Standard televisions are low resolution. Each individual pixel is MASSIVE compared to a monitor, thats why it appears sharper. Essentially if you look really, really close at any screen you'll see a grid of black lines. On a low-res TV the lines are thicker, and the blocks (pixels) are larger.

Doug · 31 Jan 2006 at 16:51

dirtydog said:
PAL DVDs are 720x576, which you'll notice is higher than 640x480.

That's the number

I was hoping this would be fixed with last night's update, seems they can't be arsed.

pinkaardvark · 31 Jan 2006 at 17:00

Doug said:
That's the number

I was hoping this would be fixed with last night's update, seems they can't be arsed.

There's nothing broken though.

Doug · 31 Jan 2006 at 17:04

The fact that it's outputting at less than standard DVD resolution...

Not broken, but it is something that can be 'fixed'