VGA Vs. Component

Dman001

Is there much difference between using VGA or Component on a 360?

Anti

It depends on the screen really.

shortys94

I know this may sound stupid but is having your tv displaying 1080 better than 720? Just had it on 720 as PGR3 box stated it needed that.

calex71

i'm sure ill be corrected on this but the best the xbox does is 720p,
the 1080 figure u mentioned is 1080i i think the p is better ,
p = progressive i = interlaced

havent tried mine with component but vga does look pretty damn sweet

shortys94

yea component is great, was just wondering

savemejebus

xbox 360 can do 1080p over component, on VGA it just says 1080 (on my tv at least) and doesn't really specify i or p, though i'd imagine is p as my VGA on the tv won't show it but is well capable of doing 1080i.

As for difference. I find i prefer vga to component output on my tv. It just seems brighter

Julez

Too bright in my opinion, the quality is a little less through component yes, but the contrast and coulers are alot more defined, in my opinion anyway, also it does depend on the tv and personal taste too of course!

mcgovern

I'm using VGA at the moment because DVD's have lines across them on my Dell TV using component. Can't say I've noticed much difference on games though.

Flaccus

360 games are nearly all rendered internally at 720p (PG3 is even less). The scalar chip in the 360 upscales them to whatever res you have selected in the dashboard. So they are outputted at either 720p, 1080i or 1080p. 1080p output is ONLY supported by the VGA cable (after a recent dashboard update) regardless of whether your tv or monitor can process or display 1080p signals via other sources. The 360 will ONLY output 1080p (which is really only upscaled from 720p) through vga. 1080i is possible through component though.

Of course if your TV is a standard LCD TV which has a native res of 1366x768 then 1080 (either 1080i via component or 1080p if you tv has vga) is pointless as the tv will scale it back down to 1366 anyway. So for the majority of people 720p is best. The TV will take the 1280x720p output from the 360 and stretch it slightly to make it fit your 1376x768 LCD screen. This is far better then taking a 1920x1080 interlaced or progressive signal and shrinking it to fit your 1366x768 LCD. This also applies to TV's which say they support 1080i. People see this and think their TV can now output 1080i and select this in the Xbox dashboard. In reality this advertising of 1080i ususally means the TV can take a 1080i input (usually thorugh component), but in the vast majority of cases the tv can only output 1366x768 as this is the panels native res. So you are back to the image being resized again. The cheapest 1080p TV screen I have seen that can actually output at 1080p start at around 1700 euro (Samsung model on Komplett), so those who have 1080p screens will certainly know they have them 'cause they shelled out for them.

For those with LCD's that are 1080p panels or better then plugging in through the vga cable is considered best by many people though I believe for PC monitors like the Dell 2407 you have to fiddle with the sharpness settings a bit to get the perfect picture. Some people say the colour are better on component but I think this is because component are overexaggerating them to begin with. Also if your LCD does not support 1:1 aspect ratio, you also end up with stretching. Some LCD screens (Dell 3007) can go as high as 2560x1600 and with no aspect scaling you get enormous stretching. It's ugly.

So for the 360 I think the ideal situation is a screen that outputs 366x768 (90% of them - very few do exactly 720p (1280x720) or one that outputs 1920x1080 on the money (1080p, expensive) and has a vga input.

savemejebus

I could be wrong flaccus but i'm pretty sure the 360 can output 1080p over component for games, it can't do this for movies due to licencing restrictions, hence 1080p in movies is only through VGA.

I know that my xbox gives me the option of 1080p through component on my (1080p) tv anyways.

mcgovern

Yeah, it can do 1080p over component since about November.

Flaccus

Yeah...I stand corrected...For some reason I had HD movies in my head.

So movies and games at 1080p only over vga
games at 1080p over vga or component

Dman001

thanks for all the help

skywalker

Flaccus wrote:

So for the 360 I think the ideal situation is a screen that outputs 366x768 (90% of them - very few do exactly 720p (1280x720) or one that outputs 1920x1080 on the money (1080p, expensive) and has a vga input.

Does anyone know why 99% of screeens we see in shops have that resolution? Seems like it would have been much more logical to natively support 1280x720.