Xbox 360 VGA HD AV Cable

10 Review to this product

• 

  David Goebel
  April 20th, 2006 on 3:30 am

  Rating

  The reason that I ended up buying the VGA cable was due to the fact that the component signal (both 720p and 1080i) is subject to overscan. This means that the screen “zooms in” slighty so that you are sure to see a complete picture with no black or static edges. This is a problem though with the Xbox 360 because it ends up cropping the image. For example, the HUD in GRAW is cutoff on the corners when using the component cables. This really bothered me so I gave the VGA a try and viola!

  I can now go into the dashboard settings and specify 1360 x 768 which closely matches my LCD’s native resolution of 1368 x 768. Thus, I am able to see the whole screen without any overscan/cropping. The only downside is that the overall image gets “washed out” when using the VGA cable. However, this is not really a big deal because most of the newer games (GRAW, Oblivion) have an in-game setting for brightness which you can turn down to eliminate the washed out look.

  I highly recommend that you at least give the VGA cables a try. Depending on your TV, you may or may not like them. No big deal though because you can just return them. However, you may find that you really like them and will be glad that you tried them out! Check out my VGA vs Component pictures at http://spaces.msn.com/theshepherdsbag/photos/ and read about my detailed testing on my blog at http://spaces.msn.com/theshepherdsbag/blog/ and you can check out this xbox forum thread for further insights at http://forums.xbox.com/2885313/ShowPost.aspx

  Lastly, I have the Samsung LNR238W and there is NO ghosting issues when using the VGA cable.
• 

  Susan S. Scutti
  June 2nd, 2006 on 12:31 am

  Rating

  I bought this in order to play my 360 games on my 17″ CRT flatscreen monitor. It was really fast to hook up and worked without any problems whatsoever.

  Please note that the cable comes with a RCA to 3.5mm jack and a VGA f/f gender changer.
• 

  RPG Fan
  December 3rd, 2006 on 6:28 am

  Rating

  I, too, am a college student (seems to be a trend, eh?) and don’t have a 50-inch X brand HD whatever. I got this cable to hook up to my flat-panel computer monitor which is of course better than my TV. My monitor isn’t big, mind you, but the improvement is definitely noticable. I can harness my XBox 360′s potential much more than with standard AV cables.

  Also, as far as sound is concerned, if you’re hooking this up to your computer system: the cable comes with a Y adapter that can be plugged into your standard audio card (the green, blue, and pink colored slots in the back). I have awesome speakers on my comp (not Dolby surround but a 200-watt 2.1 system) and had to look everywhere on the internet to see if this cable would be able to connect to them. I finally found it somewhere. In short, yes you can hook the audio adapter into your computer for sound (your computer has to be on to do so). My comp speakers plug into the green slot then the VGA cable (via the adapter) plugs into the blue one. Bingo, seat-rattling explosions and gunfire.

  Even if you’re not like some of the Richie Riches that are using this cable for their $2,000 TV and want to hook it up to your computer system, then you absolutely MUST buy this cable. You’re really cheating yourself out of the full gaming experience if you stick with standard AV.
• 

  C. Baker
  December 21st, 2006 on 6:13 pm

  Rating

  VGA is superior to component, and the difference in quality can be seen quite clearly when using this cable. The only way to get a true 720p signal from your Xbox is to use the VGA cable.

  The main thing is that VGA is pure RGB, as opposed to Component which is compressed into YPbPr and then has to be decompressed into RGB at the TV end.

  If you want to see a night and day difference, get the add-on HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 and play an HD-DVD through the VGA cable and then play it through component cables.

  One thing that may make component cables look better than VGA is if you have a 1080i (interlaced) television. You will be best off with the VGA cable if you have a progressive scan television at either 720p or 1080p (which are much better anyway).
• 

  Mr. Coffee
  January 2nd, 2007 on 8:01 am

  Rating

  Please note that this review deals with using this VGA cable to plug into a monitor. I haven’t tried it in any HDTVs, so I don’t know how it fares when used that way.

  I bought this after playing a couple hours of Dead Rising on my 13-inch standard definition TV. As you can imagine, games are hard enough to see as it is, but then throw in a game where the text isn’t formatted at all for SDTVs, and you find yourself wishing for high definition.

  I plugged this in to an old 17-inch CRT that I’ve had for over five years. I put the resolution first at 1024×768, then at 1280×1024. Both looked phenomenal and extremely clear. Honestly, every game I’ve tried it with looks absolutely amazing.

  I don’t have the money for an HDTV, even a modestly sized one, and the Xbox 360 is in my bedroom (and not the living room), so this solution was wonderful for me. Because I had a spare monitor and set of speakers lying around, this whole solution cost me only the price of the VGA adapter. You should also check out one of the other reviews on here from a guy who’s a college student and uses his monitor for both computer and 360 to save space in a small dorm room. It’s definitely ideal for that.

  Please note that this cable comes with a VGA female/female gender changer and RCA to 3.5mm (headphone) jack adapter, which can be plugged into the back of your computer, if you wanted.

  Also note that if you are using the 3.5mm jack adapter and are going to plug in basic speakers that also use a 3.5mm jack, you will need a 3.5mm female/female stereo coupler if your speakers didn’t come with one. It’s a little adapter used to connect together two existing 3.5mm audio cables. They’re pretty easy to find for under $3, so it’s not a huge deal.
• 

  Rachel Brown
  January 4th, 2007 on 2:28 pm

  Rating

  I purchased these cables because, along with the new Xbox Live update, you can view games and movies in 1080p (1920 x 1080 resolution). Your system will give you the option to turn on 1080p with the new update, but it won’t work. These cables are the only cables that will allow you to view 1080p on your 360. And with the HD-DVD drive add on… wow. High Def movies in 1080p will make you quiet and teary-eyed.

  Beware of a few things though to make your experience less of a hassle:

  1) You have to have access to Xbox Live and a 1080p television or monitor that can display 1920×1080. Otherwise you’re only looking at a minimal upgrade in quality most times that doesn’t justify the cost over the component cables that came with your 360.

  2) Check your TV or monitor’s vga audio inputs. This cable comes with a red and white set of audio wires but a lot of monitors and TV’s, especially a lot of the new full 1080p TV’s, require an optical audio cable. You can get these everywhere and cheap ones are just as good as expensive ones. Best Buy has one specifically for the Xbox 360 for $8. One end hooks into the base connection on the VGA cables. Not only is the audio quality increased 10x, but it’s no hassle or mess at all unless you didn’t know you needed it.

  3) Some TV’s don’t allow you to adjust as many picture options on their VGA component channels because they assume you’re connecting a PC, which usually has it’s own visual adjustment controls. I found little problem here after a few changes in the visual settings available to me but video-philes may be disappointed depending on their individual TV’s or displays. For me, in particular, I had no color issues or washed out picture problems unless I dropped into lower resolutions… which is pointless to do if you’re buying these for the 1080p compatibility.

  Do some research and avoid all of these possible headaches and you’re in for a treat.
• 

  Aaron
  January 19th, 2007 on 5:51 am

  Rating

  I read all sorts of reviews about this cable providing a “washed out” image compared to component. This has nothing at all to do with the cable but everything to do with the display being used.

  If you examine the XBOX 360 output, you’ll find that the same RGB pins are used to create component or VGA outputs. VGA adds the HSYNC and VSYNC pins already present in RGB signal for component.

  So why do people complain about the “washed out” effect? That’s because they haven’t calibrated the display properly or their display can’t be calibrated properly using the VGA input (my display and probably most displays have different calibration settings and processing hardware for each input). My display only allows me to set contrast, brightness, sharpness and color temperature on the VGA input, however, the hue and saturation are almost spot on from the factory so the VGA cable is the best for me since I can make use of the DVD upconversion and the XBOX 360 seems to do a better job of scaling 720p/1080i to the 1360×768 resolution of my display than the display itself using component.

  If Microsoft allowed brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and temperature adjustments from the 360, this cable would truly be the best to get the highest quality output from the 360 for everyone with a VGA capable HD display.

  Do yourself a favor and purchase/rent the Avia Guide to Home Theater DVD or Digital Video Essentials DVD and use this to calibrate your display for the best results using any cable.
• 

  Sinister Crayon
  May 25th, 2007 on 9:41 pm

  Rating

  So my HDTV died and is in the stages of RMA. In the mean time I wanted to play my xbox 360 elite. Since the DVI port on my monitor is already occupied, and the HDMI port is used by my new PS3, I bought this cable. It has the standard TOSlink optical audio jack (like the component cables do) which I used to hook up to my stereo system. But what I did notice is that MS goes the extra mile by including A. the little stereo RCA to 3.5mm converter and B. the Gender changer which would be useful to hook this think up to a CRT that does not have an interchangeable VGA cord. Microsoft could probably get by without including these, but they did and it makes life a whole lot easier. There are many complaints about washed out colors through the VGA connection, but in the spring dashboard update, MS included a feature that fixed that issue and now the colors are as vibrant as component and much sharper. This is a great cable to own. Just make sure not to buy the cheap knock-offs because there is a chance that if they ruin your console MS will void your warranty.
• 

  Cory R.
  June 30th, 2007 on 7:39 pm

  Rating

  As soon as I hooked the cable up I noticed the visual upgrade immediately. The XBox 360 dashboard seemed crisper and clearer and the text looked less blurry (this was something I could see with my own eyes, it didn’t take looking at some 200% zoom side-by-side comparison photos on some gaming message board to see the difference). The first thing I did to test out the true abilities of this cable was to pop in a slightly-compressed anime DVD that I own. The DVD that showed some obvious artifacts over the previous component cable were nowhere to be found with the VGA cable. The image quality was very smooth. Even the 10th Anniversary edition of Reservoir Dogs (not even the latest version/film transfer) looked noticeably better and could almost be comparable to some hi-def content.

  The reason for the obvious visual upgrade on the DVD is because of the XBox 360′s hidden DVD upconversion that can only be unlocked through the VGA cable (a true gem of a feature!). As far as games go, they already looked amazing with the component cable, but I did notice that they looked a little more defined and brighter. The games did NOT looked washed out like some reviews suggest. I believe that the washed out picture may have been a problem in the past, but Microsoft has since released a fix to the problem over XBox live (if your system is hooked up to the internet, you will get the upgrade for free…no need for a gold account). Most users probably never had the problem at all.

  The VGA cable still includes a digital audio output, much like the original component cable did, and a headphone-sized adapter plug for the audio cables if your television set only has the single input. Just for the information, VGA is also known as D-Sub, so if your television has a D-Sub video/audio input (like mine did), it will work with this cable. Setup was fairly simple, but not exactly as simple as “plug-and-play”. You’ll need to know your TVs screen resolution (example: my 27″ HDTV was 1366 x 768); a simple google search answered this for me. I also needed to manually change the ratio to Widescreen. Both of these setting are changed through the XBox 360′s own display settings (not your television).

  Obviously, if you have the XBox 360 Elite (black version), you should be using the HDMI cable for the best quality, but for the rest of us with the Premium and Core systems (white versions), the VGA is mandatory to reach the best picture quality on a HDTV. I paid about half the price that this cable retails (bought it off a user on the Amazon marketplace), but after my experience with this cable I would have gladly paid full price for a new cable!
• 

  D. Deavours
  September 11th, 2007 on 4:03 pm

  Rating

  I picked up a set of these cables to connect my 360 to my 22″ LCD monitor. I have a 52″ HDTV and it displays 1080i wonderfully. But it’s impossible to haul around an old 52″ projection HDTV.

  My only gripe is I wish they would update the 360 to support something in-between 1360×768 and 1920×1080. Like 1680×1050, that would be sweet. But even my el-cheapo 19″ LCD at work does admirably at 1360×768. (Supported resolutions are 640 x 480, 848 x 480, 1204 x 720, 1280 x 720, 1280 x 768, 1280 x 1024, 1360 x 768, and 1920 x 1080)

  Any way the VGA cables connect your Xbox 360 to your monitor as advertised. I also use them for hooking up the 360 at work or in my hotel room if I travel (none of the hotels I’ve been to have HDTVs yet!)

  Bottom line, if you have a 360 and a VGA monitor but not a HDTV these is a must. Personally I would highly recommend a 24″ LCD (1920 x 1200 widescreen) with these – then you can get the best resolution possible on the 360 and a good sized monitor for your computer to boot. What a deal.