XBOX 360 looks like shit on HDTV without HDMI cable, right?

Dog--

Dog--

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My brother insists HDTV without HDMI on our 360 looks so good, I say it look a million times better on regular CRT TV. It's all blocky and shitty on HDTV when the 360 is not on HD settings.
 
Looks great on my HDTV without an HDMI cable.
 
God dammit, it does not, it's all squished and blocky compared to a CRT regular TV.

I hate you, ace, watch your back you dirty bitch.
 
Well maybe his hdtv sucks.
Is it not widescreen or something?
 
Maybe you need to use that switch on the cable to switch to HD settings
 
If you use the component cable that comes with the 360 using an HDTV, the difference between the component cable and HDMI cable aren't that much.
 
component cable supports up 1080i so it looks good even without HDMI cab;es newb.
 
lol is he using composite? he assumes it must look better because its displayed on an hdtv right?
 
I know nothing of HDTV's, there are the red white and yellow cables that plug in, plus the green blue and red ones.. I plug those in and they make no difference..
 
It may be because his HDTV is 1080p native, and the Xbox only outputs up to 720p. The HDTV will therefore not be running at it's native resolution, and the pixels will look stretched. This is really only noticeable if you sit close to the HDTV. The reason this doesn't happen on a CRT is because they can scale to any resolution, unlike with LCD or Plasma (hence the native resolution).
 
Sedako said:
It may be because his HDTV is 1080p native, and the Xbox only outputs up to 720p. The HDTV will therefore not be running at it's native resolution, and the pixels will look stretched. This is really only noticeable if you sit close to the HDTV. The reason this doesn't happen on a CRT is because they can scale to any resolution, unlike with LCD or Plasma (hence the native resolution).
Click to expand...

even 720p on a 1080p screen shouldn't look really blotchy though. depending on how far you sit away though.
 
Tried hooking the other ones up (the purple blue red), and it just looks a tad bit better. still blocky though.
 
giant384 said:
even 720p on a 1080p screen shouldn't look really blotchy though. depending on how far you sit away though.
Click to expand...

It does. I have a 1080p native monitor, and running many PS3 games on it will result in that non-native resolution blocky look when viewing up close.
 
Xbox360 with a non-HD picture? What are you using it for? If you are using component cables (3 color plugs for video) that is still considered HD.

Also, make sure you have the HDTV setup with the right aspect ratio. If it is supposed to be a 'square' (4:3) picture then don't let your TV stretch it to fill the size of a widescreen HDTV.

But low resolution and analog video (like some TV stations on cable or w/antennas) do look better on CRT (tube) TVs because they are also analog like the station. Plus CRT TVs sort of blur the picture. But that is bad when you have a lot of detail (Xbox360) because you want a sharp screen (HDTV) to show it off and not blur it.
 
I think component looks better than HDMI on the 360 - a little richer, more solid. Composite looks like complete shite.
 
Are you sure you've matched up both outputs on the TV and 360?
 
It sounds like he's either using composite, or hasn't switched the cable to HD.
 
You should be plugging in the red, green and blue cables, and the red and white cables from the other set (the yellow isn't used for component). Make sure it's all into 5 ports next to each other. Make sure the switch on the 360's end of the cable is set to HDTV. Go into settings on the dashboard and turn up the resolution to 1080i or 720p.

I just switched from component to HDMI, and I don't notice a huge difference yet. Still nice to have it in one cable though, and at 1080p to make it that bit crisper and smoother.
 
So I put it in all correctly and everything, made the XBOX output to 1080p, and even though it's a little better, it's still blocky around the edges.. Look way better on my regular TV still..

And yes, I made the cable output to HD rather then Standard TV.
 
HD/HDTV is extremely overrated.

I swear GTA IV looked much better on a flat-CRT, even with a HDMI/component cable with the 360 set to HD. :p
 
Saturos said:
HD/HDTV is extremely overrated.

I swear GTA IV looked much better on a flat-CRT, even with a HDMI/component cable with the 360 set to HD. :p
Click to expand...
Well, supposidly GTA4 on the Xbox360 was actually rendered at 720p w/2xAA. While the PS3 version is rendered at 1152x640 w/no AA but outputed at 720p or 1080p which the PS3 and your TV will show it as.
/shrug

Either way, it does look quite blocky which the CRT would smooth out. But then that makes it harder for shooting at long distance targets w/out zoom.
 
Dog-- said:
I know nothing of HDTV's, there are the red white and yellow cables that plug in, plus the green blue and red ones.. I plug those in and they make no difference..
Click to expand...

Lets start from the beginning.

Plug in the pair of red, green, and blue cables for the video and the white and red cable for the sound. Leave the yellow cable unplugged.

Turn on your xbox, hopefully you have a picture. If you don't have a picture your XBOX was outputting on the composite line and not the HD lines. You will have to change the switch the HD to get a picture.

So assuming you got a picture go to your system settings and under resolution change to 720p.

How does it look after you do this? If it still looks shitty post the model of your TV.
 
360 does output in 1080p doesn't it? The latest games are 1080p, which would be pointless if it didnt.

I read on an AV forum that the 360 does 1080p over component, vga and HDMI.
 
Is it not down to the fact that most X360 games don't have Anti-Aliasing?

I know PGR3 doesn't, anymore?
 
I plug in all of the colours except yellow. I have picture. I switched cable to HD, I changed output to 1080P (I actually tried all of the 4 choices I had including 1080i and 720p, 1080p looks best).

It looks like if you ran a computer game at low resolution. The edges are all square and blocky opposed to a CRT TV where the edges of things look nice and smooth.
 
Dog-- said:
I plug in all of the colours except yellow. I have picture. I switched cable to HD, I changed output to 1080P (I actually tried all of the 4 choices I had including 1080i and 720p, 1080p looks best).

It looks like if you ran a computer game at low resolution. The edges are all square and blocky opposed to a CRT TV where the edges of things look nice and smooth.
Click to expand...

Your tv is shit?

Which model is it?
 
kazsymonds said:
Your tv is shit?

Which model is it?
Click to expand...
All LCD TV's are shit.
I love my RCA Tru-flat CRT. Colours and contrast is just so, so much richer than any LCD TV I've ever seen. Kind of sad imo that it's getting harder to find CRT TVs in stores these days.

Want to know why LCD technology is taking over? Because it's cheaper to manufacture. Fact.
Nobody fool yourselves into thinking it's because it's greener, lighter and more *cough* *cough* advanced.

Electronic companies don't give a crap about advancing mass media technology if it costs them more money than it can produce. Fact.

I'm very cynical when it comes to today's LCD/HD display technology. I'm hoping the new OLED line can remedy this one day.
 
So back to the topic.

Which is better, the composite or HDMI.
 
From what I could tell from playing around with both configurations in the past, they both look very similar to me, which is why having the option between the two is useless imo.
 
What about having them both on/in?
 
DEATH eVADER said:
Is it not down to the fact that most X360 games don't have Anti-Aliasing?

I know PGR3 doesn't, anymore?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that most X360 games have anti-aliasing.

The 360 looks good on HDTV without HD activated, though a new CRT TV will definately give better results.
 
Saturos said:
All LCD TV's are shit.
I love my RCA Tru-flat CRT. Colours and contrast is just so, so much richer than any LCD TV I've ever seen. Kind of sad imo that it's getting harder to find CRT TVs in stores these days.

Want to know why LCD technology is taking over? Because it's cheaper to manufacture. Fact.
Nobody fool yourselves into thinking it's because it's greener, lighter and more *cough* *cough* advanced.

Electronic companies don't give a crap about advancing mass media technology if it costs them more money than it can produce. Fact.

I'm very cynical when it comes to today's LCD/HD display technology. I'm hoping the new OLED line can remedy this one day.
Click to expand...

Ok, cool.

I'll stick with my 40" 1080p lcd (which looks amazing with a half decent input btw).
 
Funny little unrelated, yet tragic, story for you all. I was innocently playing Fable II with my dinosaur of a CRT television perched atop an old wooden Ikea table, when all the sudden the legs freaking gave way, sending the monster of a 35"+ CRT television slamming into my hardwood floor. When I propped it back up, the AV prongs had literally broken off into the television ports, leaving me with no way of interfacing my poor ol' 360 with any sort of viewing device. This means two things: I'm going to need to take pliers and pick the prongs out of my television and I'll also have to buy a new, (hugely overpriced), set of component cables for my Xloud360. The saddest part is, I can't be arsed to do any of this because I spend all my time on my PC anyways.

That's my story of the day. Pretty lame, I know.

P.S. I love how they don't even bother making text viewable on non-HDTVs now. I just get big fuzzy symbols vaguely resembling letters. I'm forced to sit literally 1 foot away from my television, squinting and straining my eyes because of this new godforsaken HD fad. Developers could at least make the damn text viewable on old shitty tube televisions.
 
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