XBOX 360 Wire

Okay, when making your choice first thing you need to look at is what kind of screen you are displaying on. Obviously we are talking HD sets here (in there many guises, PC monitors, HD-TV’s etc) as the whole conversation becomes redundant for most standard TV sets.Second you need to check what connections you have on the back of said set, if you have only one connection choice then the options narrow slightly. Connection converters are available however I have no experience of using them so will refrain from commenting on them.I run my 360 through a Panasonic HD projector (the PTAE900 for those who are interested) and this has both component and VGA connections available. After doing a little research before my projector arrived I opted for a VGA cable. The impression I had been given was that VGA provided the sharpest picture and I figured that as the screen size would be 106 inches this would be a very important thing. When I connected it all up for the first time I was not disappointed - the image was incredibly sharp. However I was aware that the color appeared faded, not to the extent that it hindered my enjoyment but the dashboard color had definitely gone from a vibrant yellow (almost orange) to a faded yellow.

I continued with VGA quite happily for a number of months, right up until the launch of the HD-DVD drive. I was one of the lucky ones to have a drive at launch (in fact I had it a couple of days before). In the lead up to the drives arrival I had discovered that it was capable of up scaling standard DVD’s but only through component, so I dutifully went out and picked up a component cable. Swapping them over, the difference was incredible. The colors were so much deeper and rich. You could see the loss in sharpness but the increase in color saturation was hard to ignore.

Right, I thought, decision made, component all the way. However, in life’s usual fashion I was thrown a curve ball. The HD-DVD player does indeed upscale through the component cable but, and this is a big but, there is a compatibility issue between DVD playback over component and my projector (It’s worth noting this has nothing to do with the 360 or HD-DVD add-on). Watching Lilo and Stitch 2 with my other half there was a terrible color banding across the screen, which got worse whenever there was a lot of movement on the screen. I did at first assume that this was due to playing the (standard def) DVD through the HD DVD drive, possibly even an up scaling issue but swapping the drives had the same problem. In order to test if it was a problem with the disc or my setup I switched back to VGA.

This turned out to be a great choice, not only did the color banding disappear but the color saturation was almost as strong as component, turns out there had been a dash update whilst I was using component which improved the color over VGA. The difference is fantastic, the color saturation on VGA is now almost as strong as over component, and the fact that it is only ‘almost as strong’ is an improvement over component. With the original comparison VGA was sharper but colors were a little too faded, and component was less sharp but the colors slightly too strong. Now VGA is just as sharp but the color is pretty much perfect.

And so the conclusion. For me VGA is by far the best choice, and several discussions with friends using plasma TV’s reveals they have come to the same conclusion.

It still comes down to personal choice though, some people prefer the much stronger color, others are more than happy to re-jig the color setup on their display constantly depending on what they are watching and I am aware that some people adamantly claim that certain makes and models of plasma TV’s really just don’t look good over VGA, but for me as a rule of thumb, VGA is the way to go.

This article can also be found at allabouthegames.net (written under my other username)