Getting an XBox soon and have a cable question... (1 Viewer)

[Andre F]

I plan on getting an Xbox soon and have a question regarding the best cables to get. Here is how I plan to hook it up. I only have two digital connections (one optical and one coaxial) in my receiver. One belongs to the PS2 and the other the DVD player. Since the Xbox gives true DD 5.1, I figure the PS2 gets bumped down to RCA hookups and Xbox wil get the 'special' treatment. I only have one Component connection and this belongs to my DVD player so it will NOT get bumped (movies always win). My GCN and PS2 both and the new Xbox can all run through an S-Video switcher that I have. Thanks in advance for the help.

Sounds good to me, whats your question?

Are there any special cables I need to do this? I assume the Xbox does not come with a Coaxial, Optical or S-Video cables...

 

[Mark_A_C]

Sounds good to me, whats your question?

 

[Kelley_B]

You need the Advanced AV pack, its like $20.

 

[Jeffrey Forner]

Andre;
You may want to take a look at this. It's a component video switcher from JVC that will allow you to switch between three component video sources. If you got this, you would be able to use the Hi-Def pack and get progressive scan video on your display. Believe me, it will look that much better if you do.

 

[Travis Kolesar]

You may also want to consider Radioshack's optical switcher. That way you can run both your PS2 and XBOX through your one optical input, and it'll leave you with a couple of open inputs for future use.

As far as cables, I have the Monster Component cables for my xbox. I really like the fact that it's just one cable, instead of a breakout box like the MS cables. The only real issue I have with it is that it uses a proprietary connection for the optical cable.

 

[Andre F]

Jeffrey,
Look here for a discussion on that box. I thought I about getting it for a while and decided not too after reading about it more carefully. The one thing I'm not willing to do is degrade my DVD connection.

 

[Mark_A_C]

I've got the JVC switcher, and it's awesome. Works great. As for an optical switcher, I would not recomemend it just for the PS2 because the PS2 doesn't really need to be hooked up for 5.1. There is only a handful of EA games for the PS2 that can actually do 5.1, and even then, it's not very impressive.