Xbox/360 via monitor? (1 Viewer)

[Jon Duke]

I am looking into moving my current Xbox from my Hitach 32UDX10S to a monitor upstairs on my computer. I would like to maintain the possibility of utilizing my games at 480p, with the ability to use the capabilities of the Xbox 360 at 1080i.

Is this possible? From what I have gathered, I think I want to stay away from an LCD, as cost is an issue here. I've seen a few 19-21" CRT's with a native resolution of 1600 x 1200. Shouldn't this be able to handle 1080i?

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

1080i/p are both 1920x1080, a very high resolution. That is the first stumbling block (making sure the screen can handle that, and in that widescreen format.)

Secondly, you come up against things like differing standards, connectors etc that may also be a problem. I can't really comment on how to make the Xbox 360 talk to a computer monitor since I don't have much data on it... and it's not that big of an issue to me yet since we won't even see those before December.

Your current Xbox can however be connected to a monitor; there are third party connector kits that give you a normal VGA monitor connection from it. 480P is only 640x480 as well, which isn't much of a resolution for a computer screen to handle.

A quick Googling found me this one: http://www.xboxhardcore.com/hardware/x2vga.shtml

This may or may not be the homepage: http://www.x2vga.com/ - apparently VGA passthrough has been added to that device, nifty if you want to use one monitor for the Xbox and a computer.

 

[Jon Duke]

Thank you Kimmo!

Tiger Direct has a monitor that I'm looking at and it looks to be a good fit. I understand that since it is 4:3 that there should be something of a letterbox format when playing 16:9 games, but I also don't intend on spending $750 for a widescreen LCD panel just for gaming.

Do you think the monitor in the link above would do the job?

EDIT: One more thing... what about refresh rates? The big monitors I've looked at support 1920x1440 but with a refresh rate around 65 hz. Will that work?

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Hmm, I may be off here (never been an issue until now) but I think that all TV standards including HDTV are 60hz, so that would be 1920x1080@60hz for full progressive HDTV.

1080i should be half that (i = interlaced), ie 1920x1080@30hz (might be tricky to get a computer to output that one, or to get a computer screen to show it!)

A quick search on that monitor found me this page: http://dv411.com/necmulfe122c.html which doesn't seem to indicate the monitor would like a widescreen resolution at all, but that might still be doable... I just don't know.

We don't even have HDTV here in Finland officially, although I do use an Xbox and a HDTV kit to output 720P to my projector.

Maybe someone else has played more with HDTV and computer monitors and is willing to chime in here...? Also, for advanced HTPC/HDTV/etc issues there are lots of knowledgable people over at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/

 

[Jon Duke]

I suppose I initially need this monitor to support 480p, which it should do without much trouble, with a 4:3 aspect ratio.

I am more concerned with having the capabilities for 720p and 1080i for Xbox 360, whereas I'm not sure to what extent that machine will use those upper screen resolutions.

I'm going to take a deeper look over at avsforums, but any additional help is appreciated.