HD Visuals on Standard TV's

Grumpy Old Fart · 17-07-2005, 08:03 AM

How will the 360 compare to standard Xbox games on a non HD TV? Will there be a marked improvement or will you only benefit if you have a HD TV? It's just a few guys on Live last night have picked up the lates Official Xbox Mag (U.K. Version) and on the demo there are some videos of 360 games. All seemed to agree that watching the video clips on the TV they were'nt all that impressed. In fact a couple said they weren't all that more impressive than some of the better visual games available on hte Xbox.

Now I don't buy the mag and I haven't seen the demo, but I would be interested in what others thought. At the moment in the U.K. HD-TV isn't as big as it is in say the U.S., so alot of U.K. gamers won't be playing thier new 360 games on HD TV's.

pApA SmerF01 · 17-07-2005, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

How will the 360 compare to standard Xbox games on a non HD TV? Will there be a marked improvement or will you only benefit if you have a HD TV? It's just a few guys on Live last night have picked up the lates Official Xbox Mag (U.K. Version) and on the demo there are some videos of 360 games. All seemed to agree that watching the video clips on the TV they were'nt all that impressed. In fact a couple said they weren't all that more impressive than some of the better visual games available on hte Xbox.

Now I don't buy the mag and I haven't seen the demo, but I would be interested in what others thought. At the moment in the U.K. HD-TV isn't as big as it is in say the U.S., so alot of U.K. gamers won't be playing thier new 360 games on HD TV's.

it won't be a huge diff, but it'll be noticeable.

i mean, more pixels vs. less pixels obviously.

Akany · 18-07-2005, 02:50 AM

I am interested in this as well.

I noticed a big difference from using standard AV plus versus the RGB cables I use now on my Xbox. I really wonder what HD-TV would be like, and is it worth the price (what is the price of a HDTV btw?)

pApA SmerF01 · 18-07-2005, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akany

I am interested in this as well.

I noticed a big difference from using standard AV plus versus the RGB cables I use now on my Xbox. I really wonder what HD-TV would be like, and is it worth the price (what is the price of a HDTV btw?)

HDTV's cost anywhere from $700 to i saw one for $3000(72" 1080p).

i would say it's not really worth the price as of now, but midway through the next-gen, we should see the prices drop and everyone start buying them.

remember when dvd first came out? how expensive it was? same thing for HDTV's.

Grindstone · 20-07-2005, 07:06 PM

I bought an HDtv last Xmas along with a component hook-up instead of the RF adaptor I was using on my POS 20 year old 19" magnavox wood panel siding tv. I'll tell you that it was a vast improvement. I've have since hooked up the composite (AV) to see the difference of between it and component on HVtv; still a nice improvement.

I'll break it done for you. HDtv's here cost at low-end $500 then to high-end +$7000 for nice big Sony 72" screen in 1080p definition, although at this point there is not much of a reason to own a HDtv with that sort of resolution as very little caters to that sort of resolution. I am hoping that the Xbox 360 will have HDMI or DVI converters that I can use to increase the image quality, as my tv supports those connections (same connection to your monitor, only for a tv). Right now I can hook up my desktop to my tv, but I prefer to keep them seperate.

If you buy an Xbox 360 and use composite (AV) connection on a standard 480i tv, it will not look as nice next a HD tv with a component or better connection. M$ has said that all games released on Xbox 360 will be a minimum of 720p resolution. It will still work on your 480i tv, but the image quality will not be up to par with what it could be.

Grumpy Old Fart · 26-07-2005, 06:58 AM

Another dumb question from the techie forum n00b

I came across this statement on another forum

Quote:

the frame rate will be 60fps if it is progressive(720p) or 30fps if interlaced(1080i)

First can anyone confirm this. Second why the drop in frame rate and how noticeable would it be?

Cybergig1 · 26-07-2005, 04:18 PM

that sounds odd I dont see why it would drop frame rate just because of that unless they are saying the Xbox's hardware strains that much under the higher resolutions which is a possibility since when PC gaming everytime you up the resolution your going to lose some performance. But still.....

Man if you saw a 1080p HDTV for 3,000 you should have bought it

I mean honestly they just came to the market a week or two ago and most were starting at 6,000 so you may wanna double check if the one for 3g's really had 1080p
Which you really dont need 1080p no TV stations are going to support that for who knows how long, and by the time it even starts to become the norm the price of those sets will have dropped dramatically

plus theres still so few channels now that even support 720p or 1080i but ya know. I'm definitely looking forward to going with the 360 on an HDTV, you really do see an improvement in overall quality, however I do have to say on the current Xbox that going with 480p really shows the systems limitations. As the higher resolution shows off a lot of artifacts and bad aliasing in games like Halo 2 and whatnot. It actually in some instances made the game look worse which was odd, but then again the systems are older and I'm just too used to my PC games like BF2 which isn't a fair comparison

We should definitely see the games coming out later on in the systems lifecycles looking stellar on HDTV's

MH_prophet · 26-07-2005, 11:17 PM

I don't know if this helps, but I remember that once in an article on IGN, the author said "When consumers see the PS3 running at 1080i at a choppy 30 frames and the Rev. at 720p moving along cleanly and smoothly at 60 frames they may spring for the latter."

Grumpy Old Fart · 27-07-2005, 03:55 AM

Another question if you don't mind guys.

From the thread pApA SmerF started regarding what we'll get with our 360 out of the box and what are extra we can buy. From the cables listed what would be the best cbale to pick up to get the maximum from the visuals on a standard, non HD TV? The ones listed were...S-Video AV Cable, VGA HD AV Cable, Component HD AV Cable.

On another note can you hook up your 360 to a PC monitor? If so would that give better picture quality than a standard TV.

Thanks guys I appreciate the help

Justin Buser · 27-07-2005, 05:54 AM

Component HD AV Cable AFAIK

I think its also called RGB

Father Campfire · 30-07-2005, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

Another question if you don't mind guys.

On another note can you hook up your 360 to a PC monitor? If so would that give better picture quality than a standard TV.

Thanks guys I appreciate the help

AFAIK you will be able to do this but you might need a VGA adapter to make it work. Plus your pc monitor is HD supported because of the resolutions that are used, so you should be able to display 360 games in HD on pc monitor.

Grumpy Old Fart · 30-07-2005, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Father Campfire

AFAIK you will be able to do this but you might need a VGA adapter to make it work. Plus your pc monitor is HD supported because of the resolutions that are used, so you should be able to display 360 games in HD on pc monitor.

Campy, how much would one of these VGA adaptersd go for?

Father Campfire · 30-07-2005, 11:51 AM

http://www.lik-sang.com/list.php?nav...4f8b4388f82f7b

there you go stuie you can get them on liksang

Superior Grant · 30-07-2005, 12:43 PM

i so want to buy an HDTV too but i get confused and outpriced

thing is i want one, but all the affordable ones are too small

and i thought about usuing a pc monitor but theyre even smaller and not widescreen

and there are few palces with them available, so theres limited choice, and it seems most are like 42"

im lookin for about 23" or something

edit:

actually quite a lot of choice and better prices on kelkoo

Quade013 · 30-07-2005, 06:46 PM

My best advice to anyone not playing on a HD set is to bite the bullet and take the plunge. Current games on the Xbox look incredible in HD and I have no doubt that the 360 games will be amzing in HD. The only down part is that you will always spend more than you thought on a new set. Two years ago when I bought my set I budgeted 1700.00, after leaving Tweeter I was 3500.00 down but it is an investment in my personal entertainment.

bxgladiator · 09-08-2005, 09:13 AM

I could buy a hd but I'm not since I just got a tv like 5 months ago. Its goin to suck but hey its ok its still goin to look nice on a standard tv.

Father Campfire · 10-08-2005, 02:21 PM

To answer the question about frame rate drop when in higher resolution mode. It happens on the pc as it eats up the system ram by having to produce more poly's etc to attain the higher resolution plus once you have used up the on board gpu memory it then starts to use up system ram to meet the needs to get a decent frame rate. Try running far cry on your pc with everything maxed out and the highest resolution and see how many frames per second you get. even getting 30fps on the 1080i is good enough and you won't really notice it.

Agent X · 11-08-2005, 11:08 AM

you could always buy an HDTV tuner that is if you have an HD-Ready TV HD Tuners are much cheaper usually 2-300 dollars

Grindstone · 11-08-2005, 03:54 PM

The simplified answer is: it will look good on your basic TV, but the image will look even better (more crisp) on HDtv.

The graphics have improved regardless of your TV, but if you really want to be impressed, HD tv is the way to go.