Xbox 360 Through an LCD: Cable Comparison

Sunday, March 19th, 2006

Over the past couple months, I’ve had a number of people ask how my 21″ widescreen LCD performs with the Xbox 360. To be honest, I haven’t really been using my monitor for gaming much since one my primary reasons for getting a 360 was to get myself away from this chair once in a while. I’m currently using my 27″ Sony Trinitron television with the S-Video cable. It’s the best resolution I can get on my standard definition television and it’ll hold me over until I can drop the cash for an HDTV. Since I’ve already got 2 cables in my position, I went out and picked up the VGA cable for the 360 to do a little comparison. The results blew me away!

On a standard definition television, S-Video and even Composite looks pretty good. When you use these cables on an LCD it’s just plain ugly. Composite especially, is blurry and blocky around the edges. Just gross! I tried playing Burnout Revenge with the composite cable for a quick race and I had a headache before I was done my second lap. The Xbox 360 Guide looks exceptionally awful and is quite hard to read, where as the same cable on a SDTV looks just fine - nice and crisp.