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I've been thinking about getting an X360 recently, but I'm at an indecision. I know you can play it on an HD set and that it'll look great, but I just have a normal television and I'm hesitant about going out to get a new one just for the Xbox. Is there a big enough difference in quality to justify the cost, or would it be fine playing it on SDTVs?

Depends on the game. Some games scale down to SD very well. Most notably Kameo and Oblivion. Other games, mainly sports games and slipshod ports(TH:AW, Quake 4), that don't scale down to SDTV as well, and hardly look next-gen.

How good does it look on SD? Ive wondered the same thing, since HDTV is one thing... regular 320i is not so flash.

VGA cable + Xbox360 for teh win!

I have to somehow get comparative shots of regular vs HD for 360. I'm really curious as to how bad it looks - does the box downgrade it when it's using regular AV leads, or does it send a full quality signal to a shit television?

It has different connectors for HD & SD signal with a switch for the HD cable.

On my 17" LCD monitor there is a big difference when I switch from 1280x1024 to 480i in Xbox dashboard using the VGA cable.

Hmm. How much of the 360 hardware effects are wasted in SD? It'd be a shame for the 90% of Australians that use regular TVs if it looks Xbox-grade on regular tellies.

You won't lose any 3D processing effects, what you will lose is resolution.

Try turning your favourite PC game down to 640x480 and comparing it to the same game at 1024x768. That is pretty much the difference between 480p and 720p. There is a sharp increase in level of detail visible at normal viewing distances.

I can't, unfortunately, get a decent picture to highlight the difference between 720p and 480p on my TV set, because my camera isn't up to the job.

Vendetta wrote:Try turning your favourite PC game down to 640x480 and comparing it to the same game at 1024x768. That is pretty much the difference between 480p and 720p. There is a sharp increase in level of detail visible at normal viewing distances.

Most aussie TV sets until very recently are 480i, interlaced shit.

I have seen Oblivion on the 360 played in both high and standard def, and on a regular TV. At 480p it still looks pretty good compared to 720p and 1080i, but at 480i it looks like crap. I would recommend picking up a transcoder so you can use the console with your monitor. Monitors are HDTV's usually capable of 1080p. Transcoders cost about $60, but that's damn cheap compared to the cost of an HDTV.

Or get the VGA cable or a fraction of that and you get to dial the resolution as required (not back compat with halo & halo2 is a little dodgy if you do this)

VGA cable sounds like a good idea, but suppose I did get an HD set, (forgive my ignorance) but could you watch normal TV on it, and how much would it cost signing up for HDTV?

You can watch normal TV on an HDTV, it just won't look any better than a standard TV unless you feed an HD signal into it.

I don't know about Oz, but here in the UK they're going to be starting HD broadcasts soon, Sky are charging £300 for the decoder box and then £10 a month on top of your normal sky digital subscription. (I'm not really bothered, as I don't watch any TV, my set is for the 360, PS3 eventually, and my laptop, and for HD disc formats when they are reasonably priced).

Vendetta wrote:You can watch normal TV on an HDTV, it just won't look any better than a standard TV unless you feed an HD signal into it.

I have an HDTV and standard TV signals in fact look noticably WORSE on it because they are a 480 line interlaced signal that is being upscaled to fit the native 720 line progressive resolution of the HDTV. The upscaling process tends to reveal all the various artifacts and flaws in the standard TV signal that an average TV would otherwise hide due to its lower native resolution.

Dammit. Aren't there any images of the stretched, blurry 360 graphics? I mean, most of all AU users are going to be looking at that right now. Maybe I should pop round.