360 HDMI, worth it?

[Franco B]

My girlfriends brothers 360 Elite recently stopped outputting video but he was out of his years warranty so he bought a new 360 Arcade to replace it and swapped his HDD and HDMI cables over to it.

I said I would take a look at his Elite for him and I managed to fix it. He said if I sell it I can have half of whatever it makes. I have a 360 myself but its the old version without HDMI. I'm going to get a nice LCD soon so I'm thinking of buying the Elite from him if HDMI is a noticeable improvement over component.

I figure I should be able to get it from him pretty cheaply as it has no HDD, no box, no HDMI cable and it has been opened up.

[massive88]

I dont think the difference in quality would be substantial, but cable management of HDMI is awesome.   

[HaRuMaN]

I have mine hooked up through component, and get 1080P...  so I'm not sure what benefit there is to using HDMI (other than cable management).

That being said, I don't have the option for HDMI out on mine.

[Gatsu]

HDMI & VGA are the only ways to get true HDMI through the 360. To me its not really a substantial difference over component on a tv that 27" or below. Any larger set you'll be able to see the difference.

It worth it just for cable management alone though since audio & video go through HDMI.

[massive88]

I have mine hooked up through component, and get 1080P...  so I'm not sure what benefit there is to using HDMI (other than cable management).

Analog vs digital is the only difference.  Technically brighter colors, better darks.  Not anything substantial in my opinion.  If you can get along with using a VGA hookup on your computer vs using a DVI hookup (same resolution) thats the kind of difference we are talking about, except probably even less so as a computer screen might have better display than your TV (depending on your TV and display of course).

[Samstag]

I get much better picture quality out of my Elite using HDMI than I did with component.  VGA was almost as good as HDMI.

[Visitor Q]

I never saw a big difference between different HD outputs myself.

Personally I would not want any Xbox that was broke and fixed but that is pretty much all of them these days. 

[northerngames]

I run mine on vga at 1280X1024 with a pc monitor and use a RCA to mini jack to connect the sound to the pc speakers.

my 60" TV is not HD so I went with high res VGA with no color fading or dull blacks.

[RetroGreg]

I use VGA and noticed an improvement over component on my set up.

[Malenko]

I could tell the difference between component and HDMI, not HUGE but was there. Cable  management is much better with HDMI, the PS3, XBOX360 and my DVD player/surround sound main unit all feed into my TV with HDMI and it takes up much less room then the Saturn, DreamCast, AES, and Wii cables :p

[northerngames]

I use VGA and noticed an improvement over component on my set up.

the 360's stock vga setting is blocky but if you turn it up even more in the console's video settings you will really see an improvement.

[SirDaShadow]

If you have a 22" LCD monitor, it is not just worth it ,but essential. When I used the VGA output, it limited screen resolution to 1680 x 1050 (native) and 16:9 ratio (black bars).
When I plugged in the HDMI cable, I had the same problem at that resolution. Needless to say I was disappointed. Then, something told me "go ahead and select 1920 x 1080 and see what happens". Lo and behold, my monitor scaled the picture PERFECTLY to 1680 x 1050 with NO distortion/bluriness and there are no black bars!

I have an envision 22" widescreen LCD with a hdmi->dvi adapter. I bought a $30 HDMI switch from Radio Shack, 3 inputs for one output and I can switch my computer and the xbox 360 easily...

[northerngames]

I too use a switchbox to swap between console's but it is a standard DB-15 or HD-15 switchbox with no converters.