HD Question/Help

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Up until now I've been using my 360 with an old crappy portable SD tv set, but the other day I ordered up the VGA HD cables and they arrived this morning.

I don't know if it's because I have the resolution too high or if I'm not used to HD yet and how it displays games (I'm using a 1905FP Dell monitor btw).

I tried out PGR3 with my monitor and it seems like the cars are a bit squashed. I don't know if I need to adjust my settings or am I imagining it and it is displaying properly?

I set the resolution in the dashboard to 1280x1024 at first, but trying to see if it helped I changed it down to 1280x720 and it still looks the same..

Any ideas?

[Lingwo]

Is your monitor widescreen? The reason they looked squashed is the game is set to widescreen and so it is trying to create a 16:9 aspect ratio on a 4:3 screen. If you try most games they will put black borders in on your 4:3 which stops it looking squashed, for some reason PGR stretches the image.

I hope that helps.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Is your monitor widescreen? The reason they looked squashed is the game is set to widescreen and so it is trying to create a 16:9 aspect ratio on a 4:3 screen. If you try most games they will put black borders in on your 4:3 which stops it looking squashed, for some reason PGR stretches the image.

I hope that helps.

Thanks for your help. I have it sorted now.

In my excitment this morning I just switched the resolution to 720 without looking at the first deimension. I picked 1280 instead of 1024 :p

[dnast]

It'd be better to use 1280x1024 since that's your monitor's native resolution. That's what I use when I have it hooked up to my monitor and I haven't had any problems with games looking squished.

Disclaimer - I haven't tried PGR3, though. ;)

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

It'd be better to use 1280x1024 since that's your monitor's native resolution. That's what I use when I have it hooked up to my monitor and I haven't had any problems with games looking squished.

Disclaimer - I haven't tried PGR3, though. ;)

Well switching back to 1280x1024 would take away the black borders and mess up the ratio. Unless anyone knows how to fix it for PGR3? Other games display fine apart from it.

[dnast]

Ah, so it only does that with PGR3? You would think they'd patch it by now - especially with it being a 1st party title.

[PabUK Veteran]

It's a problem with PGR3 (and some other games) when using the VGA cable.

[jerzdawg]

Does it have anything to do with the VGA cable only being able to display up to 720 and not 1080???

[icecaveman]

^ VGA cables in general are capable of far higher resolutions than 1080p... so no it's not the cable that's limiting anything.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Thanks for all your help guys, I thought I was doing something wrong but I guess all I can do is wait and see if they patch PGR3?

It's quite annoying how games are allowed to over ride the settings you pick.

So in the mean time I should run the native resolution? :)

[jerzdawg]

^ VGA cables in general are capable of far higher resolutions than 1080p... so no it's not the cable that's limiting anything.

The default MS Xbox 360 VGA cable only supports the games up to 720. I realize that normal VGA cables can support the higher resolution but the xbox vga cable cant.

[dnast]

The default MS Xbox 360 VGA cable only supports the games up to 720. I realize that normal VGA cables can support the higher resolution but the xbox vga cable cant.

Are you sure it's the cable? I think there's just no option for 1080i because all computer monitors are progressive scan and 1080p has twice the resolution as 720p (and would require twice the power) while 1080i only uses a little more pixels per second than 720p.

Besides, when it's hooked to my monitor I have it set at 1280x1024 which is already higher than 720p, so while the games might not use that resolution the VGA cable is quite capable of doing so.

[jerzdawg]

Are you sure it's the cable? I think there's just no option for 1080i because all computer monitors are progressive scan and 1080p has twice the resolution as 720p (and would require twice the power) while 1080i only uses a little more pixels per second than 720p.

Besides, when it's hooked to my monitor I have it set at 1280x1024 which is already higher than 720p, so while the games might not use that resolution the VGA cable is quite capable of doing so.

Yep, I'm sure. When I bought my new TV i actually thought it would be a better purchase to get the 360 vga cables instead of using the component cables, after looking at the back of the packaging, turns out the vga supported 720p but not 1080i

[dnast]

Yep, I'm sure. When I bought my new TV i actually thought it would be a better purchase to get the 360 vga cables instead of using the component cables, after looking at the back of the packaging, turns out the vga supported 720p but not 1080i

I assume it doesn't support 1080i because computer monitors are progressive scan and MS probably thought all HDTV owners would just use the component cables. It seems more like the resolution is limited in the software (because of potential performance problems) rather than the VGA cable.

In fact, if someone more knowledgable about cables can help me out, I'm not even sure VGA cables were ever meant to output interlaced signals.