I was really dissatisfied with the image quality of my N6 and Xbox. First the resolution was poor, and blacks were more a muddy brown, dark scenes looked really bad. I read somewhere here that componant 480p was not much better then an S-video connection in terms of resolution. For this reason I was reluctant to spend money on an a compant cable for my xbox, cheap as it is. Well last night I finally got one. Whoah! Resolution is much nicer. It may not look high def but it doesn't look grainy anymore. But best of all, blacks are BLACK they block out all the light from the projector like a pc. I've heard some bashing of the quality when using componant video on the N6, boy was it misleading. The colors and contrast are improved and darker scenes look better. Wait till my t15 and pro reflector come in the mail!

Anyways, I just wanted to say, if your using an S-video connection, and heard componant input does not make a huge difference, its not true. It makes a huge differance!

Component is better in every way over s-video, I can't play Xbox without component cables now. Unless I'm playing on an old TV with just A/V jacks . By the way, what cheap Xbox component cables did you buy? I bought mine for about 10$ shipped off of eBay, but I know that the Monster 400X component are supposedly the best.

I got a used cable at eb games for like 5 bucks. :-)

Yep I can never go back to s-video it sucks that I can't get componetn cables for my game cube at a reasonable price.

This is to be expected.
Composite is the luminance (brightness, this dates back to the days of B&W TV and this portion is exactly what was sent back them circa 1958) with the chromance (color) modulated on top, but maintaining the B&W bandwidth as the TV frequencies had already been defined. So this is a kludge with major signal bandwidth issues, as they tried to compress the whole image into the B&W bandwidth. This is NTSC witch is 480i or 640x480 30 frames per second split into two fields even and odd so you get 60 fields per second and motion is spread between the fields so as things move they will never look quite right, but this is 1950's tech so it was good enough for then but unfortunately never improvded on. S-video is the same 480i, but the luminance and chrominance is seperated so the bandwidth is no longer limited so the higher frequencies that make up sharp edges now come throught. This is a significant improvement in bandwidth and thus image quality but you are still limited by the drawbacks of 480i. With the advent of component video now there are 3 channels luminance, chrominance red and chrominance blue with while his is another increase in bandwidth doesn't help that much as the human eye has much less preception of color than brightness (B&W, contrast), the significant difference is that the image is now in 480p in which you get 60 real frames per second with no interlacing and this provides a significant improvement.

The N6 converts the signals in color space as well and scaling and as the old saying goes garbage in/ garbage out so the increased information leads to a superior output and extra bandwidth can only help provide for the best image quality.

Interesting, but apart from resolution, S-video with the N6 was only capable of producing a muddy brown at the very lowest. With this, blacks are actually black so the contrast has been improved. Everything overal looks cleaner. Smoother, better colors, everything.

This is exactly one of the reasons why a HTPC won't do for me. For Xbox, component is a must!

Mikau, want to be wowed again? Go from the N6 to a transcoder.
I know I sound like a Vdigi salesman sometimes, but the difference (in 480P) between the N6 and a transcoder is like night and day.

People that haven't seen them both side by side don't know what they are missing out on.

I'd consider it but I understand there is no scaling with a transcoder. So you get a small image. :-/

Your monitor does the scaling to fill up the whole screen. If I remember right, you have a CMV LCD? Both my CMV 520D and 522A scaled perfectly...no quality loss.

No, I had a samsung 512N, wrecked it with the whole antiglare removal ordeal, and switched to a westinghouse lcd.

Still, if the lcd can scale it up, I might be interested. How much do they cost?

Supposedly Westinghouse LCDs are CMVs. You can buy the Vdigi at http://www.vdigi.com/ for $60 +$13 shipping. It has various dip switches and a brightness adjustment screw to help with games looking too dark (black crush).

The proven alternative, X2vga is currently not being sold, but the company is working on the improved X2vga2. I don't know when it will be released.

Also, most transcoders only take a 480P, 720P, and 1080i input....nothing else. Unless your Xbox is modded you won't be able to play DVDs with the Vdigi, since the stock Xbox doesn't support progressive scan.

And who would I order that from? You?

It doesn't ????

You're supposed to be able to push both thumbsticks in and both triggers to put an XBOX in 480p mode.

Only if it is modded. A retail Xbox is 480i only on DVDs.

the xbox can output 480p, 720p and even 1080i. But I' never heard that it can't do 480p on dvd's. How depressing...

i've been modding xbox's for quite some time now...
i don't know if this has been covered before but there are vga output hacks for the xbox:

xbox vga



xbox-scene is a wonderful source for info on hardware and software mods.
i'm new to this forum and i'm planning on building a hd projector but i'm not sure how i'm going to go
about it yet. what i do know is that my main player will be an xbox1 with xbox media center.
the vga cable has had mixed reviews and from what i understand you need a compatable bios running to
take advantage of it.. needless to say i would be willing to try all of this out and post my results.

Transcoder is cool until you realize your monitor sucks at scaling, and wont letterbox an HD 720p feed. Which is why i hunt for a 1:1 letterboxing LCD. Nobody else on this website seems to care though.

The problem is that the computer monitors that we use do not contain the expensive circitry necessary to handle HD resolutions such as 720p and 1080i. If you want support for 720p/1080i you need to purchase an HD LCD/TV (15", 17", etc...), but they are more expensive. why ? ...because they contain the necessary scalers for these resolutions (this is what adds to the expense of LCD TV's over LCD Monitors... the scaling circitry... and tuner...) There is also a wide range of scaler qualities found in LCD TV's, so even if you buy one (especially an inexpensive one) you may still end up with scaling you don't like.

It is not a case of no one caring, it's just that what you want doesn't exist as you want it...

cheers,
gs

The samsung 151mp I owned letterboxed (yes it had tv features, but wasnt really an hdtv lcd).

Some dell monitors 1:1 pixel map as well


They exist , some companys just dont implement it


We worry so much about brightness, and overlook the quality of a decent HD image. I cant get hbo, or espn over an ati pci hdtv tuner.

I'm with you mikelish. I've fiddled around here and there with projection but always disapointed that I can't find this mythical monitor. I've got a modded xbox (fyi- most dashboards have the in-game reset preset as pushing both thumbsticks and pulling both triggers) which will play all pc type formats (i.e. divx, mpg) but also has progressive scan dvd output via XBMC. When that gets boring you can load up some old school Metroid or something and have fun with a foot tall Samus. That monitor problem is a serious nuisance. If you've got a 17" monitor you should be able to reap the benefits of 720p playback and then go back to 4:3 for everything else without $400 worth of scaler. I'm sure mikelish and myself aren't the only ones that find this maddening. There has to be a monitor capable of such a feat. Settling for an N6 is like settling for a large woman, you certainly aren't doing yourself any favors.

I just want a 17" monitor that centers 1280x720 under 250$


THere are rumors about some that can, but nobody ever follows up with validating them.

It seems there are no solutions

? i'm not quite following you... no solutions to what exactly ?

if you have a stock xbox, you can use the N6 or transcoder... (480i and 480p support)... LCD monitors handle 480p signals, just not 720p and 1080i/p... if you've modded your xbox to those resolutions then you might need a better scaler... N6 has also been discontinued I guess as it is no longer on the viewsonic website.

cheers,
gs