UPDATE 19/12/05

XBOX 360:
With the onset of the HiDef era and the XBOX360 I was worried that my still unfinished projector would be unsuitable for displaying HiDef console gaming. It appears however that my fears were unfounded.

The XBOX 360 has a VGA Output capability with an extra cable:
Review Listing Compatible Resolutions is Here

So it appear that we can finally play console games at a resolution matching the native resolution of our panels in our projectors, providing you own a 360 and the vga cable.

There is however a full pinout available here
if you wish to make your own.

Please note that I have not tested this yet myself on a PAL 360, however as soon as I do I will post results here.


-----------------------------Original XBOX & Low-Def Information--------------------------------------
I know we have a UK discussion thread already, but I wanted to discuss more specifically video scaling.
I have noticed that I am not the only one that wishes to play games on my xbox in 480p on my projector. And also watch other pal sources properly upscaled. So I wanted to give everyone the benefit of what I have learned so far.
Although I have yet to find a statisfactory solution myself.


PAL to NTSC
Firstly for those wondering how to get a PAL xbox to display NTSC 480p, the information can be found here.

HDTV component out
If you are lucky enough to have a video scaler already that supports HDTV in, then to get the component out without the USA advanced AV pack info can be found....
Here

X2VGA+
This little device plugs into the back of your xbox, and produces a resulting output in
480p VGA. There is also some talk about being able to hack it open and add a second input for other sources, but I'm going to guess that that would be NTSC sources.
Discussion of that can be found here.

Interpolation
So why not use a tuner box and x2vga+? Interpolation on LCD's
The x2vga+ outputs 640x480, outside the 15" lcd's native range of 1024x768, so unless your panel can interpolate really well. The picture is not going to be brilliant.
Apparenly Benq monitors are not brilliant at interpolating, which is a shame cus these are kinda the main choice of lumenlab projectors. If anyone else knows of a 15" panel that interpolates well, has a low response time, and can easily be stripped. Please let me know.

VGA upscaler & tuners
However the Zinwell CF-251F can be used to upscale VGA to XGA. And I believe can be imported cheaply from abroad. You could probably combine this with a seperate tuner box for your other signals something like this. However by the time you have bought a tuner box. £100-120, the vga scaler £150? and the x2vga+ £45. You have already ran to some considerable expense.

The other options, wait for the rumoured N5-2 or buy an expensive professional scaler.

Building a VGA cable
You could cut out the x2vga+ by building your own vga cable and loading up the appriopriate bios into your xbox.
Info on building your vga cable can be found here.

Hope this info is useful to someone.
Thanks.


[EDIT]

Now hoping that the PAL AverMedia TV Box 9 could be the right solution!!!

I went to the 2004 UK home automation show where I picked up a flyer about a TV card for the PC called Sweetspot. It looks very good and might work nicely for us in a HTPC.

Check it out at www.pluggedin.tv/sweetspot

Its available to buy now for £175 inc vat.

Which to me, is just too steep for something that is tied to a PC.

It does seems to be able to accept a 480p signal though, so if the avermedia tv box does not work out. I will try this.

I have a PAL Avermedia box on order so personal opinions to follow in the next week.

Just got my PAL AverTV Box 9 today.

Thought I'd let you know my impressions of it.

Size wise, the box is very small, smaller that the size of a DVD case.

You'll excuse me if I don't list the features of it, as they are listed on the manufactures website.

I can't say I like a lot of things about this box, because I wouldn't call it the bargain of the century.

The Remote Control 6.5/10:
Right sized and flat, feels a bit cheap, has most of the essential buttons, and is quite responsive. Batteries included.
Better than something like the xbox remote for instance.

Manual & Documentation 3/10
A single folded up sheet is not really good enough in this day and age.

OSD: 2/10.
Confusing to navigate, looks cheap and nasty.

Inputs:
Svideo - NTSC only? All I got was a black and white screen from sky box, my graphics card video in takes the output perfectly. So why is this black and white?
Faulty perhaps? Operator error? I dunno. 0/10

EDIT: Problem solved, was a sky box error it said it was output to PAL as opose to RGB, but it clearly wasn't, after recycling the power a few times and setting to PAL it worked fine.
Good picture quality and colour balance, not as sharp however as a 17" phillips LCD TV I have to compare it to. Even with sharpness adjustments. 7/10.

Tuner: Looked alright, I hooked up my sky box RF output to the tuner input to judge the picture quality in comparison to s-video input on gfx card. The gfx card was better, with less scaling artefacts. 6.5/10 Although it was acceptable to me.

Composite: Also looked okay, a quick trial with the xbox and ninja gaiden.
Looked a bit to soft focus until I found the sharpness control. 6.5/10

NOT tested: Component, sound, PIP etc

To be honest this is the first tuner box/scaler I have come across. But I'm not convinced this is a suitable hub of a projector setup.
I tried the three available resolutions of my flat panel 640x480 800x600 and the native 1024x768.
And I couldn't honestly say that there was a discernable difference on my 15" Phillips flat panel, at 640x480 the flat panel must scale anyway, so correct me if I'm wrong but I just can't see that the scaling is doing that much of a better job than my lcd. Which I know is not brilliant at scaling anyway.

Other hates.
The mega bright blue LED on the front. If you sleep in the same room as your setup this would be a mega nuisance, and is quite dazzling if you look straight at it.
Also the cables plugging in at the front makes it a bit messy.

Needless to say this thing is going back, a sweetspot will be my next choice.

Overall: Average, just my opinion, but I don't think the cost of £130 is reasonable.
I'd say it would make a good way of getting tv to an old monitor. But I'm not so sure about home made projectors.

Feel free to flame or correct me. Afterall this review is just my opinion! :-)

Well I paid nearly half that - $175 Aus (£68).

I'm not using the s-video input, but I'll give it a test.

The tuner is on par with the one in my VCR, which I prefer to use.

I also see no difference between the available resolutions.

Problem solved, above post edited.

I found this Multi Purpose XGA Magic Box,,, looks ok anyone have one? am prob gona get this as its only £49.90 :-D


link to product:

http://www.consoleplus.co.uk/product_info....f9f00e566501e0c

http://www.converters.tv/products/converte...erters/104.html

any comments?

Is anyone using a gfx card that can input composite/s-video to display it at fullscreen on the projector, or a tv tuner card with composite/s-video input? surely those two routes would be cheaper than buying an expensive box that does the composite/s-video to vga output.

being a newbie,still reading and looking,don't know if any good or not but came across this store, there must be one near you,cause i found one in Scotland
they stock loads of stuff to interest us ,including vga converters from £40.
www.maplins.co.uk
merry xmas and happy new year.

Hi,

For those interested in using the projector for XBOX gaming, I have to say that I cannot fault the x2vga+ for its performance.

I’m in the process of building the lumaenlab projector using a BENQ 567 v2, and hooked my PAL xbox with the x2vga+ up to the screen last night. Got a bit of a shock at first, wasn't working! So, tried changing switches modes etc and nothing.... After doing much explorative google-aided reading, I realised that the x2vga+ will not give 480p on European XBOXes as 480p isn't enabled this side of the Atlantic (good auld microsoft!).

So, I used a program called the “Enigmah Videomode Switchdisc”, which allowed me to change the region from PAL to NTSC (you need to hardmod or softmod your xbox). My PAL games now run in NTSC mode, I've only tried HALO and HALO 2 so far but the results are mouthwateringly good!

Perfect quality, the 480p is crystal clear, miles ahead of the traditional composite scart or svideo signals, and is well worth investing in if you're using a BENQ (or any other LCD for that matter) to play xbox games on. Also, the picture is automatically scaled by the monitor, which was a pleasant surprise as I was sure parts of it were going to be truncated or artifacted.

I have previously tried the viewsonic N5 with the xbox on the BENQ (svideo connection) and the quality was absolutely terrible, loads of colour bleeding poor focus and blurry appearance.

Hope this helps any of you thinking about using the projector for gaming....

Thanks for letting us know, I think an x2vga+ will be added to my buy list then!

I think I'll need to do some more testing with the avermedia box. Maybe if you get the chance it would be nice to see some screen shots. Then if I post some (when I get chance of course) we can see if there is a hugh difference between the two products.

Sure no prob, I'll try and get my hands on a decent digital camera tonight and post a picture of the LCD with halo running through the x2vga and with the N5 as a comparison tomorrow.

*** Just to note, you do have to change the region with the enigmah mode switcher, my xbox is softmodded and in NTSC mode.
(PAL mode will output no viable signal to the BENQ)

I got a tv tuner ebay today (pic below). I haven't tried it on my projector yet because its not set up, but on my crt monitor it looked pretty good. It automatically tuned itself in to all 5 channels, and I also tried a dvd through the MMI socket briefly which also looked good. Theres loads of them on ebay going for about £40. I also have a Gigaair2323 arriving from ebay tomorrow hopefully, which is a device (again from ebay) that transmits the tv signal from another room, and relays any infrared remote control signals you send. I'll be using this to get Sky tv on my projector along with the tv box.

Heres a pic from halo on the XBOX comparing x2vga+ on th ebottom and viewsonic N5 on top (svideo). Note the pixelation on the top, the lack of clarity of lettering, also the game runs much much smoother when at 480p (something I cant quite show here! )

Thanks very much

It's definetely on text where you see an improvement. Especially looking at the word LEFT, on the x2vga screenshot

For reference, did you take the screenshot from your projector or a normal screen?

The pics were taken directly from the BENQ monitor, I borrowed a digital camera last night (not the best camera in the world!) and tried to set up the two versions as close as possible. The pictures really don't do the 480p mode justice, although the text does show up the difference. Moreover, it wasn't helped by the JPEG scaling artifacts caused when I ried to scale everything in paint shop pro...

The colour depth on the monitor also seems much much deeper, and the game runs really smooth. The intro scenes in Halo 2 are almost hypnotic... Its a shame the pics didn't come out better, I'll trya and get my hands on a better camera and paste some halo 2 pics in the next few days.

I also tried the 720p mode with a couple of games last night but u need to use a down scaler as well, the BENQ wont scale down itself. I purchased the zinwel 251f scaler and it arrived yesterday, so I'll post some pics from that as well in 720p and 1080i modes (hopefully there'll be no lag in the games!).

Hello jusrt thought you should know that daewoo do a A DSA9310E boc which has two scart two Composite (each with L+R audio) and a S-Vid input (shares L+R audio with one of the composite's) unfortunately this device only output's at 640*480 (VGA) but it does have PIP and two pics side by side (one scart etc + the RF) it has a pass though cable so that when all the other sources are turned off, the PC sighnal goes though, This lowers thw quality of the PC Signal though (Might be better with shield cable) (And without 1/2 mile of other cable near the box!)

Hello just ordered a 48" by 48" piece of Lexan XL10 (Blocks UV AND IR) from the states it's very good and much better than tempered glass. If anyone wants any let me know and I'l post on Ebay

One thing to mention about the X2VGA+:

It doesn't handle 480i all too well - some games simply won't run properly (such as Fable and Ultimate Spider-Man).

On the plus side, the stuff that does run is nothing short of stunning. Get yourself an NTSC copy of FIFA Street, which runs at 720p - the sharp images displayed are stunning. Not forgetting XBMC at 720p - it downsizes 720p programs and movies nicely onto a 15" monitor!

Martin