HD-DVD - Best through VGA or Component?

I'll guess that the first one of each pair is component? Looks much sharper to me.
The first does look much sharper, is that not VGA?

Edit: Just read it's not...........hum......think I am going to have to get a Component switch.
 
Stirring up a hornet nest, I prefer VGA. I have several reasons for this, I dont like the over saturated colours provided by the component connection, with vga you get nil (zero overscan) unlike component. The vga image is much sharper I find with my display, and colour more natural. The 360 also upscales SD DVD playback to your selected resolution, unlike component where the 360 switches to 576i.

Following the last MS update I have had to revert to component because VGA got screwed and all I get now is a blank screen. This is being fixed by MS as we speak and as soon as it is I will be going back to VGA.
 
i did have my 360 connected by vga, but just got my hd-dvd add on this morning and watching king kong and superman returns through vga, screens seems to jump/stutter, where playing through component its silky smooth
 
Thats because you need to set your VGA connection to MOVIE. In the menu on my Hitachi pd7200 theres an option for VGA called PC or Movie. This alters the refresh rate and fixes the stuttering.

Sorted.

R.
Nigel
 
Thats because you need to set your VGA connection to MOVIE. In the menu on my Hitachi pd7200 theres an option for VGA called PC or Movie. This alters the refresh rate and fixes the stuttering.

Sorted.

R.
Nigel


That is an option specific to your screen though, they'd don't all have it.
 
Update to my findings....

Got my new VGA cable today and replace my home made one,

now detail has matched component and they both look the same in detail, colour etc...

So it looks like my cable was the problem with missing detail and now i can use VGA with no problems!:thumbsup:

I would agree that the 360 seems to be using Video colourspace(16-235) on all outputs hence the differences in colour, brightness, contast between the two connections as most displays look for PC videospace(1-255) via the VGA connection.

So get your display calibrated to balance the effect and use decent cables.:)
 
I have a 32WLT66 and have often switched between the two connections. The colours are more or less the same, vga a little easier on the eye. However i do find that vga can sometimes make the blacks look a little "greyed out", if that makes any sense. Prime example is the opening scene in gears of war, in the prison cell. With vga i can see the door before jack starts to cut through it, on component i cant and when jack starts to cut its as if the screen comes to life from nowhere. I know this is a game and not video, but i thought this was a good example to illustrate my point. Im still undecieded which i prefer though.
 
Interesting comment in this thread..

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/archive/index.php/t-51211.html

Dealing with the first one, many people complained of a similar thing withe the Samsung. This occurs because the VGA connection on the set has been tweaked for PC use.
My TV actually has 2 settings for VGA - DTV and PC. DTV is required to be used, or else I get a washed out image. There may be a way to change this, on the menu or even the service menu if you can find out how to get into this.
Anyone else find this?
 
Managed to resize the pictures i created (using a tripod for stability), so i have uploaded 3 from VGA and 3 from component.

You can see the calibration can be done to get the two looking the same.

Now looking for to see if a better VGA cable can improve the detail due to a softer image(but i'm not holding my breath on this as the cable in use is quite good anyway).



.
Did you adjust any settings when you changed the cable to VGA? Maybe that could be the reason for lack of sharpness?
 
Just came across this...

http://www.coldforged.org/archives/2006/11/10/xbox-360-high-definition-and-hd-dvd-faq/

Q. Which cable should I get? Which one has better quality?
A. In general VGA and component are about the same in terms of picture quality. However, if you have an HDTV that only accepts a 1080i input signal, only the component connection will work for you.The 360 will not output a true 720p or 1080i HD signal over VGA, only computer resolutions of 640×480, 848×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×768, 1280×1024, 1360×768 and 1920×1080 (progressive). In most other cases the VGA connection provides more options, especially when viewing movies on DVD or HD-DVD.
 
maybe rob has a point because when I had my first 360 I prefered the vga piccy, just bought one again and on my 40" sammy the vga looks really washed out in comparison (yes I have done plenty of callobrating, more than actually enjoying the thing tbh, hehe)......

but

at the moment I have borrowed a 3rd party cable, and from my experience with the xbox 3rd party cables give a much worse piccy that the official one.

1st xbox rgb scart I bought was madcatz and was very dark, bought the official one and it was as if someone had turned ths lights on/....:)
 
I can't get over how much sharper and 3d like the picture is in component over VGA on the sony Bravia i have , it's like a veil is lifted from the image going from vga to compo , really staggering difference.

EG : on the unforgiven , the backgrounds on vga seem to mush together , the grass isn't distinct and it looks pretty lousy , swap to compo and the picture is utterly mindblowing , every blade of grass jumps out at you and it's quite simply the most stunning picture i've ever seen !
 
Well I finally got my replacement Sony 40W2000 this morning and have spent all morning swapping cables and tweaking settings, for me VGA is the best option. It has more detail overall and has natural colours from the start (good job as you can't change them much on this set through VGA). There isn't a great deal in it truth be told but with component it needs a fair bit of tweaking to get it looking decent. The colours are way too vivid (almost cartoon like) so I knock these back. With the component input though you do get a lot more settings to mess around with, although these are only really "processing" the picture further. However for some films I found that you could get some pretty interesting results which looked pretty funky in their own way. In the end though I've stuck with VGA for the moment, it just edges it in detail. For example in scenes from The Chronicles of Riddick his goggles can be totally blacked out (in shadow) on component but VGA reveals more detail, such as the edge of the lense...

Films I have been testing with are for the most part, King King, Chronicles of Riddick, Batman Returns and MI3. I've also got MI, MI2, Bourne Supremacy, Troy, The Thing and Supermans Returns to test\view but there's only so much time in the day!

Note to others with the same set, using the Auto Adjustment for the VGA setting sometimes changes the phase to minimum. If you then look closely at the screen this will have introduced a "shimmer" which obviously isn't ideal!
 
do the vga options have the effect of sharpening up / focussing the image ?

i didn't bother fiddling with them tbh
 
Did you adjust any settings when you changed the cable to VGA? Maybe that could be the reason for lack of sharpness?

Had to change colour, brightness, contrast etc... as the picture was far from the same as component.

Manged to get VGA looking similar to component and to some point thought i had the two idenical but after much comparing found that component has the edge over VGA, producing a sharper and more 3D image.

No matter what settings i tried i could not get a sharp enough VGA picture to that of component.

Using component, i'm blown away with the quality, it really stands out, perfect for me.
 
I can't get over how much sharper and 3d like the picture is in component over VGA on the sony Bravia i have , it's like a veil is lifted from the image going from vga to compo , really staggering difference.

EG : on the unforgiven , the backgrounds on vga seem to mush together , the grass isn't distinct and it looks pretty lousy , swap to compo and the picture is utterly mindblowing , every blade of grass jumps out at you and it's quite simply the most stunning picture i've ever seen !

Exactly the same results i have found.
 
do the vga options have the effect of sharpening up / focussing the image ?

i didn't bother fiddling with them tbh

Not really, the phase setting doesn't make any difference unless set to max or min where you get this "shimmer". The other settings are just for positioning.

Another reason I've stuck with VGA is that 1080i opver component is at 50hz, some games need 60hz and I'm not swapping cables or changing down to 720p just for that. VGA gives me the best of both worlds. I'm surprised VGA connections seem to vary so much from set to set, you would've thought they would have it down and sorted by now!
 

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