Vertical banding on Xbox on Panasonic AE100

tomacwhite

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Hi,

A friend of mine brought his projector around my house tonight to see if a projector was suitable for my room. Apart from being shocked at the quality of my Japanese GAMECUBE running in progressive, I noticed something weird when using my Xbox...

Its a stock PAL Xbox (via US official Xbox component pack), obviously outputting a PAL60 interlaced display. Whilst playing on games, you can see vertical lines across the screen. They are a sort of grey colour, and are not always noticeable. I guess its down to what colours are being displayed on screen. At first I thought it was down to the rather poor interlaced image of Xboxs PAL60 mode, so I tried it in 50hz, and although it was improved, the vertical lines were still visible. I tried 3 PAL R2 DVDs aswell (T2 Ult, Matrix, LOTR Fellowship), and the lines were visible there too.


I tried a few American and Japanese GC games on it in interlaced mode (via component lead) and there were no lines atall. It was perfect.


Any ideas what it could be?

Thanks for reading
Paul.
 
Not really a solution but a bit more info so hopefully we can figure this out as it has been bugging me for ages!!!

OK i've got a chipped pal xbox running in NTSC mode with all the progressive modes enabled (480p,720p etc) and a ptae100 pj.

The gamester cable was just rubbish banding, ghosting etc.

The official xbox hi-def cable produces vertical banding, nothing too bad but enough to drive me nuts! lovely bright image though when used with a nice component cable. I opened up the unit and soldered component connectors directly to the cable to see if the connectors on the hi-def unit itself where crap, but the problem persisted

Finally i tried this cable which costs about 6 quid, it produces no banding and no ghosting in fact a perfect image, however the image isn't quite as bright (hardly noticable). But its big downside is it has no digital audio out. (ps i'm not the seller of this cable!!!!)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3054240286&category=20385

so basically what's the difference between the official hi-def pack and this cheapy cable?!?!?!?!?

It's driving me INSANE!!!!!
 
-- As an eBay Associate, AVForums earns from qualifying purchases --
I have a bog standard pal xbox and a Sanyo Z1. I'm using the advanced kit. RGB Scart with 5.1 optical out. I have a RGB Scart to Component converter. I haven't seen any banding on any of my games. Used it for almost a year now.

Have you got any examples and I'll check I just haven't missed it...doubt it. I did see banding on reds when I used a composite cable while waiting for my converter....come to think about it I remember almost every colour was smearing and banding!
 
ok here's my test.
When you load Halo (surely eveyone owns this!) you get the microsoft logo in black text on a white background.

With the cheapy cable all the edges of the text are smooth but with the hi-def pack you can see the banding clearly and the text is not smooth.

Would photos be of any use? i'm at work at the mo but I could take pictures tonight.

And out of interest how much did u pay for your rgb to component converter?

ta
 
I just picked up the gamester hi-def pack and tried it out this evening. I have a modded PAL Xbox, set to NTSC video mode.

If I just connect it directly up and leave the video options for 480p, 720p and 1080i set to 'no, no and no', I get regular purplish vertical bands on a black background. On a white background they appear as faint grey bars.

If I switch on the 480p compatibility, the bars go away, but I get ghosting. Its not too bad on 480p (appears as 525p on the AE100), but worse on 720p (appears as 750p) - I tried Soul Calibur II Japanese version for this.

Maybe the gamester kit isn't designed to support actual progressive scan, only interlaced component? But that doesn't explain the official US kit doing the same thing.

Its annoying, as I think the overall picture is slightly better than S-video through the ProV.

And I really like having sockets, as I can unplug the cables from my DVD player and plug them into the Xbox that way (I don't have any component switching yet)

Anyone got any further thoughts? Is museumsteve anywhere about?
 
if you look carefully, there isnt any sign of horizontal as well? The Ae500 is doing this i think....

ad
 
What if you try the PAL Xbox with a PAL game in normal video mode (interlaced). Do you get banding with the S-Video connection?
 
Last year I brought the US hi-def pack for the x-box and used it on my UK machine and found I got green vertical banding on DVDs but not on games through a Panasonic PT-LC75 projector. My x-box is not modded so would be outputing a interlaced component signal. I also tried the gamester cable brought from Game in the UK and it did the same so took it back. I still do not know what causes this. :confused:
 
I can't try s-video, as I only have VGA and component cables going to my projector.

I have no problems on my TV with s-video.
 
I did have this with my HS10. I'm sure I got rid of some of the problem by adjusting the signal into the HS10 (via the menu). I put it down to the frequency being output from the Xbox at the time. What is strange though is that some Xboxes dont do it at all, so maybe different machines (depending on where they're produced) use diferent AV output components..sounds quite feasible.
I certainly dont have the problem now and I run a US and a modded UK machine. Both run progressive but dont have the problem in interlaced either.
The gamester pack has been known to be very dodgy at times. Spooky (who posts here) had a Gamester pack and it was dire, he changed it for a new one and it was fine..
 
would you say switching to the US official hidef pack would be remove one potential source for the problem?

Does it have an s-video output though? I like the gamesters ability to have both and switch between them - I use svid for TV, and component for pj.
 

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