Xbox 360 Monitor Resolution Support

A

adamadekat

Gawd
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Aug 12, 2004
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Why doesn't the Xbox 360 support a widescreen resolution of 1680x1050??? I bought a Viewsonic VX2025 recently and a VGA hookup cable for the 360...and it can't even support the monitor's native resolution...Is there a way to get around this?
 
Here's the deal: until VERY recently (as in, Xbox 360 is the first) the highest you could get a console to support would be a resolution of 720x480 (widescreen standard definition television) except for a few select games (like original geometry wars on Xbox). Now, the Xbox 360 is a game console, not a PC. It can only support certain resolutions because upping or lowering the resolutions in a variable matter can screw up game performance in a way that the developer didn't imagine. So, here's the deal: if you want a monitor that the Xbox 360 will support natively, you will need to get a monitor with a native resolution of 640x480 or 720x480 (not likely to find anymore), 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080i), although for 1080i most games will simply be upconverted.

Now, with 1680x1050 what makes the situation even worse is that this is a non-standard aspect ratio in addition to not being an HDTV format -- meaning, it's at a ratio of 1.6:1 instead of the standard 1.777:1 that HDTV is. So, even if you could get it to work on your monitor (albeit not in the monitor's native resolution), the picture will look slightly squished.

Next time make sure your monitor supports 720p (also known as WXGA in the computer world) or 1080i.
 
The best thing you could probably do is have the xbox 360 output to 1280x768 which is close to your monitor's aspect ratio and then let your monitor stretch it the rest of the way.

That's what I'm currently doing with the Viewsonic VA1912wb that has a native resolution of 1440x900.

-Justin
 
the highest VGA output isn't 16nn x 10nn

it's 13nn x 9nn or something. I have the VGA cables, just can't remember off the top of my head right now.

The res you want is not 640x480 either...the games are all made for native widescreen. You'll want to run 8nn x 4nn or 1280 x 720 (720P) and then adjust your monitors display so the image is no longer stretched..
 
I'm not sure that's what he meant. The console has the capability to render at 1080i, of course... but many of the games would choke (frame-rate wise) at that resolution, wouldn't they? Not even the PS3 can handle very many "next gen" games at 1080, despite the tiny advantage in power it has, simply because 1920x1080 with a great amount of detail is too much of a hit on either piece of hardware. Kahnvex would know more about this since he's experimented with the resolutions and the resulting framerates, so perhaps we can bring him into this conversation. Developers have the option of rendering at a lower resolution and upscaling to compensate, from what I've read.
 
theNoid said:
Doesn't upscale, it supports 1080i, nice try troll.
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That's not a troll. There has already been some discussion about whether the Xbox360 renders at 720p and scales everything, or if it renders at the selected output resolution.

Anyway, carp3n0ct3m is correct here. You want to have the correct aspect ratio for your display (which is 16:10, I would guess), so choose 1280x768 and hope for the best.
 
Supposed Japanese devs said a while back that they use that upscaling technique as well, but I think the X360 does just fine at 720p, and that most games will upscale from there.
 
steviep said:
I'm not sure that's what he meant. The console has the capability to render at 1080i, of course... but many of the games would choke (frame-rate wise) at that resolution, wouldn't they? Not even the PS3 can handle very many "next gen" games at 1080, despite the tiny advantage in power it has, simply because 1920x1080 with a great amount of detail is too much of a hit on either piece of hardware. Kahnvex would know more about this since he's experimented with the resolutions and the resulting framerates, so perhaps we can bring him into this conversation. Developers have the option of rendering at a lower resolution and upscaling to compensate, from what I've read.
Click to expand...


We have two 360s here that use a 32" LCDTV and play at 1080i for 6 months straight. The other 360 uses a HD projector so it is at 720p. There is absolutely no difference in game play between the two except 1080i looks better on the LCD TV - PC monitor than 720p does.
 
Do the games render at 1080i or are they upscaled? The only way that it truly be found out is a dev kit that can do a framebuffer capture, I guess (the same way they found out that PGR3 is upscaled to 720p). Regardless, either way is HD beauty, it would just be an interesting thing to find out.
 
At the moment, it is widely believed that the 360 renders frames at 1280x720, and then upscales it to 1080i if need be. It's all speculated, though, I don't think Microsoft has said anything official about it, though.
 
Guys, currently every single Xbox 360 game only supports 720p, although some marketplace games (like Geometry Wars) support 1080i. If a game doesn't support 1080i, then the Xbox 360 will upscale the 720p games to 1080i for televisions that don't support 720p. Microsoft has said plenty on this in the past.
 
isnt 1080i actually a lower rez than 720p


may ur thinking of 1080p (maybe some ps3 games?)
 
DruSi3r said:
isnt 1080i actually a lower rez than 720p


may ur thinking of 1080p (maybe some ps3 games?)
Click to expand...

No...

720p = 1280x720
1080i = 1920x1080

1080i is bigger if you ask me. The i / p only refers to whether or not the picture runs in a progressive or interlaced format. Now, image quality is an entirely different ballgame: some people claim that, while 1080i is a higher resolution, it is of lower image quality due to the interlaced video format. I myself see no difference in quality between content in 720p and 1080i, but that's not to say there isn't any difference.
 
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