I have a TV that's probably about 10-15 years old, but, since it was the only TV I had, I had to hook up my newly acquired Xbox 360 to it.
Bad idea.
Man, I couldn't see a thing. "Is that an 'S'? Zomg what is that coming at me? Am I supposed to pick it up... it freakin' killed me!"
Not a good gaming experience.
I buckled down and decided it was time for a new TV. In keeping with the new trend of convergence, I went out and bought a spiffy Samsung LN-S1951W HDTV/Monitor, shelling out yet another $500 or so. It has composite, component, VGA and DVI connections all built-in. I thought, "Great, one monitor that I can plug everything into. I'll save a lot of space!"
Well, now I'm thinking all this convergence talk is full of crap!
First, the monitor has a DVI connection. I have a computer with a GeForce 7600 AGP video card that supports DVI. First thing I do, I take the monitor home, and try to plug it into the computer.
That was my first mistake.
I had forgotten that the LN-S1951W is technically a TV, as opposed to a computer monitor. This means it came without any computer type cables. My old monitor came with cables that are attached to the monitor and not removable, so they're not reusable. So, of course, I run down to Fry's immediately for some DVI cables.
That was my second mistake.
Apparently the LN-S1951W DVI connection is meant for DVD players, which has a "slightly" different DVI connection (it's missing the 4 pins around the horizontal pin). Of course, the cables I bought have the computer monitor DVI connections. This means I have a cable that have 4 extras pins that don't fit into the female connection on the monitor.
Great, back to analog cables I go.
Except, of course, I had no analog cables.
Back to Fry's I went, exchanging the DVI for Analog cables. Finally the computer and monitor talks to each other properly.
So, it's onto the Xbox 360 connection. The Samsung is supposed to be HDTV, all the way to up 1080i or something. Well, it might want to let my 360 know about that, because with the 360 component YBR cables connected, I can only get it to recognize 480p mode, no matter what I do.
But that's not what's really bad...
In HDTV mode, I get these really ugly pixel artifacts that usually appear blue (although green and red appears a lot too). No amount of adjusting will make it work. I've tried everything. I even went and bought the 360 to 15-pin analog computer connection cable, hoping I can then get a analog to DVI converter to plug it into the DVI section. But, of course, I can't get a converter that converts from analog to the DVD player DVI connection (I can only find the ones to the computer monitor DVI connection, which, as previously mentioned, doesn't work).
Basically, I've got a HDTV capable Xbox 360, and a HDTV capable TV, connected with super quality component YBR cables, but it's running in low quality TV mode, because it's the only mode that works.
I wish I knew if it was the HDTV, or the Xbox itself. *sigh*
Anyways, I've got a lot of cables to return to Fry's now.
