playing 360 on monitor help

[mattmatt08]

Hi, so I wanted to play my 360 on my monitor, only to realize my monitor has no svideo or composite ports. is there some way I can route through my video card (8800 GTX, with svideo connection) to my monitor? I have a composite to svideo converter. Would there be any possible way I could pull this off? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Drizzt5]

Wouldn't it be funny if I sent you here only to answer your question? LOL

Well anyways, someone please help him... I sent him over here cause IDK how to answer him correctly.

[zedman3d]

No i dont think you can, just shell out the $39 on the VGA cable. It is capable of 1080p so its a good investment. I have one and its great.

[Fat.Clown]

and the reason why is that video card only have output ports...
not input.

[CalcProgrammer1]

Don't shell out a ridiculous $39 for Microsoft's VGA cable. I bought an offbrand VGA cable on eBay for $2.50 plus $10 shipping, same features as Microsoft's cable (VGA, Red/White audio, optical digital audio), works great, and insanely cheap. If you're using a CRT monitor with a hardwired cord, you'll need a VGA Female-to-Female gender changer (like $5 online) to connect the two plugs together, but LCD panels usually have female connectors anyways, so you won't need any adapters to hook up to an LCD. I'm using my 360 with my 20" hp w2007 and the picture quality is awesome.

[mattmatt08]

can you give me the name of the vga cable you bought?

[CalcProgrammer1]

It didn't have a "name" really, it was just a really cheap off brand cable I found by searching for "Xbox 360 VGA Cable" on eBay. Here's some listings for cheap cables:

I got mine for $2.50 plus ~$10 shipping, for a total around $12.00. I see some that are Buy It Now for $12 or $13 with free shipping, so that is about the same deal that I got on mine.

New VGA HD High Definition HDTV AV Cable for Xbox 360 - eBay (item 300246015741 end time Aug-01-08 07:37:52 PDT)

VGA HD High Definition HDTV AV Cable for Xbox 360 - eBay (item 280251543773 end time Aug-02-08 11:02:48 PDT)

BRAND NEW Premium VGA AV Cable For Xbox 360 Console - eBay (item 220261542233 end time Aug-01-08 08:45:52 PDT) (there's about 10 of these listed)

NEW VGA HD High Definition AV Cable for MS Xbox 360 - eBay (item 160265949119 end time Aug-03-08 09:01:49 PDT) (this one might not have optical audio)

NEW COMPONENT HD AV VGA CABLE FOR MICROSOFT XBOX 360 - eBay (item 230276216443 end time Aug-01-08 01:46:09 PDT) (this one might not have optical audio)

[Athlon]

Getting the official cable is best, because I had a third party one that started to break just weeks after having it. It also wasnt as sharp as the official one that I got soon after. If you're going to be switching between your PC and Xbox on the same monitor all the time, then you should probably also invest in a VGA switchbox to reduce the risk of damaging the pins in the cable (like what happened to mine), you can pick those up quite cheaply off ebay and they work well

[CalcProgrammer1]

I've had my cheap $2 cable for a few months and never had a single problem with it...well, one day the optical audio output wasn't on, but it was a problem with the 360 (went into settings and turned digital back on and it worked). I switch the cable between my HDTV and my monitor a lot and it seems pretty good. Maybe for another $38 you'll get a barely noticeable sharper image (because Microsoft's cable is gold plated) but that is unlikely, considering the short range that the signal has to travel. I switch between PC (DVI) and 360 (VGA) using the video input switch on my monitor, but if your PC uses VGA then yeah, a switch box is a good idea.

If your 360 is newer and has HDMI, you might even be able to use an HDMI->DVI cable if you have a DVI monitor that supports HDCP (mine does, but my 360 is old and doesn't have HDMI).

[Athlon]

Yeah well $2 for a cable is dirt cheap, well worth a try dont get me wrong. You just might get better results with the official cable as there will be more shielding on the cabling, gold connectors etc (gold connectors are quite important, as most of the signal quality is actually lost through the connectors, and as gold is a better conductor than the other materials used to make cheaper cables, the signal loss is lessened)

Try the cheap cable, you might be happy with it. Is the monitor you want to play it on a TFT (LCD) monitor? or is it a CRT? (the big things). Either way, you can still do it with the VGA cable, the only problem is, with most CRT monitors you can't actually plug the VGA cable straight into the back as they're designed so the VGA cable isn't detachable. You'll need to get a male-female adapter to stick on the end of the monitor cable and then put your VGA cable onto that.