My 360 VGA Mod

vomitsaw · Post by **vomitsaw** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 5:44 pm

This is my take on Ben's Xbox 360 VGA Mod. Spent a good chunk of the weekend working on it, but it was worth it. Now I can better see my friend sneaking about in Gears of War, and I've definitely got better ways to spend $40 than on A CABLE.

Changed a few things up though. Had to go with a more slender, "vertical" design, since the wireless adapter takes up some of the real estate on the back. Also added an 1/8" stereo jack for ease of hooking up computer speakers.

For the case, I had some scrap transparent red acrylic laying around. Lucky me. Formed the back so that it more or less fits to the 360's rounded case.

Anyhow...

(The epoxy makes it ugly, I know, but gosh darn it works wonders!)

And there we have it.

Again, thanks to Ben for the idea and pinouts! Great weekend project, and I've still got enough cash for Digiorno and beer! (Which makes for a wonderful Monday).

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 6:07 pm

Damn that looks good.

benol · Post by **benol** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 6:08 pm

Wow! Translucent dark red=pwn.

jedi knight · Post by **jedi knight** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 6:31 pm

Yes very nice work!

lifeisbetterwithketchup · Mon Oct 15, 2007 6:42 pm

Nice work! Paying too much for cables is always a drag, but the worst is when stores force it on you without telling you. We got a $30 S-Video cable forced upon us when we bought our DVD player, and my grandpa got a $130 HDMI cable forced upon him when he bought his $5000 badass HDTV. Needless-to-say, we were not pleased.

You have just owned all $70 "premium" Xbox 360 cables. Congrats.

Post by **CronoTriggerfan** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 6:45 pm

Very nice mod, man! Snazzy looking, too.

How does it look, though? I just ordered a VGA cable, as I've got a 21 inch widescreen monitor (HD-ready at 720p), but no HDTV. I picked this up to see how my Xbox 360 looks in HD, is it a result you're happy with?

CTFan

XPCportables · Post by **XPCportables** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:01 pm

I can testify, the VGA cables on a good monitor looks better than any HDTV I've ever seen the 360 running on. The picture is fantastically sharp at those monitor resolutions.

Post by **CronoTriggerfan** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:16 pm

XPCportables wrote:I can testify, the VGA cables on a good monitor looks better than any HDTV I've ever seen the 360 running on. The picture is fantastically sharp at those monitor resolutions.

Great!

I was worried there for a second that the picture would look just as poor as it does on my composite connection; hopefully 1440x900 should be a good resolution for the 360 to run on.

CTFan

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:24 pm

XPCportables wrote:I can testify, the VGA cables on a good monitor looks better than any HDTV I've ever seen the 360 running on. The picture is fantastically sharp at those monitor resolutions.

Ever notice that everything looks sharper when its smaller? Like a 100x100 pixel picture looks a ton better when displayed at 1x resolution than 2x? I was playing Halo 2 on my friend's 360 through component on my 48" HDTV, the menus looked beautiful, though in game wasn't too much better than on an SDTV (duh, since thats mainly what it was made for). As soon as my friend gets his 360 back from Microsoft (RROD), I'll have him come over and we'll play Halo 3. The 360 dashboard looks awesome at 1080i.

Now I just need a 360 of my own...

jeroen · Post by **jeroen** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 5:05 am

My problem with the vga cable: Everything was too light (third party). Setting the reference levels did nothing.....

Website · Post by **Life of Brian** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:31 am

That thing is beautiful! Well done!

XPCportables · Post by **XPCportables** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 11:20 am

vskid wrote:
XPCportables wrote:I can testify, the VGA cables on a good monitor looks better than any HDTV I've ever seen the 360 running on. The picture is fantastically sharp at those monitor resolutions.
Ever notice that everything looks sharper when its smaller? Like a 100x100 pixel picture looks a ton better when displayed at 1x resolution than 2x? I was playing Halo 2 on my friend's 360 through component on my 48" HDTV, the menus looked beautiful, though in game wasn't too much better than on an SDTV (duh, since thats mainly what it was made for). As soon as my friend gets his 360 back from Microsoft (RROD), I'll have him come over and we'll play Halo 3. The 360 dashboard looks awesome at 1080i.
Now I just need a 360 of my own...

I know that, but that doesn't change the fact that it looks fantastic.

vomitsaw · Post by **vomitsaw** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 7:59 pm

Thanks to all for the kind words!

After extensive testing, I'm only noticing one teeny tiny little issue. There seems to be just a LITTLE bit of ghosting, probably because I didn't shield the wires well enough. Ah well. Can't fix that now, it's all sealed up. You really have to be looking for it to notice it though. At any rate, it looks approx. 1000x better than my crap old SD Teebee.