Bad, Bad Vga Cable, Washed out picture Options

[jizmo]

Well, I've heard some rumours about x360 VGA cable delivering bad image, but I was still flabbergasted when I got mine yesterday. Colors aren't anything like they are with the original component-cable, everything near-white is burnt to white and image is overally really washed out. It's sharper alright, but all the color / brightness issues make it look so lousy that it's useless to me.

Here's how it looks like

And the damn thing cost me $45. Damn I'm pissed off.

Has anyone tested any component to VGA transcoders, like VD-Z3, to test out if transcoded component would look better than the crappy VGA?

This post has been edited by jizmo: Dec 18 2005, 11:13 AM

[Foe-hammer]

Prob might be that your monitor adjustments are off, because if they are not adjusted correctly, it will look lousy.

Before you adjust anything, make sure your monitor has warmed up for 30 min.

First thing is to do is adjust your brightness settings. Turn up your brightness high, then turn it down just to the point that your blacks are true blacks.

Second, turn up your contrast all the way.

Third, adjust your color temp to high, or adjust them manually tell the colors have less red and brown in them, and have more vibrant greens and blues.

Doing this gives me an excellent picture with on my monitor via 360 vga.

[jizmo]

I've had a HTPC connected via VGA and it worked perfectly out of the box. Adjusting the brightness etc doesn't help anything, because the damage to the picture has been already done. If I lower the brigtness, all overburned white parts just get gray. Plus the colors don't get any more vivid.

From what I've read, the problem seems to occure with LCD TVs. I'm sure my old CRT monitor would be more forgiving.

This post has been edited by jizmo: Dec 18 2005, 11:24 AM

[Foe-hammer]

Yes, a crt would more then likely do the trick. Plus, my advice was for a crt monitor.

I just noticed the link you gave in your first post. The only prob with the vga cable image is the idiot needs to turn down his monitors brightness setting, and it would look the same as the other, component, picture.

This post has been edited by Foe-hammer: Dec 18 2005, 11:32 AM

[jizmo]

The only prob with the vga cable image is the idiot needs to turn down his monitors brightness setting, and it would look the same as the other, component, picture.

You're missing the point, I'm afraid. If the picture is burnt-out and badly washed, the damage is irraversible. Turning down the brightness doesn't re-invent the lost shades, it just makes all the shades burnt to white darker (=gray), making the image look pretty flat and dim.

Like this.

MS should've offered HDMI. Hopefully they're working on one.

This post has been edited by jizmo: Dec 18 2005, 11:49 AM

[Foe-hammer]

Are those images take from you?

First of all, If they are, how did you take such high quality video image of your 360.

If so, i appoligize for saying idiot; i just thought it was some picture you found, and where refering to.

I wrote it was too much brightness, because that is exactly what an image looks like on my pc crt monitor (colors all washed out, and not rich), but if i turn down the brightness is fixes it.

This post has been edited by Foe-hammer: Dec 18 2005, 11:15 PM

[RocketMBA]

I'd say that the VGA image is better than the component image. But then again, I have glasses so strong I can see into the future.

[gamerguy999]

I'd say that the VGA image is better than the component image. But then again, I have glasses so strong I can see into the future.

I agree.

In the example you provided, the VGA picture looks much better to me, since you can actually see all the details instead of it being dark.

[redwolf]

Here's how it looks like

And the damn thing cost me $45. Damn I'm pissed off.

how the hell did you capture that image? or is that been photoshoped to show us example to what you mean?

[Arakon]

I'd say photoshopped.
in my experience, using my own selfbuilt vga cable, the image is perfect without any additional adjustments on a 17" CRT, 17" TFT, and a 32" HDTV LCD.

[Mick Garvey]

Now that I look at mine more and more I notice this too. The picture is sub par, washed out. I mean even turning down the brightness doesnt work, the colors just are not as vibrant with the VGA cable. I think Ill have to go buy the RGB cable now which is disapointing.

[Ezrem]

I just purchased a VGA cable over the weekend and have noticed the same issue.

I am using a Sony G540P 21" CRT for a display. In its day, this was a $1200+ PC monitor.

I assure you there are no issues with this display, as I use it for my PC's regularly.

When connecting an XBOX 360, the image looks washed out as others have said. Almost as if someone has raised the gamma correction to its maximum setting on the source device. This is especially noticeable when playing Condemned, which inserts bars on the top and bottom of the image to provide a 16:9 widescreen experience. The bars, which SHOULD be as deep a black as one can find, are a medium gray in color.

When switching to input 2, which I use for my PC's, I am rewarded with normal rich colors, and no washed-out look. Areas that are black look black, etc.

When I run the 360 through my Sony KV34XBR910 high definition TV using the supplied component video cable I am rewarded with the same normal rich colors I expect from every other source used on that TV.

In summary, This problem only appears to exist when using the VGA cable.

[ybaig123]

i got the vga hooked up to my dell 2005fpw it looks amazing with no problems

[Mick Garvey]

no... no it doesnt.


But seriously there IS a problem. Maybe some do not notice but I notice it ALOT. If you compared VGA to RGB directly Im sure there would be a huge difference and it would be very noticible.

I also noticed how the 16x9 bars are not black while playing PDZ, if I use it on my computer and watch a 16x9 it looks WAY WAY WAY darker black and the colors are alot richer.

[biosehnsucht]

disaplying 1280x720 on my Viewsonic 17" tends to munge the gamma a bit as I have to use V-squeeze to make it 16:9 so I have too much light in one direction, so contrast/brightness can't completely correct, but its nothing so bad as that.. its just that I can't have true black and still see what I'm doing.

1280x1024 actually looks more washed out however vs just overbright.. and since PGR3 has a buggy handling of 1280x1024 and doesn't scale to 16:9 letterbox on its own like the other games I've just left it in 1280x720 (which I already had squeezed anyways from my xbox1 + vdigi)

In either case, my monitor is a few years old and noticibly more washed out in general and harder to get true blacks even on the PC and see things still (bad gamma). I actually have a 100% identical one that hasn't been used much (both are leftovers from the company my mom used to work for, I haven't the desk space for dual monitors so I've just kept the other for LANs so I don't have to move the desktop monitor out from under my center channel speaker) and the lesser used one has MUCH better picture. Normally, you wouldn't notice that the more used one is worse, but if you switch from the other you can't say anything but "wow!".

This other monitor hasn't the same blacklevel/gamma issues, its just that the more used one's phosphors are more tired out (you can only bombard something with electrons so much.. ). When I've had the xbox on it before w/ the vdigi it also looked better than on the one I use most of the time.

I have no problems with the VGA cable for the 360, it looks better than the VDigi (which has some issues at 720p with sharp horizontal constrasts of color/brightness causing some smearing horizontally, but only on really extreme like near blacks to near whites/colors, and this isn't helped any by the old monitor - 480p is fine).

My monitor is set 100% constrast and something like 75-80% brightness.. color temp is not maxed out, forget what it was but I set it the last time I was doing color calibration on the PC.