webmonkee
Shared on Tue, 03/27/2007 - 18:38OK, I've been playing on an SD TV since I got my 360. Today, with Live down, I hooked it up to the HD dowstairs for a bit. I played GOW, COD2 and R6V to see the differences in each game. Some folks playing on SD may wish they had an HDTV to play on, so I thought I'd research that wish list a little bit.
My SD is a 27" Sylvania. I am connected with a gold-plated S-Video cable I bought at Best Buy for $15.00. This exercise aside, if you are playing your 360 using the composite cable and your TV has an S-Video connection, stop reading this, go to Best Buy, and spend the $15.00. Makes a BIG difference.
I connected to my new HDTV (Panasonic 42" Plasma HDTV TH-42PX60U) via the 360 in-the-box supplied component cables. Here are my observations:
GOW: Looks a bit better/sharper and definitely brighter. The larger screen (42" versus 27") allows me to see things in the distance more clearly. Verdict: Looks a bit better, but not worth buying HD if you don't already have an HDTV.
COD2: COD2 looks fantastic on my SD, and it just gets better on HD. Very sharp picture. I had some trouble aiming at first because the picture was almost too big. Backing up helped a lot. Verdict: This game looks fantastic in SD already. No reason to go HD unless you already have an HD.
R6V: Ok, here's the one that made a good diference. Everything was way sharper. I can see HD definitely improving your game with this title. I was hitting folks much more easily. Now, some of this is attributable to a larger screen and therefore larger foes, BUT, this is the only game of the three that I was stopping and spinning around in because it looked that much better (yes, I died a few times satisfying this crazy twirl itch). Verdict: If you are a Rainbow 6 nut, go out and buy that HDTV!
Overall verdict: I am not seeing enough of a difference to warrant going out and buying an HD monitor. As you may recall from my world-famous 360 purchase thread, I was at one time considering buying a 22" HD monitor to game on. After this experiment, I will stick with my SDTV for the fore-seeable future until I have the extra scratch laying around to go with a larger HDTV for gaming. Alternately, if someone starts to really take advantage of the component connection, I may have to upgrade then. I won't go out and buy the new $469 XBOX 360 with HDMI, but that may make a difference - especially with newer titles where the developers KNOW that HDMI will be available.
Because of the size difference, I will start to play on the HDTV more often, simply because I can see targets better. But, to go from a 27" SD to a 22" HD would make the targets smaller, and the resulting sharper picture is not, to me, worth it at this time. :D
My SD is a 27" Sylvania. I am connected with a gold-plated S-Video cable I bought at Best Buy for $15.00. This exercise aside, if you are playing your 360 using the composite cable and your TV has an S-Video connection, stop reading this, go to Best Buy, and spend the $15.00. Makes a BIG difference.
I connected to my new HDTV (Panasonic 42" Plasma HDTV TH-42PX60U) via the 360 in-the-box supplied component cables. Here are my observations:
GOW: Looks a bit better/sharper and definitely brighter. The larger screen (42" versus 27") allows me to see things in the distance more clearly. Verdict: Looks a bit better, but not worth buying HD if you don't already have an HDTV.
COD2: COD2 looks fantastic on my SD, and it just gets better on HD. Very sharp picture. I had some trouble aiming at first because the picture was almost too big. Backing up helped a lot. Verdict: This game looks fantastic in SD already. No reason to go HD unless you already have an HD.
R6V: Ok, here's the one that made a good diference. Everything was way sharper. I can see HD definitely improving your game with this title. I was hitting folks much more easily. Now, some of this is attributable to a larger screen and therefore larger foes, BUT, this is the only game of the three that I was stopping and spinning around in because it looked that much better (yes, I died a few times satisfying this crazy twirl itch). Verdict: If you are a Rainbow 6 nut, go out and buy that HDTV!
Overall verdict: I am not seeing enough of a difference to warrant going out and buying an HD monitor. As you may recall from my world-famous 360 purchase thread, I was at one time considering buying a 22" HD monitor to game on. After this experiment, I will stick with my SDTV for the fore-seeable future until I have the extra scratch laying around to go with a larger HDTV for gaming. Alternately, if someone starts to really take advantage of the component connection, I may have to upgrade then. I won't go out and buy the new $469 XBOX 360 with HDMI, but that may make a difference - especially with newer titles where the developers KNOW that HDMI will be available.
Because of the size difference, I will start to play on the HDTV more often, simply because I can see targets better. But, to go from a 27" SD to a 22" HD would make the targets smaller, and the resulting sharper picture is not, to me, worth it at this time. :D
- webmonkee's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments