How would a 360 look on a 22" Gateway HD Monitor?
Saturday, February 24th, 2007 - 2:07am
As luck would have it I have to get a new monitor for work. On my 20" Wega TV the fonts are really small for Crackdown. I'm thinking of maybe getting a new home monitor, then taking my home monitor to work.
So would playing it a 360 on a 22" HD Monitor give me a good picture? Or would that still be too small? Curious before I head in to get the new monitor for work.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
It'd look a hell of a lot better than a 20" standard def television, that's for sure.
It'll still be small, but text is a LOT easier to read when it's on an HD display (the higher resolution makes all the difference in the world)
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Ah, so it's not so much the size of the TV as it is the fact that it's SD? That's good to know. I'm not sure how much further I want to dive further into this rabbit hole by getting an HDTV or something like that when an SDTV works just fine. Have to see how the monitor works out. My home monitor. And if that means I could replace my home monitor with the XBox-capable (at least I assume it would be) Gateway.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
Well yeah. You're probably reading this text on a screen that's not all that big. Resolution is everything. And some 360 games are well known for not scaling their text well for SD resolutions. HD resolutions are the target now, SD is secondary.
"Works just fine" is good for tools and other utilitarian things. This is a hobby, a pursuit of pleasure. You have to allow yourself to be treated. Not that video gaming is the be-all end-all of your life, but the things we do for pleasure are among the first things we look back at fondly. You can be smart with money and still allow yourself to enjoy your hobbies, and not make every hobby purchase a fight with yourself.
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You have to believe, we are magic.
As a rebuttal, it is known that I can be forced to DM a game or two or an forty of D&D on occasion. Sure, I could go out and buy a CAD program (or something) to map out all my dungeons. I could purchase a laptop to use during my gaming sessions, and several programs that keep track of PC's, NPC's, those nifty dungeons I somehow generated on using some fancy tool. I could even purchase the latest rules editions with spiffy leather-binding.
Or, alternatively, I could use some graph paper, a pencil, some note cards, some more scratch notebook paper, and used copies of PHB, DMG, and MM off an unemployed college student desperate for beer money (okay, I didn't quite do that, but same deal). Not only does this second way "work just fine," but is arguably just as enjoyable as the first way. What makes our hobby fun is the content of the medium, and not its delivery.
So, the question between a SDTV verses an HDTV remains? Whatever a given individual is comfortable with, I guess. There's no way I'd be able to personally justify an HDTV for my own lifestyle right now, seeing that I have a heck of a lot of fun gaming on a SDTV and a 500 ton CRT monitor. But that's just me, to each his or her own.
Andy Van Hout
yeah but HD for the 360 makes a HUGE difference.. as my one friend said visiting my house and watching me play Gears of War..
"This doesn't look like the same game I play at home"
Next day he bought a 42" Plasma for his 360.
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
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I used to use a computer monitor (first a 19" and then a 22" widescreen) for my 360. I had everything setup on my desk in my home office. It runs fine, looks great and won't break the bank. Depending on the inputs on the monitor, you might need to get the VGA cables (although, I think the Gateway has plenty of inputs).
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Yeah, in line with what Guru said.
The first time I tried to play Gears of War it was on a 27" SD tv and I almost threw up. The textures ran together and the motion made me nauseous.
The second time I played Gears of War was on a 46" 1080p Sharp Aquos. I finished the game that time.
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I use my 360 on a 21 inch widescreen monitor. Can't imagine using anything else.
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"In other news, Miyamoto pissed on my head, and gave me a forecast of rain." - *Le
I use a Dell 20" widescreen with the 360 in my studio. It works beautifully.
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I'll have to think on this. It's possible my home monitor isn't good enough for work. And I need my work monitor to be good, no questions, so I can do my work without eyestrain. That's priority #1. So there's always a possibility, maybe probability, that I just buy a new monitor for work.
In that case the monitor in my office is a decent candidate for the 360 still. It only has DMI and VGA inputs, however. The VGA used by my ancient Radeon 7000 card (I run Linux, so a 7 year old video card works fine). So I'm not sure how I'd hook that up exactly. Sounds like I'd have to upgrade to a DMI-capable video card, so I could use those VGA cables and the DMI at the same time.
Oh, and the other part of that equation is that my monitor isn't HD. It's just standard LCD. Not sure if the difference in quality between that and my SDTV would be big enough to make that route a non-starter. Trying to figure this all out. I just know I need a better monitor at work and a better picture for my 360 and for a price that doesn't break me.
Anymore than I've been broken. I'm anxious to get on it, though. Added a bunch of you as friends last night and got familiar with Live. Funny to see what my friends were doing online. I didn't even know that happened. I know I sound like a little kid that just discovered something everyone else already knew about, so my sense of wonder is probably kind of dumb, but it was still kind of cool to me to log onto my 360 and have it pop up with all my friends.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
You and Staats both!
Don't worry too much about the HD-SD thing. For some of us the cost as it is now can not be justified and we still manage to chainsaw people in half just fine.
Danjo Olivaw Lives
MOST LCD panels are capable of at least 720p. Unless you have one that only supports 1024x768, then you are just a hair short of 720p.
720p is 1280x720
1080p is 1920x1080.
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
My home monitor's native resolution is 1280 x 1024. It's a 19" monitor.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
Seconded. I'm can be pretty anal about stuff like this, but SD still rocks my socks when I'm not trying to read anything. Personally, I'd want a larger TV over HD, but I can understand not wanting to purchase tech that's only going to become more dated.
Xbox Live: StaatsM
You've got enough pixels to push a 720 image. The only concern would be since 720 is inherently a widescreen resolution you would have black bars top and bottom IF your monitor can be set not to stretch the image. If your monitor automatically tries to adjust the 1280x720 to by 1280x1024 then you may have to fall back to a standard aspect ratio anyway.
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
I'm not as concerned with aspect ratio as I am with clarity of picture vs. the clarify of picture on my SDTV. I took the aforementioned monitor into work today and it appears that the first monitor I bought for work is better than my home monitor, so my home monitor stays home and no new monitor for me.
So now until I get money for a new monitor I can either get those VGA cables and try the above out, or just bag it. I'm leaning towards just bagging it, though. Main reason being that I don't know how good the picture is going to look on my non HD LCD monitor anyway. And I have a non-DVI video card. So if I wanted to use my monitor for both the 360 and the computer, not only would I have to come up with some convoluted way to convert the XBox VGA sound signals to something my older LCD can use, but I would also be stuck buying a new AGP video card, just to get DVI output so the VGA port on my current monitor isn't spoken for. At that point I might as well wait and get a new monitor...
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
You could just buy a A/B switch box for the video for the VGA. That's got to be cheaper than a monitor, although vid cards are really cheap if you're just looking for a DVI output.
If you run with VGA cables, you'll have the option to select the resolution, not just 720P, 1080i or 1080P. You can run a non-widescreen rez, and some games will have the black bars and others won't. For example, Kameo wouldn't run without bars on my 4:3, but GRAW didn't care.
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So my monitor doesn't have to be an HD monitor? New to all this stuff (HD, HD Gaming, etc.) so please excuse my ignorance.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
HD is a funny thing because computer monitors have been HD capable for years! Technically, If you can set the resolution on your computer monitor to 1920x1200 then you can display 1080p content.
SD tv resolution is basically running a resolution of 720x480. (which is why TVs used as monitors generally have problems because computer fonts are very hard to read with only that many pixels to draw them)
Here is some more info about the resolutions, specifically 720p. The bottom picture is the important thing. You should be able to display any resolution smaller than the max your LCD panel has pixels for. If it has to stretch the image it may look funny. Also, generally you can send it the larger resolutions too, but it will down-sample the image until it fits your screen or in some cases only show the top corner of it until your display runs out of pixels. It can vary from monitor to monitor.
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
Yeah, I think I need to try something. My aforementioned headaches at work certainly aren't being helped by the fact that in my downtime I'm looking at a 360 on a 20" SDTV.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
The crazy thing is, I think that for me to get the most enjoyment out of this I kind of have to figure out a better display situation. Even if it's "just" the 22" Gateway HD Monitor. It's just crazy for me to set the figure of a $400 game machine + a $400 monitor next to $129 for a PS2 that looks fine on my existing SDTV. Stupid progress.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
I know this changes your pricing drastically.. but I think the various 24" displays are far better suited to use with the 360.
If you can find a deal on one that puts it in the same range as whatever 22 incher you're looking at it would really be worth it.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
Yeah. That would put the total cost of playing Crackdown, Viva Pinata and occasionally playing with my friends at around $1000. Egad. Then the $129 PS2 really starts to look like the better choice.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
But you're buying the monitor for work, right? It's just a nice side effect that you will be able to plug the 360 into it.
XBL/PSN: zeroKFE | BHA: zeroKFE
No. That didn't work out. The idea there was that I needed a different monitor for work. So I'd take my home monitor to work and buy a new home monitor. Well, my home monitor didn't look good at my office, so I was stuck buying a whole new monitor for work. And I don't think they'll let me bring the 360 to my office.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
You could pretend.
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I only bring up the 24 inchers because I have a 22 inch monitor myself that I don't use anymore and the 1680x1050 resolution is far far far from ideal for recreating HDTV resolutions. The component inputs support 720p, but the screen doesn't handle it correctly. That said some other 22 inchers handle it far better than the one I bought.
Do your research on whatever you do end up buying. I'd avoid buying anything until I had direct impressions from someone else with the monitor who uses it with their 360.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
Thanks for the info. It will definitely help inform my decision. The thing that sucks is that the 24" I would consider is the Gateway at Best Buy (can be found here - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8037117&st=gateway+24%22&type=product&id=1158104010302).
That's not much cheaper than a 26" Sharp Aquos (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7674144&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat95100050040&id=1134702136945).
So... either way it's like do it right and spend another almost $1000. Or just keep it on the SDTV and either live with it or bail. I don't want to bail, but I didn't get the 360 intending to pay $1200 to play a couple games.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
Honestly, if you are sitting at a desk a 20" widescreen is plenty big. That's how luna plays her 360, and she more or less prefers that to sitting on the couch playing on our much larger HDTV.
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