Xbox 360 HDMI noob questions

[Incognito D]

Such is my commitment to retro gaming, that I have never had an HD console. However, my brother recently bought an Xbox and I plan to get him an HD TV for Christmas.

However, what do I need to connect the 360 to the TV in HD? On Amazon I see Xbox 360 HDMI cables, but also HDMI cables + Audio Adapters. What are these for?
From what I gather, an HDMI cable on it's own is enough as it transmits both sound and video.
Also, is it better to get the £14 official Microsoft HDMI cable, the cheap-ass £2 third party one, or somewhere in the middle?

Finally, on a side note, what is with the tendency for 20" HD TVs to have terrible sound quality? My parents bought a Samsung one, and the sound quality was so terrible that I had to hook them up with some old PC speakers. It seems stupid to spend so much money on a new TV only to have shitty sound and need external speakers!

[Mendoza]

You can connect a 360 to an hdtv with any hdmi cable. Don't spend more than 10 bucks on it though, there a well made cables that are in this range, anything over that is normally just mark up. The with adapter i think is the dongle that you use for the big 360 to use digital audio out. If he has a slim model he wont need it at all.

There is also a hd component cable available that is normally pretty cheap on ebay.


This cable is nice because it also has a normal rca cable for those times when you have no hd inputs available.

As for the sound, the simple fact is that at that size most people don't care about the sound and the companies don't want to spend much money on those sets so they can keep the price down. This is normally true even on larger sets because people tend to hook up larger sets to surround systems anyway, so they can save money and keep total price down.

[fvgazi]

Get the cheap HDMI cable. The brand name ones are a rip off. I've been using 3rd party for a long time and i've had absolutely no problems in 1080p.

[Krooner]

Alot of poundshops are carrying HDMI cables now, they're as good as any other, it's a digital signal so it's pretty black and white it works or it doesn't, it's not like scart for instance.

The only real difference besides price will be cable length the cheaper cables are rarely over 1M long

[avrame]

As stated earlier, HDMI cables rarely vary in quality, and in terms of signal loss, that is not an issues with HDMI. Being a digital signal, all the cable transmits 1's and 0's, so you don't really have to buy a high quality cable for the best performance ($80 for a Monster HDMI cable is worthless).

As for the audio adapter, thats mainly if you want to have the sound output to a different destination other than the TV. If you have the newer slim 360s, they already have a optical out port built in, and they audio adapter is not necessary.

[thelolotov]

Such is my commitment to retro gaming, that I have never had an HD console. However, my brother recently bought an Xbox and I plan to get him an HD TV for Christmas.

However, what do I need to connect the 360 to the TV in HD? On Amazon I see Xbox 360 HDMI cables, but also HDMI cables + Audio Adapters. What are these for?
From what I gather, an HDMI cable on it's own is enough as it transmits both sound and video.
Also, is it better to get the £14 official Microsoft HDMI cable, the cheap-ass £2 third party one, or somewhere in the middle?

Finally, on a side note, what is with the tendency for 20" HD TVs to have terrible sound quality? My parents bought a Samsung one, and the sound quality was so terrible that I had to hook them up with some old PC speakers. It seems stupid to spend so much money on a new TV only to have shitty sound and need external speakers!

You only need that adapter if you want to send the audio to a separate receiver, if you want the audio to come out of the TV's speakers, just any HDMI cable will do, brand name doesn't mean jack.

[Niode]

Yep, get the cheap cable. Expensive cables do nothing. Like everybody else has said, it's digital, doesn't matter if it's gold, copper, platinum or made out of pure unicorns. It's still 1s and 0s. It will either work or it won't. Get the $2 cable, if it breaks, get another, if that breaks, get another. You've still saved $4 over the expensive cable. Even signal loss isn't a problem. I bought an 10m HDMI cable from ebay which was £20, so dirt cheap as far as HDMI cables of that length goes. It worked perfectly well to connect my PC to my plasma in the living room. No signal degrade or anything.

You only need the audio connectors if you're sending audio to another piece of equipment like a surround sound system. The official HDMI cable comes with a little adaptor that allows you to get optical out of the 360. They put the HDMI slot in a place that it makes it impossible to plug the multi-a/v cable that comes with the 360 into the system at the same time as the HDMI. You can modify your a/v cable of course, but it's not very elegant.

[Hobie-wan]

Awwww maaaaaaaaan.

I want a HDMI cable made of unicorns. *kicks at the dirt*

[Anapan]

My friend once bought an $90 HDMI cable made of Unicorns and filled with Nitrogen. There was no discernible difference to my $18 one from Rodgers Video.

[Mendoza]

Awwww maaaaaaaaan.

I want a HDMI cable made of unicorns. *kicks at the dirt*

I'm sorry Bill Gates had the last of the unicorns killed to make his own personal HDMI cables, and for some Unicorn Canned Meat to go with his dodo egg brunches.