360 on a monitor

Mai-Kero

So I'm attempting to get my 360 working on my 25" 1920x1200 monitor. The video is fantastic, but as my monitor lacks an HDMI even though it has a speaker bar and an audio in, I have to use a DVI adapter, which does not carry sound. I've heard tales of simultaneously using HDMI and an audio cable on a 360, but I've got no idea how to do this.

I have the following:

HDMI with a DVI connector
The original component cables that came with the 360
An audio cable. I'm not sure what the technical name is, but it's got two blue ends and worked fine for connecting my cell phone/MP3 player to an audio in in a car, and also worked for connecting my computer's sound to the monitor's speaker bar before I had a real pair of speakers.

Is there anything I can do with what I've got? I've got a fairly nice (for how cheap they were) pair of logitech speakers, and they have an easily accessible audio-in.

I also have a secondary question:

Does any type of object exist that I could plug my computer's DVI cable and my 360's DVI into, and then have them combine into one DVI that goes into the monitor, with a switch to enable either one?

Esh

Get a 360 VGA cable and reverse engineer the sound outputs (white and red) at Radio Shack to hook into a 1/8th inch stereo jack so you can just plug them into the monitor's audio inputs.

EDIT: Or your external speakers.

Richard M. Nixon

Esh wrote: »

Get a 360 VGA cable and reverse engineer the sound outputs (white and red) at Radio Shack to hook into a 1/8th inch stereo jack so you can just plug them into the monitor's audio inputs.

EDIT: Or your external speakers.

the official 360 vga cable comes with an rca->1/8" stereo connection adapter.

if your monitor has a vga connection, you can use the dvi from your computer and then vga into the monitor and use the selector switch. Order this one is significantly cheaper than the official one though I don't think it comes with the rca->1/8" adapter (you can find one of those here)

SightTDW

I use the official VGA cables, and you will need to mess with the sound a little. It has an audio connection, but it is a very short cord, so you'll need to get an extension most likely. I run my audio through my desktop's audio-in port.

Bionic Monkey

Esh wrote: »

Get a 360 VGA cable and reverse engineer the sound outputs (white and red) at Radio Shack to hook into a 1/8th inch stereo jack so you can just plug them into the monitor's audio inputs.

EDIT: Or your external speakers.

The 360 VGA cable actually comes with a 1/8" stereo adapter for the audio cables.

Willeth

SightTDW wrote: »

I use the official VGA cables, and you will need to mess with the sound a little. It has an audio connection, but it is a very short cord, so you'll need to get an extension most likely. I run my audio through my desktop's audio-in port.

I do exactly this.

However, if you want to run HDMI and sound as you say, you need to either buy the massive HDMI cable that MS sell, or use the original SD or SD/HD cable that came with the 360.

In later models, the Xbox comes with SD cables with a reduced plug footprint to allow you to plug HDMI and RCA into the machine at the same time. If you have an older model, the plug is too big, and blocks the port. You can take off the plastic casing with a sharp knife and just use the metal plug inside, and it'll allow you to fit both in at once - you may want to wrap it in electrical tape as a makeshift casing, too. Then just plug the red/white jacks, or optical audio cable, into whatever you need.

I'm not sure if there's also a setting you need to change, but I know this works.

To connect your RCA red/white to your blue audio cable, you'll want an adaptor that has female red/white RCA into a female 1/8" minijack connector. Then you can just chain them together into your PC's line-in or your monitor's audio input. If you have it going into line-in, you have the benefit of being able to record game sound or voice messages in Audacity.

Richard M. Nixon

You can also crack apart the grey plastic surround of the standard plug (it's just empty space covering up the HDMI port anyway) and then you've got access to the HDMI port as well as standard stereo red/white rca out and optical digital, if you want it.

A caveat with using HDMI: If your monitor is not HDCP certified, you won't be able to watch DVDs on it though you'll be able to play games.

edit: whup, just read all of willeth's post and my initial paragraph is just redundant to his.