Xbox 360 w/ Home Theater

Ganluan

This should be a fairly straight forward question, but I can't find solid information when I've looked around on google and such. I just got a great deal on a new HT system; the only downside of the receiver is that it has HDMI pass-through. As such, I want to use HDMI for video on my 360 (which I am now) and also connect the optical cable for audio (since the pass-through means audio won't work over HDMI).

What cable do I need for this? Has anyone else set up their 360 similarly to this? I've read a couple things indicating that you can't use both HDMI and an optical audio cable at the same time unless you buy a certain one from Microsoft, but I'm not sure how that's possible.

saint2e

I haven't done this myself, but that strikes me as malarky. You just need a regular optical cable and that should do you fine.

monoprice.com has these on the cheap, as well.

mastman

They are liars. I use my own hdmi cable and my own optical audio cable. But M$ did a dick thing and made the component/optical audio connector jack (the one that came with the 360) so huge that if you use it, it blocks the hdmi port b/c they want you to buy their expensive hdmi/optical audio out jack. but this is not necessary.

What you do is buy a separate hdmi cable on the cheap and buy a separate optical audio cable. Then, you take the gigantor component/optical audio jack and tear that huge plastic cover off. Because that's all it is, a huge plastic cover designed to block your shit and cost you more money.

Then, plug in the optical audio cable in to the naked jack,. and your own hdmi cable into the hdmi port. This is how I have mine setup

for pictures, and probably a better description, see here
http://www.chadledford.com/?p=50

Ganluan

Ah I see... I'll have to dig out my 360 box from the closet, but I'll be using the other connector it came with, and plugging my optical cable into that? Any recommendations on a good optical cable?

Nova_C

Does your TV have an optical out on it? Mine does and this is how I set it up - HDMI to the TV, optical out on the TV to the Receiver.

Ganluan

Nova_C wrote: »

Does your TV have an optical out on it? Mine does and this is how I set it up - HDMI to the TV, optical out on the TV to the Receiver.

I don't believe it does, but I'll double check. If it does, I'm not sure it supports 5.1 either, but it couldn't hurt to double check.

mastman

stryker116 wrote: »

Any recommendations on a good optical cable?

not really. Glass is glass is glass. Just don't bend those bad boys too much or you break them.

Ganluan

mastman wrote: »

stryker116 wrote: »

Any recommendations on a good optical cable?

not really. Glass is glass is glass. Just don't bend those bad boys too much or you break them.

I've never actually used an optical audio cable - I assume toslink is the term I'm looking for when using the 360? If so I figure I'll just pick one up cheap on monoprice or newegg or something.

SlickShughes

mastman wrote: »

What you do is buy a separate hdmi cable on the cheap and buy a separate optical audio cable. Then, you take the gigantor component/optical audio jack and tear that huge plastic cover off. Because that's all it is, a huge plastic cover designed to block your shit and cost you more money.

Then, plug in the optical audio cable in to the naked jack,. and your own hdmi cable into the hdmi port. This is how I have mine setup

I have mine set up with HDMI (the one that came with my 360) to the TV, and optical (picked one up at radio shack, $15 maybe?) to the surround sound. No breaking of plastic was involved, I had no problems putting it together. I'll check my exact config when I get home if this thread is still active.

Ganluan

SlickShughes wrote: »

mastman wrote: »

What you do is buy a separate hdmi cable on the cheap and buy a separate optical audio cable. Then, you take the gigantor component/optical audio jack and tear that huge plastic cover off. Because that's all it is, a huge plastic cover designed to block your shit and cost you more money.

Then, plug in the optical audio cable in to the naked jack,. and your own hdmi cable into the hdmi port. This is how I have mine setup

I have mine set up with HDMI (the one that came with my 360) to the TV, and optical (picked one up at radio shack, $15 maybe?) to the surround sound. No breaking of plastic was involved, I had no problems putting it together. I'll check my exact config when I get home if this thread is still active.

I think the difference is you're using the cable that came with it... using your own HDMI cable and then trying to fit MS's other A/V cable next to it won't work from what I understand, at least without getting rid of the plastic.

mastman

Yeah, I thought you were in the same situation I was in. I had the MS A/V jack that came with my 360 pro that came with component video cables and an optical audio out jack and you wanted to use HDMI for video->tv and the optical audio for audio to receiver w/o having to buy the MS hdmi/optical audio jack separately for $80

Ganluan

mastman wrote: »

Yeah, I thought you were in the same situation I was in. I had the MS A/V jack that came with my 360 pro that came with component video cables and an optical audio out jack and you wanted to use HDMI for video->tv and the optical audio for audio to receiver w/o having to buy the MS hdmi/optical audio jack separately for $80

Yep I am, I'll be trying what you suggested when my receiver gets here :P

SlickShughes

stryker116 wrote: »

I think the difference is you're using the cable that came with it... using your own HDMI cable and then trying to fit MS's other A/V cable next to it won't work from what I understand, at least without getting rid of the plastic.

The HDMI that came with it was a just a standard HDMI... isn't it? it looks the same, the connectors are the same on both ends, what else could be different?

AngelHedgie

The only bad thing is that the audio from an optical cable isn't as good as the audio on HDMI. This isn't a major concern on the 360, since it only supports HDMI 1.2, but it's something to note on the PS3, which uses the 1.3 spec.

mastman

AngelHedgie wrote: »

The only bad thing is that the audio from an optical cable isn't as good as the audio on HDMI. This isn't a major concern on the 360, since it only supports HDMI 1.2, but it's something to note on the PS3, which uses the 1.3 spec.

indiscernible IMO. Optical doesn't do 7.1, which really only exists on Blu-Ray