Is HDMI worth it on a 360?

JaysonFour

A friend of mine is wondering if he should drop $50 on an HDMI cable for his 360. I just use component cables for mine, so I'm asking you guys:

1) Are there any advantages to an HDMI connection over a component HD connection?

2) Is it really worth the $50 to upgrade?

mooshoepork

you shouldn't be dropping 50 dollars

www.monoprice.com

The picture is better, but I can't really notice it. It depends how big your tv is. Definitely use monoprice though. 50 bones is ridiculous

DarkPrimus

Just having one cord for everything is good. The picture is better, yes, but unless your television is of large enough size, the difference isn't going to be noticeable.

tofu

Just spend 3 bucks on an HDMI cable at monoprice.

50 dollars haha

Blake T

There is no difference between the image quality between component and HDMI other that one is digital and the other is not and when HDMI encounters interference (and despite what you are told by the shill in the store there is little interference) the HDMI cable will lose less quality than component.

KalTorak

Never spend $50 dollars on an HDMI cable. I'm just echoing what's been said, but a $3 HDMI cable will be exactly the same quality as an $80 HDMI cable (this changes once you get really long cables i think, like over 25 feet long). If your TV has HDMI, there's really no reason not to do it - I'd rather deal with 1 plug than 5 plugs, and the quality can only improve over component.

wunderbar

You think $50 is bad, I know a very un-educated person who spent $180 on a 6 foot HDMI cable at the sony store because the sony staff actually told him he had to have that one cable.

After I stopped laughing and crying, I bought him a cable from monoprice, and gave it to him for free if he promised to return that cable and never ever do something like that again.

Sir Carcass

The only thing to keep in mind about not buying the official cable is you can't use separate audio, without cannibalizing the component cable.

Orogogus

To elaborate on what Sir Carcass said, the component A/V (where you plug in an optical cable, if you're not using your TV's audio) is so large that it blocks the HDMI port. The MS cable conveniently includes an extra port for audio, and conveniently (for MS, not the user) costs $50, which is about $40-45 too much.

There are plenty of guides on the Internet describing how to take apart the standard A/V cable port so that you can use it for the audio while plugging in a standard HDMI cable. Here's one:

http://www.chadledford.com/?p=50

Synthesis

I doubt your friend will be able to distinguish that much of a difference between HDMI and Component, barring some sort of extreme circumstances, but on a positive note, 1080p-capable HDMI can be found for $9 on Amazon (and even less on other places).

Post Blue

Some 1080p TVs don't actually support 1080p input via component, so you might go for HDMI if this were one such case.

Captain Tragedy

Post Blue wrote: »

Some 1080p TVs don't actually support 1080p input via component, so you might go for HDMI if this were one such case.

This. My HDTV does 1080i through component, with 1080p only through the HDMI slots. If your friend's TV is the same way, it's definitely worth $5 on an HDMI cable for progressive.

Nova_C

One thing if your friend plays Rock Band or whatever - I had a bitch of a time getting it to sync since the lag seemed really unpredictable when using HDMI using an external digital stereo receiver. I eventually gave up when even Rock Band 2's auto calibration tool failed to make it work. So I use the component/analog audio just so it's possible to play Rock Band.

DolbyDigital

Here's a question:

Am I correct in saying that:

360 only has HDMI 1.2, which only supports stereo audio.

Vs. PS3 which has HDMI 1.3, which supports full digital 5.1 audio.

Is there any difference in the HDMI cable? The $3 cable will take whatever audio is put though it whether it is full digital or stereo?

Unknown

This content has been removed.

MrDelish

Nova_C wrote: »

One thing if your friend plays Rock Band or whatever - I had a bitch of a time getting it to sync since the lag seemed really unpredictable when using HDMI using an external digital stereo receiver. I eventually gave up when even Rock Band 2's auto calibration tool failed to make it work. So I use the component/analog audio just so it's possible to play Rock Band.

Apparently my TV also has this problem