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[no0b123]

I will buy a xbox360 but I first need some questions answered.

1) If I have just an "OK" TV (non-HD), will the picture/graphics quality still look good?
2) Why do I see white lines around the players in Madden 06' (choppy pixels around the jerseys, played at best-buy)
3) How are the loading times in games...Faster, slower, or about the same as xbox1?
4) Are there still heating problems?
5) Since the new batch of xbox360's, is there anything wrong with them? (overheating, freezing, ect.)

Thanks!

This post has been edited by no0b123: Mar 3 2006, 06:32 AM

[KAGE360]

1.  the graphics will still look WAY better then xbox 1, the character are made of the same polys, the same effects are being used, and you will still see all the action.  you will just not be able to see it as good or as clear which after getting used to high-def, i cant go back.  

2.  dont know, maybe something wrong with the kiosk.  never judge a game by a demo

3.  loading times are about the same if you have a HD.  in time the loading will improve as we can see in games like DoA 4 which have loading that lasts only seconds.

4.  most of the heating problems were user error, so its not something to be worried about.

5.  the reports have stopped spreading like wild fire, so i would expect most of the issues to be ironed out.  you will always have a chance to get a faulty system even years down the line, but i wouldnt worry now.

This post has been edited by KAGE360: Mar 3 2006, 05:13 PM

[no0b123]

Thanks for your input KAGE360, I wish I could get a HD TV but its a new TV or a xbox360 premium. I played PGR3 the other day and fell in love with the graphics and the small (but important) details. I think the only thing I was not too crazy about was the white outlines of the football players in Madden 06'. I think I have made up my mind and I will go with the xbox360 anyhow  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[deacon187]

you can always get the 360 vga cable and play on your pc monior which will be in 720p HD and look much better than a regular 480i tv, at least until you can afford an HD tv set, you can pick up a vga switch box from a computer store for cheap and have your pc and xbox connected to it so with the flip/turn of a switch you flop between them both on your pc monitor

[LESTAT]

frankly i say this strickly from a pc knowledge standpoint, of which i have over 10 years.

the heating issue:

the current design of the xbox360 will not allow for M$ to just simply FIX the heating issues.. MY xbox which i just got today 3-3-06 gets hotter than shit  even idle its crazy warm.
I have the electrical thermeter you use to take your temp and i sat it directly behind the 360 where the air blows out and it was hitting 108f and still rising quite steadily,, that was just idle at the dashboard. that roughly translates into around 42c for those of you, like me, who measure hardware temps in Celcius.
that is absolutely not horrible not bad at all since there are 3 CPU's in there and a GPU all running reallllllyyyyy crappy damn aluminum passive heatsinks being cooled by 1 god damn fan suck are across all for die's.
Now at 108f the thermometer kicks off and says that its too high,, so i have a better thermometer that i will try tommorrow that reads well into the 300f range. so i will get a better temp then.

now the big thing to remember here is that those temps are 4 inches away from the actual cpu and gpu. and are anywhere from 10-20 deg cooler than the actual cpu/gpu silicon die.  taking that into consideration those chips are just cooking, and the lifespan of our beloved xbox360 is GUARENTEED!! to be VERY short lived.

heat, especially prolonged heat will kill those chips.. and not to mention the fact that the hottest part the ATI GPU is sitting directly underneath the dvd, so there you have heat flowing directly upwards into the dvd drive that WILL cause massive failures in not only reading the dvd since when a dvd is either too cold or too hot they fail to read. but also a hardware failure induced by heat within the dvd drive hardware itself....


think about how hot your video card and cpu get inside your pc when your playing a game.... now thats even using a nice copper heatsink with a fan blowing air directly onto the heatsink.. ok now take that temp and increase it another ohh 20 deg and you probabl have the actual core temps of the THREE 360 cpu's and look at your video card temps.. ok now increase that by another 15 deg.. and you more than likely have the temps of the GPU in the 360.

what does all of that mean ?  heat destroys silicon,,, and thats exactly what those chips are made of.....

probably not going to kill them right away but you can definately look for issues popping up more and more until the unit may not even read disks or stay powered on very long... just like what happened with the 1st rev of 360's...

now,, they could have designed it with an intake fane blowing cool air into the case and one sucking out.. that would have dropped the temps alot and allowed for a greater life span.. but they didnt.. and its going to come back and bite them in the ass  big time.


video quality..

regular tv with the xbo360 just sucks balls...
like the other chap said go get the VGA cable and hook it to your pc monitor. but MAKE SURE it support 720p  which is 1280x720  Progressive scan mode... unless you have some old arse 15-17 inch monitor your gunna be ok.. but if you do have some old monitor  your probably s.o.l.
other than that if you dont have that option,, then get the cabling with the svideo on it if your tv has one of those. svideo is not HD but it is a slightly better picture than the standard yellow cable..


white lines around players... i have no idea...  but are you talking about the 360 version or the xbox1 version ?  if your referring to the 360 version then why are you asking those other questions,, your answers are right in front of you already lol (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)   sounds definately wierd.. is that the only game that does something like that ?
youvery well could have a dieing xbox  or a bad video cable..  or it could be some goofy fluke..

load times.

load times suck ass... PGR 3 is SLOWWWW  but you have to realise there is 2-4x's more data being loaded also,, so considering that.. they aint so bad.. but the load times in PGR3 suck.. same for Full Auto  but again there is alot of crap going on in full auto.. so its gotta load alot of stuff....


the whole heating issue is never going to go away unless you mod your 360 to run cooler with better fans and more air intake.. and also replacing the horribly crappy thermal pads that they are STILL using even after they have been proven time and time again to have horrible thermal conductivity. replacing those with Arctic Silver 5 or some Shin Etsu goop will help out alot also...
If you have access to a machine shop you could even take some copper heatsinks and cut them to fit and replace the crappy aluminum heatsinks that are inside the 360...

This post has been edited by LESTAT: Mar 4 2006, 11:01 AM

[no0b123]

Thanks for the input LESTAT!
I think I will buy a HD TV first then get the xbox360 for my birthday.. Does anyone reccomend a good HD LCD TV? Im thinking about the ones you see at the xbox360 kiosks from bestbuy but that may be a little too small for everyday use (watching movies, shows ect.). Any links provided would be great too!

What do all the 720p, 1080p, 1080i, 16:9 ect. mean? I am sooo lost with that  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)
Thanks

[achilles614]

about the person saying it will appear as 720p on a moniter i have a moniter lcd 19 in hp f1905 and when i play my 360 on it it doesnt show as 720p

[twistedsymphony]

no it wont display as 720p on a monitor.. you can however play it at 1024x768 or 1280x1024 (neither of which are "720p")

As for the white lines... it's probably because the console is outputting in 480p instead of 720p, this same effect can be experienced on any TV with the "sharpness" setting turned all the way up. Basically it happens when the display tries to re-create data that isn't there. The Sharpness setting allows you to control this, it was created to compensate for data lost through poor broadcasts, HDTVs (particularly fixed pixel displays) do this as they try to scale up the image and make up for the lost resolution by making up image data that doesn't exist.

As for the heat issues, there are a few places around that have REAL numbers recorded by a probe sandwiched between the heat sync and processors. From what I remember the 360 does run warmer then your Average PC, but not any warmer then the G5s it's based off of, which if that's any indication, as long as there aren't any OTHER problems you shouldn't need to worry about heat destroying your console before the next generation rolls around.

[no0b123]

All Im asking is if I use the xbox360 with my non-HD tv, will there be a major difference than having a HDTV (like will I need to return it basically)

Also, can I use the HD cables that come with the premium console with my non-HD TV?

[Incognito1]

noob123 u can use your 360 with ur standard tv.  it will look great. it will look much clearer on a hdtv but go ahead and play it on ur regular tv for now.  its not bad.  and yeah u can use the hd cables it comes with with your tv. theres a switch at the end of the cable the part where it plugs into your 360. it will say hd < sd.   high definition or standard tv.  make sure its switched to tv and ur good to go.

[no0b123]

Ok, thanks for all your help here x-s members. I cannot wait until I get a xbox360!