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[Parak]

Sorry in advance if you guys already know of this.

Ordered a regular (from the picture) looking HDTV pack from buy.com. It arrived just now, and I haven't seen anything like it before. It looks sort of like the monster pack, only black. The connector that plugs into the xbox has the optical jack, then a long thick cable (about 7 feet long), ending in about 8 inches of individual connectors. There are 5 total, two for sound, and the three HDTV connectors. The plugs are really heavy duty, and gold plated. The package is definitely non third party.

I'll try to get some photos up in a few when the batteries on my camera charge ;p

Edit, Pictures:

cable
RCA Plugs
xbox connector with the optical port (small latch on a spring)

This post has been edited by Parak on Oct 20 2004, 01:30 AM

[hereticx]

Got a pic of the packaging?

[Parak]

Yep. Scuse the blur ;p

Front
Back

[nibbler]

Nice..
damm i just bought the old version 2 months ago too.

Maybe this one has got better quality than the previous one cos it doesnt have the breakout box anymore?

[Hitcher]

Looks cheap and un-official to me.

It hasn't been swapped over has it?

[AlTheKiller]

QUOTE (Hitcher @ Oct 20 2004, 06:07 AM)

Looks cheap and un-official to me. It hasn't been swapped over has it?

 cheap?  the gauge of those wires looks to be about twice that of the first gen HD pack.  and the interconnects seem to be of much better quality too.
 the first gen was cheap, youve obviously never opened one up, looks quite hacked and the quality of the wires werent really upto snuff for a/v as far as im concerned.

and as for it being swapped, those blister packs are hard enough to open, let alone put back together in such a manner that someone wouldnt notice it.

[Hitcher]

Sorry, no offence intended, it just looks like the cheap PS2 one I've got.

Don't like the idea of the opitical out being on the Xbox end though - it'd mean me having to buy a longer cable.

[Mr Ed]

That's crazy.  I don't like that they give you male connectors instead of female because I swapped my cables out for much thicker/longer ones (my TV is far from my XBOX) and now you'd have to use like female to female adapters just to make the cables longer.  

Still, higher quality cables look nice.

[ChrisF]

I saw those used minus the packaging at GameStop the other day and was wondering who made them.  I can't get over the fact that they look 3rd party, when I saw the packaging the first thing that came to my mind was fake (not that the cabling doesn't look solid - it does).  Either way.  I don't know what goes into creating packaging but until I see those cables and official packaging at a regular store I'm kind of leary that it's first party.  I mean, doesn't buy.com do discount items?  If this is a new MSFT product (and there is a lot of demand because the original is very scarce right now), what is buy.com doing with a volume of first shipment pieces when BestBuy, CircuitCity, EBGames, GameStop and all the traditional MSFT outlets are stocked out.  That doesn't make sense.

EDIT - I checked their site.  They have a lot of XBox stuff.  Who knows but if this is brand new I still wonder why it's not in any store yet.

This post has been edited by ChrisF on Oct 20 2004, 08:19 PM

[hereticx]

If this is truely a MS product, hopefully more of them make it into the marketplace soon so we can find out if the video quality is better than the older breakout box. If it is, I know I'll be upgrading.

This post has been edited by hereticx on Oct 20 2004, 08:34 PM

[-FourDoor-]

Interesting set of cables. They do look befier than the original HDTV pack with the breakout box. Who knows, maybe they read our discussion here on the original HDTV cables and concluded as well that the breakout box does reduce PQ.

I'll wait till I see it officially advertised as well on xbox.com although the packaging looks pretty authentic to me. How much did the cables cost you Parak?

[Parak]

$20 after shipping and a 5% off coupon floating around on fatwallet. One thing to note, is that these cables solved my earlier problems of ghosting and bleeding that I had with the jandaman pack.

[hokiewalrus]

It is an official pack from MS.

I recently got a high-def TV so I went out to every store I could think of that might sell the high-def pack.

After a crappy experience with the Intec pack, it was back to more stores.

Finally, at the second Gamestop I went to they had the new high-def. The packaging is exactly the same as the earlier model. I was a little weary when I opened it since it looked different than the pictures I'd seen.

I plugged it in anyway and wow. It works great, the picture is rock solid and looks crystal clear in all resolutions. The cables themselves seem to be very high quality, they are quite thick and the interconnects are very nice.

Overall, great product.

[newbiemodder15]

what is the name of the pack so i know what to look for because i plan on getting a hdtv.

[ChrisF]

QUOTE (hokiewalrus @ Oct 21 2004, 01:08 AM)

It is an official pack from MS. I recently got a high-def TV so I went out to every store I could think of that might sell the high-def pack. After a crappy experience with the Intec pack, it was back to more stores. Finally, at the second Gamestop I went to they had the new high-def. The packaging is exactly the same as the earlier model. I was a little weary when I opened it since it looked different than the pictures I'd seen. I plugged it in anyway and wow. It works great, the picture is rock solid and looks crystal clear in all resolutions. The cables themselves seem to be very high quality, they are quite thick and the interconnects are very nice. Overall, great product.

 That alleviates my fear that buy.com got sold a bunch of knockoffs from someone claiming to have excess stock of MS HDTV kits.

It's nice to see MS respond to the cable critique.  I'm not by any means a member of the high-end cable brigade but cables at least need to be reasonably good and for $19 you simply can't manufacture a breakout box with solid terminals all around and a set of decent quality cables.  Of course the issue now is that people who need custom length runs are SOL without female adapters in the middle.  I sure wish someone made a higher end breakout box.  That mod where the guy put component outputs right on the back of the Xbox was intriguing but it is beyond my ability to do a smooth job and make it high quality.