Xbox 360 connected to PC monitor, but it's soft/blurry

I’ve got a 360 hooked up to a 22" monitor with a native resolution of 1680x1050, I notice the image is quite soft and/or blurry compared to when it’s hooked up to the HDTV. I know this is what happens to PC games when they are played at a significantly lower resolution than the native, but is there any way to get around this with the 360? Any setting that I might be missing that increases the resolution or the sharpness of the image?

What do you have it set to in the 360’s display settings? If it’s via the VGA adapter, you can switch the settings to something closer to your native resolution.

What monitor? Maybe you can set it to 1:1 pixel mapping for 720p games. Black bars all over but no stretching.

I made this thread before I updated my system to the new dashboard which now lists my monitor’s native resolution, however if there is an improvement it is minimal. Still doesn’t look nearly as clear as on an HDTV.

I have the Samsung SyncMaster T220.

Do you guys use your 360 your PC monitor?

What cable are you using for the input to the monitor? I would think the monitor would auto-set its resolution to the signal, the same way most HDTVs will auto-detect the resolution coming from a computer hooked up via DVI>HDMI.

The MS VGA cables, the resolution isn’t the problem I don’t believe because both the 360 and my monitor say the correct resolution.

It looks great on my PC monitor (a Dell 2005FPW at 1680x1050), but I did find that the native resolution option did look a bit fuzzier. Resolutions like that are approaching the upper end of VGA bandwidth limits, though going through a KVM probably didn’t help any.

I found it actually looks best for me when set to 1280x768. (1280x720 should have worked as well, but looks really dark and washed out for some unknown reason.)

I have mine hooked up to my 20.1 dell monitor as well. It looks very good using the MS VGA conector.

I have mine hooked up to a Dell 27" via the component cables. It looks great.

Mine’s hooked up with VGA to my Dell 2407. Looks awesome. Even though the monitor’s native resolution is 1920x1200, that options isn’t available on the dashboard, so I use 1680x1050.

I’m not saying it doesn’t look good, necessarily. I just feel like the image is not as sharp a on an HDTV. Have you guys had extensive time playing the 360 on an HDTV?

Do you sit as close to your HDTV as you do to your monitor? If your HDTV is doing the upconverting it might be doing a better job than your monitor. Also if your HDTV is only something like 1366x768 it will look better upconverting a 1280x720 signal to that than to a 1680x1050 monitor.

Again, see if you can get a 1:1 pixel mode and set the 360 to something like 1280x720.

I have a Samsung T240 which I connect my 360 to via HDMI.

I noticed that if I changed the AV Mode to “Off”, the picture was greatly improved. However, this setting may only impact the HDMI connection and not the VGA connection, though I haven’t played around with it.

Why are you not using DVI or HDMI? I’m surprised that anyone gets a decent image at all with VGA at that resolution.

Well, my PC currently uses the DVI port for one. Also, my monitor doesn’t support HDMI. Perhaps that is the problem? Although everyone else says everything looks fine for them through VGA.

One option would be to use an HDMI-to-DVI adapter and route them both through a KVM.

But seriously, try a lower resolution like 1280x768 and see if that helps. You wouldn’t lose any detail in games since 99% of them are rendering to 1280x720 or lower anyway, and higher VGA resolutions do tend to introduce ghosting and fuzziness and other artifacts, and your monitor’s scaler might be just as good as the 360’s.

I’ve already tried lower resolutions with almost the exact same result in reach case, a noticeably lower level of sharpness than I would be seeing on an HDTV. I’m beginning to suspect it’s my personal standards that are differentiating me from everyone else.

I’m beginning to suspect you won’t make the necessary effort to probably diagnose this problem. I don’t care if your PC is using the DVI port and you only have HDMI out of the 360. Get a damn adapter from monoprice for $10 and try it to rule out the VGA cable. Have you done the 1:1 pixel mapping option on your monitor like I told you? Did you find out what your TV resolution is yet?

This is basic problem solving; “it looks fuzzy and I’ve tried everything” is not.

1:1 pixel mapping is automatic, from what I’ve researched. . I haven’t tried the DVI adaptor yet.

It won’t look at sharp as it would on an HDTV because even after the recent dashboard update, the 360 is still having to upconvert the signal to your monitor’s resolution, which is not the same as changing the resolution setting in a PC game. The 360 doesn’t actually render the games in that higher resolution, so any fuzziness you’re noticing is due to that. So if you’re comparing the picture to what you’d get on an HDTV, you’ll likely never be satisfied without changing to a lower resolution monitor.

So yeah, it’s likely an issue of you expecting it to look better than it can. I went through the same thing when I first bought my 360 and tried to use it on an LCD monitor. It definitely wasn’t a setup issue, just an expectation issue.