9 May 2007

Dashboard Update!

The VGA level fix in the 360 dashboard update did wonders to the picture quality for my setup. Before the update I had the choice to connect my 360 to my TV (Sony) either through component or through VGA. Component has beautiful colors but fine detail wasn't perfect (there were slight artifacts around characters for instance). The VGA picture is extremely smooth and detailed, but had washed out colors on my TV. Also: component doesn't upscale DVDs, so the TV switches back to PAL (576p or so) and does the "upscaling" itself (which really looks crappy on my TV). DVD playback through VGA nicely upscales to 720 or 1080 (the latter doesn't make sense with my TV since it only has a 720 panel). So before the update I could either have nice colors, but slight artifacts, or a perfectly smooth picture with poor colors. The dashboard update fixes the VGA colors, and upscaled DVDs look perfect now (better then my old upscaling DVD player with HDMI I'd say). No reason to get that Elite now for its HDMI output :) Oh and the other new stuff is pretty cool too I guess, switching blades feels more responsive now, and it's now easier to find stuff on the marketplace.