HDMI - Worth it?

[Quindiana Jones]

I reckon this should go here. It's a general gaming question. If not, meh. I wanna get as many opinions as possible, and this place is much more crowded than the Help Forum.

Anyway, I have a 360 and a TV which are both HDMI compatible. Should I buy a cable? Why?

At the moment, I have two reasons. Firstly, because the internet told me to. Reviews etc. all say how awesome HDMI is, but I'd rather hear experiences from you guys. The second reason is just because I'm lazy. I'd put the HDMI with the 360, and the scart with the PS2, rather than having to play with wires when I want to play PS2 games. Personally, I think that's a good enough reason on it's own.

So, yeah. Pros and cons of HDMI please. Do you use it? Any noticeable difference? Worth the money? Thanks.

[LunarWeaver]

I thought the 360 came with both. Like it splits and one set of three is ty and one set of three is HDMI or something. I don't know!

[Ouch!]

Given that you can get the cables so bloody cheap online, there's really no reason not to.

[Magixion]

I have used both HDMI and the HD component cables and didn't really notice a difference at all. I ended up just switching back to the components though because I hook the sound up to my stereo and that was the easiest way to. I believe it is all personal preference though.

[Quindiana Jones]

Yeah, my TV's a bit spazzy and doesn't have any plugs for the HD part of the component that came with my 360, yet it has a juicy HDMI. That's pretty much why I thought up the HDMI thing. I wouldn't bother if it weren't for the PS2.

[Slothy]

Depends on what the resolution of your TV is. If it maxes at 720p then don't bother. Component cables come with the 360 and the max resolution they support is 720p. You'd need an HDMI cable for full 1080p, but most 360 games don't support this natively anyway.

If you do decide to get an HDMI cable out of laziness though (can't blame you, it's half the reason I did) and decide to go for something cheap, make sure it isn't super long. I'd assume you probably only need one a few feet long anyway, but some of the cheaper cables can have signal degradation the longer they get and you don't want that spoiling the HD image.

[Quindiana Jones]

That's pretty much exactly what has been going through my head, Vivi. Cheers very much.

[Iceglow]

I work selling games, HDMI cabling, Blu-Ray ect and I used to sell HD TV's now this is my opinion based on years of exprience.

HD-Component (thats the green red and blue ends on the standard xbox 360 cable) is a slighty outdated system though as stated makes a stereo hook-up easier. The image quality is slightly lower on the technical scale but you'll never really notice it we're talking like a 1 - 3% quality change. The human eye cannot track it really.

Now is it worth hooking up your 360 to your TV through HDMI? Frankly YES. I get to watch Blu-Ray on both SD and HD tv's and well the visual quality increases about 5x you won't really notice sitting right on top of it but from about 2 meters away you'll notice the image is really much more vibrant. Now whilst the 360 doesn't support Blu-Ray it does do HD nicely, I remember seeing Gears on a HD TV for the first time and just falling in love with the quality. HMDI is totally worth it and I know when I get a HD TV I am certainly going to get HDMI!

[Mirage]

I know there is a huuuuge difference on my PS3, from standard playstation AV-composite cable (audio left/right+ one cable for video) to HDMI. But even an analogue RGB component (three cables for video instead of one + audio l/r) cable is a zillion times better than component. I got the latter for my PS2 and the signal quality got incredibly much better.

[JKTrix]

Using the HDMI input also frees up one of the composite/component inputs on your TV to put something else in there. If you have a lot of different things, it will help there too.

3 HDMI devices here... 'sall good.