Xbox VGA Box by Neoya

The people over at Neoya were kind enough to send me a X2VGA adapter for the Xbox to play with. To explain what this device does is simple but the benefits themselves require a bit of chatting about High Definition TV signals to fully appreciate the beauty of what we have here. So first we'll give the quick explanation and then we'll get into the full benefits.

First of all, everyone should already know that by simply connecting a different cable to the "Audio Video Input/Output" connector, on the backside of the Xbox, you control what type of video display you can connect the Xbox to. There is an "RF module" which gives you the worst possible picture signal available but at least you can use it with your old TV sets. There is a "composite" which utilizes a single RCA jack connector for TV's equipped with this standard or in the backside of most VCR's and provides a step-up in video clarity over RF. Next you have "S-Video" which increases the clarity of your video signal by seperating video information and reduces the bleeding of colors. Last we have "Component" video which seperates your video signal into 3 independently shielded cables and will provide you with the best image quality out of your Xbox and allows for higher video modes called "High Definition" which we'll get into a little later in this article.

One display type that was not addressed was connecting your Xbox to a VGA computer monitor. Microsoft was probably trying to shed the mentality that the Xbox is a "computer" resold as a game console and the cost. Big mistake in my humble opinion.

Most of you probably have a standard TV set which is capable of producing 480 lines of vertical image data displayed each 1/30th of a second. The full pixel resolution of a standard NTSC television is actually 720 horizontally by 486 veritically interlaced if you were able to view the entire image (most cases you cannot). Also, television uses a technique called "interlacing" in which a full image actually takes twice as long to draw because half of it is displayed in one frame and then the other half is drawn in the next half essentially reducing your video image to 640 by 240 drawn every 1/60th of a second. High definition modes exceed this as shown in this chart:

So from the chart some might be asking, "what's the difference between 480i and 480p?" Well, 480p is actually refreshed at twice the speed of the 480i making it double the resolution. Most people should have noticed that a standard TV set will flicker, especially noticeable when you have a white background with black lines stretching horizontally across the screen. This is because the human eye can actually detect that refresh rate of 30 times a second. Aaaah, but 480p flicker is a different story and is very difficult to detect by us humans. The cool thing about the Xbox is nearly all of the 350 or so games available, as of this writing, utilize 480p. The PS2 has I believe under 10 games that currently can support the 480p mode (ouch!) So, this means you CAN GET double the resolution from an Xbox game over the PS2 version. If the game is made to support the higher video modes like "Enter the Matrix" available on all platforms, you can get 1080i resolution from the Xbox version while 480i comes from the PS2 version.

If you have a "High Definition TV" then you will receive all of these cool benefits that the Xbox offers. But, the prices of such television sets are a bit high pushing these benefits out of the way of the mainstream consumer, until now.

All of you Xbox owners that couldn't afford a High Definition TV, well you can start jumping for joy! Enter the X2VGA to save the day. This marvelous device brings all of the benefits that we just talked about to your computer VGA monitor and supporting all of the video modes that we just covered as well. The first time I saw Tao Feng across my 19" computer monitor I almost welled up with tears.

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