So I decided to hook up my Xbox 360 with VGA cables to my new Samsung 1080p HDTV, since the only way to get 1080p from HD-DVD with the console is to use VGA. Yeah, absolutely retarded, I know. Can you say HDMI cable? Anyway, I am among the close to 100% of VGA users who are experiencing issues. You either get washed out colors, extremely soft picture, or both. I’m experiencing the ridiculously soft picture quality. You can tell right away with the text in the dashboard looking muddy. Another huge problem I have is that the picture doesn’t seem to truely be 1920×1080. When you first turn it on, the image doesn’t fill the screen at all. There’s a 1-2″ black border around the whole screen. I was able to zoom the picture with the TV menus, but it still is not the same picture as the component video cables. You can tell it’s not zoomed in as far.

I’ve read a couple places where Microsoft outputs in a non-standard way over VGA, which is why people are having issues with VGA. Seriously, why the bloody fuck can’t Microsoft just put out an HDMI cable? This would solve just about every issue people with 1080p sets are having right now. My guess, which I would wager a good deal of money on at this point, is that the hardware just isn’t there to output digital video. Unless they update the hardware, there’s no chance of getting HDMI output on the 360. And I know for damn sure I’m not buying another one. If they could do it, they would have released one already to combat the only thing the PS3 has going for them.

[Update] I know a lot of people have no problems with the VGA connection on a computer monitor. I was referring to TVs here.