Component & HDMI PQ comparison (PS3/360)

steven123steven123 Posts: 3,235
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Basically, I have a PS4 pre-ordered and am hoping to receive it on or slightly after launch. However, I won't be getting rid of my X Box 360 or PS3 as I still use these a lot but with the other HDMI devices I have I am running out of HDMI sockets on my receiver so was thinking of putting the PS3 or 360 on component if the picture quality didn't suffer too much.

I happened to have a PS3 component cable already so decided to try it. While it works fine and the picture is still 'good' colours seemed noticeably less vivid, text less sharp (with a tiny bit of ghosting around text) and the picture had a (very small) black line down the left side as if it needed shifting a little to the left a few pixels. It also couldn't support 1080P, which I get over HDMI, though I don't mind that in itself so much as few games can do that natively.

So overall, I found component disappointing on PS3 compared to HDMI, which is surprising as I thought (lack of 1080P aside) it could give comparable quality?

I looked in the PS3 video settings but while there are various options for HDMI I couldn't see anything that might let me tweak picture on the component output, unless I'm missing something?

I haven't got the component lead for the 360 but wondered if it might produce a better picture over component since the 360 was originally built to output analogue video? (early revisions had no HDMI). Alternatively, my TV does have an unused VGA if a VGA lead is likely to offer better quality than component?

Comments

  • OMTTOMTT Posts: 5,459
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    Get yourself a HDMI switch so you can plug more than one HDMI lead into the same input
  • Banana RamaBanana Rama Posts: 3,158
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    component won't be as good quality as hdmi, so it is up to you...
  • Matt DMatt D Posts: 13,153
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    I've used component, VGA, and HDMI for my 360.

    The 360 can do 1080p for games over component and VGA, and can upscale DVDs to 1080p over VGA (but not over component).

    I found VGA on the 360 to be sharper than component. With the default settings the colours don't look as good as component, but that can easily be fixed by changing the reference levels to "expanded" in the display settings.
  • steven123steven123 Posts: 3,235
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    Matt D wrote: »

    I found VGA on the 360 to be sharper than component. With the default settings the colours don't look as good as component, but that can easily be fixed by changing the reference levels to "expanded" in the display settings.

    Thanks, I get the impression the 360 on VGA might be the way to go as I would like to keep 1080P if possible. Will try and get hold of an official VGA cable on eBay (heard the 3rd party ones can be variable quality?)
  • steven123steven123 Posts: 3,235
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    OMTT wrote: »
    Get yourself a HDMI switch so you can plug more than one HDMI lead into the same input

    Yeah, beginning to think I might be best doing this actually, just noticed this in another thread: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005SP6ARO/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 seems amazingly cheap for a remote controlled HDMI switch, I doubt I could get a decent quality VGA cable for the 360 for the same price....

    Would be a bit more clutter behind the TV with the extra HDMI cables but as it's already like a spiders web behind there with all the cables already there I guess it doesn't really matter.
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