I recently got hold of a cheap Xbox 360E console, it's the latest one with the HDMI out and little 3.5mm camera type output to RCA jacks. It was listed as having faulty HDMI but working over the RCA jacks.

I was kind of taking a punt on it hoping I might be able to get it fully working quite easily or that the problem was just caused by a bad HDMI lead as I had gotten lucky this way once before with a graphics card, which actually had nothing wrong with it.

Unfortunately the HDMI really does seem faulty on the 360 as it will display fine for flicking through the menus but as soon as you ask it to run anything (e.g. dvd or game) it just freezes on the Xbox logo, which should normally only display for a second.

If I display through the RCA all functions on the machine work but only in standard definition composite (yuck!)

If I keep the display settings on PAL50 it is fully watchable (if not great) but unfortunately most games and apps require PAL60 to work. Here lies the problem, when I set PAL60 the picture degrades and sharp/contrasting lines get a weird double image. It's like ghosting on analogue TV but instead of the lines just being slightly off, which you can get used to, they are way off, which is extremely distracting. It doesn't happen at all on PAL50.

I think it may be related to the processing on the (LCD) TV but I have tried turning all image enhancement settings off and tried with and without the 3D comb filter on (on is actually worse). I know the TV can do PAL60 as it has a dedicated mode for this but unfortunately setting this doesn't help either.

Why would using PAL60 cause this effect, when PAL50 is fine? Is it somehow more demanding?

and is there any (low cost) way I could get rid of it? Would using one of those Composite/Scart to HDMI boxes help at all?

Any help greatly appreciated.

You either need to...

Try the TV with a known good working PAL60 source.

Try the Xbox with a known working TV (ie one you know displays PAL60 OK from other sources)

That will tell you if the TV has a problem handling PAL60 or it is the output of the Xbox.

You need to check that the Xbox is outputting video OK otherwise you may be wasting your time buying extra boxes that likely won't cure the problem. If it turns out to be the TV then an HDMI converter may solve the problem but there are no absolutes with this.

Ideally you should try the TV with a 60Hz source over HDMI just to ensure it is OK and does not have an inherent problem with 60Hz material regardless of how it gets into the telly.

I think the problem is related to the TV's processing as I did briefly try the 360 on my old Sony 28" Widescreen CRT and it displayed fine at 60HZ on that, though I don't know if that was partly down to the smaller screen size (the LCD is 37") and the fact that CRTs are generally much more forgiving of poorer input sources. That said if the problem was inherent to the Xbox 360 then at least some of the artefacting would have shown on the CRT right?

Regarding the LCD, I do use it with various other sources over HDMI, all which are fine e.g. I use a Chromecast 2 and a Youview box on it and they display perfectly so could it simply be the LCD TV is really bad at handling the analogue SD inputs and that some kind of external converter/scaler would help?

If so it then is a case of finding one cheap enough to be worthwhile since it's still only going to be SD quality afterall....