Without an HDTV, is it worth buying a 360?

[Turbo_Squish]

I'm sure this has been asked before, but bear with me: I don't own an HDTV and may not for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, is it worth buying a 360 if all I'm going to be hooking it up to is a 27" Trinitron? I'm wondering if there are other 360 owners out there in the OS community that are still playing on standard def sets. If so, do you notice a substantial difference between the 360 and the original Xbox? Also, does standard def 4:3 impact the way you play certain games (i.e. are there crucial things happening off screen that you'd see with a 16:9 HDTV)?

I'm so tempted to buy a 360 because I love XBL and a lot of the sports games, but $500 is a lot of cash to drop on something if it's not going to play nice with my TV.

Thanks.

[ExtremeGamer]

Yes, it still looks good, not as good as HDTV, but it looks good.

Another alternative is get the VGA cable for the 360 and play it on your PC monitor, you'll get HD visuals that way.

[spankdatazz22]

Quote: Originally Posted by Turbo_Squish

I'm so tempted to buy a 360 because I love XBL and a lot of the sports games, but $500 is a lot of cash to drop on something if it's not going to play nice with my TV. Thanks.

Wondering if you have the same Sony I have - mine is going on 10yrs old now

I was playing on a SD tv until only recently myself. You'll still see a big upgrade in graphics between XBox1 and 360 even w/o a hi-def tv, as EG said. Games like Gears or Lost Planet are still beautiful. NBA2K7's colors still "pop" and look great; GRAW still looks amazing in SD. Madden is one game where the aspect ratio is a little more "pronounced" - I never really liked how it looks/plays in SD; in HD it's a little more tolerable (if only a little more lol). Outside of the text in some games being a little difficult to read easily, you won't be missing crucial details. Saint's Row will still be a huge upgrade from the GTA games of PS2/XBox1.

I'd recommend taking the plunge; I played 360 games for 8-9 months in SD and enjoyed the games immensely. Once you're able to bump up to HD it'll make the games that much more enjoyable and replayable again because you'll notice so many details that went unnoticed in SD

[funky_chicken]

It is worth it to buy a 360 even with a SD TV. I have one with a SD TV. I will be hooking it up to a LCD monitor in the next few days which is an option if you can't afford a HDTV.

[dl2518]

It's worth it. I have played my 360 on a 27" Phillips standard TV since I owned mine last June and it still looks great. Of course HD is better, which I plan on upgrading to soon, but it's still a lot better then the regular XBox.

[Turbo_Squish]

My Sony is about 6 years old. It was a pretty nice TV back when I bought it, and for an SDTV I think it still has a very nice picture.

The LCD monitor is a good suggestion, except that all my computers are laptops, so I'd have to go out and buy one. Plus I'd like to play a 360 from my couch with my surround sound system, so a monitor wouldn't work all that well in that set-up. But thanks nonetheless.

NBA 2K7 is interesting because I have the Xbox version and I've seen the 360 version in HD. Obviously the difference was mind blowing. What I haven't seen is the 360 version in SD. If it still looked significantly better, that would be a big plus.

Are there any sites out there with screenshot comparisons of 360 games in SD and HD? I came across one on Engadget of Madden, but that's it. Something like that would be very helpful.

[spankdatazz22]

Quote: Originally Posted by Turbo_Squish

NBA 2K7 is interesting because I have the Xbox version and I've seen the 360 version in HD. Obviously the difference was mind blowing. What I haven't seen is the 360 version in SD. If it still looked significantly better, that would be a big plus. Are there any sites out there with screenshot comparisons of 360 games in SD and HD? I came across one on Engadget of Madden, but that's it. Something like that would be very helpful.

NBA2K7 360 will look substantially better than the XBox version for you on SD - the difference is huge imo. My opinion of next gen Madden isn't high to begin with so take that into mind. But in Madden, in HD widescreen, you see more of the field. When under center, on SD you don't see the receivers unless you force the camera to pan out I think - you just don't see as much of the field. Once the ball is hiked, I think you do though. Someone did a comparison on Maddenmania awhile back.

[jpup]

yes.