The Complete High Definition Xbox Experience

Many of my recent sighs have been due to this issue, and now that I've found the solution to it, I just thought that I should share it with everyone. I didn't discover it mind you, but I doubt enough people know about it.

Otherwise I would have. Hee.

Presently, the deal is this. If you want HD video and surround sound output from your Xbox, ie. the full home theatre gaming experience, you either use component cables to wire the video out to your HDTV, and the optical output to wire to your home theatre system, or you wire a HDMI cable into your home theatre, and HDMI out from your home theatre console to input video into the TV. The problem is, component cables do anything but give you HD quality video, the available cables only give stereo, and HDMI in/out home theatre amps/consoles are not cheap. At least 2k.

One thing about my father is that even though he is very thrifty, when he wants to get something that would contribute to either bringing the family together (the home theatre for example will sit everyone down for a good movie together), he can splurge amounts of money even I find amazing. So cost would probably not have been an issue. The issue with him was that he was adamant about not having cables run across our hall, an inevitability for the rear speakers if a complete wired system is used. Understandable, because it poses a very very great danger for wires or even conduits to be lying smack across the hall, which we freely cross to get to the balcony, or my parents' favorite ironing spot. But it nevertheless grates on my audiophile ears. Wireless, knn! All the amps I've seen supporting HDMI in/out are wired systems, and none of the wireless systems I've seen support HDMI in/out. Oh de pain.

Here's the thing, companies will be set fire to if they release a HDTV without HDMI inputs, and most home theatre systems north of $800 (USD600) will have an audio optical input.

As if by fate, searching up on Xbox optical cable led me to this Youtube video.



All this genius does is pry off the plastic casing surrounding the component/composite/audio/optical port (and also just quite incidentally blocking the HDMI port) and suddenly there is space to fit both in together. So now I have my HDMI video output and my 5.1 optical audio output. Not the neatest solution, but it's a hack, and I don't believe in keeping things neat when one hacks. My dad just purchased the Sony DAV-FZ900 sound system after I ran a torturing test on it at the Wisma Atria Sony store and grilled the assistant, who thankfully knew his stuff.

Can't wait!