xbox to monitor? X2VGA

[bongopukerat]

I know this is sort of crossing the border between console and PC gaming, but these forums have some extremely knowledgable people on it.

I have a viewsonic 20.1 inch widescreen monitor. I want to take advantage of it and play some games in a higher setting than my tv can support. (mostly xbox games)

Is this my best option?
http://www.x2vga.com/

Do you think it'll work on a widescreen monitor? Any thoughts, opinions, or whatever will be appreciated. Thanks!

Oh one more thing. Would it be playing it in DVI or VGA? Or is that up to me? What would be better?
I really don't know much about this at all so any insight will be appreciated.

[FudgeNuggets]

Looks like a fair deal seeing as how the 360's VGA cable is $50 alone, it should work great for an Xbox1, ps2 or Gamcube which are all 480p, but you'd need a hell of a monitor to do 1080i (1920x1080). It says it has 2 component inputs, but I would double-check before purchasing to be sure that those component inputs can double as COMPOSITE inputs as well. There is a BIG difference and COMPOSITE is what Xbox1, GC and PS2 use, not component.

[bongopukerat]

So my current TV is a 27inch ESA. There's nothing special about it so it can probably only display 480i right? (I'm really new at this and not sure what all these numbers/letters mean)

I'm going to use Halo 2 as an example now since it's what I'll be playing the most. It can support 480p IF the TV can support that right? My tv cannot support that but my monitor can?
And 480p looks a lot better than 480i? And even if i wanted, I couldn't run it in a mode any higher than 480p because Halo 2 doesn't support anything above that?

And one more thing...In the FAQ section it has this question:
Can the X2VGA 2 work with LCD monitors?
The last sentence is this: The possibility to work in 1080i mode reaches 85% among the 17" or above LCD monitors, especially for those manufactured in recent two years.

Does a monitor HAVE to support 1920x1080 to run 1080i? If so, what kind of a 17" lcd would support 1920x1080?

Last question (and it's an important one) How does Halo 2 work with a widescreen?
Does it stretch the image?
Two black bars?
Or does it have full support for widescreen and actually give you a wider viewing space?

Thanks a ton!

[SuperFarStucker]

480i is interlaced 480 scanline (actually 525) NTSC. i.e. it alternates between painting odd and even scanlines every vblank (29.97 Hz). I guess this works because of image persistence etc. It takes a lot less bandwidth to do 480i because your only drawing half of each frame. I guess this makes a big difference when it comes to steering circuitry etc.

480p is 480 scanline progressive, i.e. every scanline is drawn each vblank. This looks much better for text. All PC driven monitors are ran in a 'progressive' mode. So as you probably guessed 720p is 720 drawn scanline progressive and 1080 is 1080 drawn scanline interlaced. These correspond to 640x480 1280x720 and 1920x1080

[FudgeNuggets]

There aren't a whole lot of monitors out there that'll do 1920x1080(1080i or p) and the ones that are are pretty expensive. most monitors out there can do 720p though. I recommend holding off for a few months and getting an LCD TV or go ahead now and get a tube-tv that'll do 1080i. Wal-Mart has a 32" Phillips for $599US that'll do it.