I recently bought a 22" LCD Acer on Black Friday this model


Acer X223WDB I have read good reviews, As a PC monitor via DVI its great no complaints.

Problem comes when I hook up my 360 via VGA, which many people have said looks wonderfull. And now with the new NXE update supporting 16:10 and 1680x1050 resolutions Natively I thought I could not go wrong. Also I have name brand the official Microsoft VGA cables

When I select the 1680x1050 resolution it look fine with some small black bars at top and bottom. Also I have access to 1920x1080 and many others. But when playing any games there are way too many Jaggies.

IS it something I am doing wrong. ? I've seen good HDTV's and its not supposed to look like this.

Also happens on all resolutions just as bad.:mad: even 1680x1050

heres a small example


ww.flickr.com/photos/korpios/1805865011/ add htt p ://w


I have my guess but what does AVS think?

The link to your picture is bad. What game is it that's giving you problems? Some games have more jaggies than others due to lack of AA. Also you are probably sitting very close to the screen which enhances and jaggies that are there.

The game is still being rendered at 1280x720, then the 360 is scaling it to 1680x1050. Additionally, being a monitor I'm guessing you are sitting about 2 feet away from it? Yup, that will make aliasing far more noticable. And finally, Portal is a high contrast game. High contrast transitions, like bright lines on a dark background, will help show aliasing far easier than a more uniformly contrasted game like Gears Of War.

You have it set up right, it will just take you a couple days to learn to ignore it.

What about 1:1 Pixel mapping

if the 360 supports 1680x1050 Natively then it should just output that signal with no more scaling by the monitor.

Is my Monitor doing its own scaling to the image?


it does look much better when I step back a foot or so I am close.

some games do look better Gears 2 is passable but Call of Duty 4 is unplayable its just no supposed to look that way.

Use dvi and you will notice a big difference. Vga is analog and dvi is digital. You are after all using a digital display. Match things up. I also have a Acer widescreen monitor and dvi looks so much better and crisp compared to vga. I would use vga for your pc and dvi for your 360.

"Use dvi and you will notice a big difference. Vga is analog and dvi is digital. You are after all using a digital display. Match things up. I also have a Acer widescreen monitor and dvi looks so much better and crisp compared to vga. I would use vga for your pc and dvi for your 360."

The VGA to digital converters inside of PC LCDs have been very good for a very long time now. Further, the native resolution is only available on VGA and not on HDMI, so the LCD's scaler would be doing the work. Without even looking at the display I can tell you that the 360's scaler is better, as bad scalers in PC LCDs are almost universal, and are a definite within any of the Tier 1 OEM's displays.

Bad advice.

"Call of Duty 4 is unplayable its just no supposed to look that way."

COD4 is rendered at 1024x600 on the 360. Load up a PC game and have it display at 1024x600 or 1024x768 on your monitor. It will look very similar in regards to jagginess.

Wrong. When you use a hdmi-dvi cable with the monitor having a DVI port. You can select the native resolution of your monitor. I can do it with mine using vga or dvi. Now if the monitor only has a HDMI port. Then you would need to select 480i, 480, 720p etc. Using DVI. You can select actual pc resolutions with the 360. How can you say I gave bad advice?

"Use dvi and you will notice a big difference. Vga is analog and dvi is digital. You are after all using a digital display. Match things up. I also have a Acer widescreen monitor and dvi looks so much better and crisp compared to vga. I would use vga for your pc and dvi for your 360."

The VGA to digital converters inside of PC LCDs have been very good for a very long time now. Further, the native resolution is only available on VGA and not on HDMI, so the LCD's scaler would be doing the work. Without even looking at the display I can tell you that the 360's scaler is better, as bad scalers in PC LCDs are almost universal, and are a definite within any of the Tier 1 OEM's displays.

Bad advice.

"Call of Duty 4 is unplayable its just no supposed to look that way."

COD4 is rendered at 1024x600 on the 360. Load up a PC game and have it display at 1024x600 or 1024x768 on your monitor. It will look very similar in regards to jagginess.

Korn is technically correct on this one, HDMI and VGA both allow PC type resolutions, even when using HDMI>HDMI. It depends on the display and what type of info it sends to the console, for example on my DLP I get no options for PC resolutions, only the standard NTSC ones. BUt on my smaller 27" Olevia LCD I can choose the NTSC types, plus the common PC resolutions when using HDMI>HDMI.

"When you use a hdmi-dvi cable with the monitor having a DVI port. You can select the native resolution of your monitor."

Well hot diggity! You win. :)

Not necessarily, you can select resolutions using an hdmi to dvi cable, but in another thread on this board, most members came to the conclusion that ONLY vga outputs 0-255 pc levels correctly. Using the HDMI port only expands the 16-235 video levels to 0-255, which is not the same thing. For the most accurate colors and for all shades of black and white, use VGA until Microsoft releases a patch to correct the HDMI reference levels.

So bottom line, is the guy should try the DVI option to see if it's sharper than using VGA.

Update: I just got home from trying it out on my buddys 1080p Toshiba Regza.

basically looks the same as on my LCD I freaked out about nothing. We tried HDMI VGA and Component on his TV. All have the same jaggies you just need to sit 6-7 feet away from the HDTV to see them less. His colors were a bit brighter and deeper blacks but overall Its the same ish. We sit 1 foot away from out PC LCD's I will just have to move back a foot more.

Note my Acer X223WDB does not have HDMI just DVi and VGA. But I will try your suggestion to hook uo the 360 via DVI and the PC via VGA.

I will need a VGA to DVI adapter, Monorprice time.

Just wish I had an HD Tube CRT display Tube CRT would make everything look so much better.


I am still wondering if I am telling my 360 to output 1680x1050 natively my LCD which has a Native resolution of 1680x1050 should not be doing any of its own scaling at all right?

And secondly, I am given the 1080p option 1920x1080 via VGA but It looks just the same as 1680x1050 to me.


Since its a Native 1680x1050 Panel and the 360 now supports that the 360 adds small very thin black bars at the top and bottom. to compensate for the 16:10 and make it 16:9 a nice trick,(when 1080p is selected there are no black bars) Looks better IMO.

Luckily I got an LCD panel with the most uniform ccfl back lighting I have ever seen, Like no backlight bleed and perfectly uniform and no dead pixels.

I will need a VGA to DVI adapter, Monorprice time.


No, you need an HDMI to DVI cable. A VGA to DVI adapter would be a waste of money, especially since you'd still be outputting VGA which would defeat the purpose. If you don't have HDMI out on your 360 then just stick with VGA, if there's a difference it's minuscule. You've already seen that it's going to be jaggy no matter what you do anyway.


Just wish I had an HD Tube CRT display Tube CRT would make everything look so much better.

Personal nitpick. CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube so saying Tube CRT is redundant. But yea, high-end HD CRTs own.

One aspect that has been over looked here is that it will depend upon the display and how it handles the signal . Many digital displays will not pixel map via VGA but will with DVI/HDMI (of course many will do both) . Some displays will have a better VGA connected image once some careful calibration is done with the displays timing/phase settings and some test patterns (if the display offers these settings ... YMMV) .

- Jason

meh I'm just pissed the public has been sold on a myth the LCD HDTV Plasma is better than Tube CRT HD Displays. Having tried out a few HD Tube CRT;s booth for gaming and Bluray. I can now see just how inferior LCD and Plasma really are. How horribly they render SDTV and a very jaggy picture.

How horribly they render SDTV and a very jaggy picture

Probably because "HD" displays were not designed for SD. The public was sold on the displays vs heavy ass tubes. Now that the prices have been affordable why would anyone want to go back to a limited screen heavy set tube? Why would the companies reinvest? They see the times have changed too. It has been over 10 years now.
Time to let go.

Despite the loss in colour and blackness (generaly speaking)I still prefer flat panels. I can't comment on PJ as I've only had one which is 3LCD and never seen a DLP projector (to my knowledge)
I don't really care about ink black. If somethings ink black theres no detail, as for ink black borders on movies (say a 16:9 screen a on 2.45:1 movie) its not worth the extra money for say a Kuro. Or the much smaller screen then a flat planel or projector.

Despite the loss in colour and blackness (generaly speaking)I still prefer flat panels. I can't comment on PJ as I've only had one which is 3LCD and never seen a DLP projector (to my knowledge)
I don't really care about ink black. If somethings ink black theres no detail, as for ink black borders on movies (say a 16:9 screen a on 2.45:1 movie) its not worth the extra money for say a Kuro. Or the much smaller screen then a flat planel or projector.

I think you're confusing deep black levels with black crush. Two different things. Black levels are just that: how dark anything black on screen is. Black crush is when a display has difficulty showing detail in dark areas on screen because it can't handle gradients at the lower end of the gamma scale very well. High-end CRT's were capable of both producing very deep inky blacks while at the same time excelling at displaying shadow detail. LCDs are just the opposite, even the best black levels on an LCD won't compare to what the old CRTs could produce and they generally crush blacks. Some worse than others. Plasma is catching up and Pioneer's Kuro line is actually comparable to a CRT. I'm still patiently waiting on OLED though, it will be like a return to the promised land.

I love my LCD but I'm not gonna lie, the black levels leave something to be desired and I'm clearly losing detail in darker material. I rate it about average in both departments. If it was one of Sony's good Trinitron's I'd be getting real blacks and no black crush.