I just recently purchased a 24" Dell 2407 (rev A03) widescreen monitor specifically to play games on and thought I’d share my thoughts on it so far, and maybe ask for any opinions. I have seen a lot of conflicting information on the web about this monitor, so maybe this will help somebody. Now that the fall update (2006) for the 360 has been released, you can see the 1080p resolution in the 360’s display options. I first tried this option with the monitor hooked up by the component cable that came with the 360, it appears that the monitor’s component chip will not accept a 1080p signal. It gave me an error saying that it could not display the input resolution. This is probably due to the monitor’s designers anticipating that anything coming into component will not be more than 720 because of the coming hdcp restrictions. The 720p option does work with component however.

I was curious to see what resolutions the 360 will offer with a vga cable so I went to Circuit City and got it. The vga cable unlocks some other resolutions for the 360. Some of them are the equivalent to the 720p and 1080p signals, just with a different designation such as 1280×720 or 1920×1080. Other resolutions are the 1024×768, and the WXGA resolutions, one being 1360×768. I first tried the 1280×720 setting. Now let me tell you, the signal on vga looks eons better than the component, at least on this monitor. I don’t quite know why this is, as component and vga are supposed to be very similar. The color on the vga looks a little less pronounced than on the component. The component looked super saturated and I had to turn down the color. The vga had no artifacts and the resolutions looked much cleaner.

I turned up the 360’s resolution to the new 1920×1080 vga resolution offered after the fall update. It looked horrible on this monitor. As far as I can tell, the monitor is downscaling the resolution to something like 720p, and then it’s producing these lines or banding artifacts in some colors on the screen. It is quite noticeable in the xbox 360’s dashboard. I will get to why I think this is happening later.

UPDATE: I have found a workaround to the 1080p problem I was having earlier. Apparently it is known that turning the sharpness to 30 will get rid of most of your 2407 resolution problems. When I did this, the artifacts disappeared and I am now getting a full 1080p signal to the monitor through VGA. The only thing left to be desired is a 1:1 aspect ratio, but I will put up with the slight stretching, as I feel a lot better now that the 1080 signal is coming through fine.

The monitor’s aspect ration is 16:10, as most people know the signal coming out of the 360 is 16:9. The question most people ask is will their monitor stretch the signal to make it fit, or will there be the two black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The 2407 gives you the option to choose. As far as the 1360×768 vga resolution, I found it slightly better than 720p, and it’s a little closer to the 16:10 of my monitor. I found the options [1:1, aspect, fit] in the Dell’s settings. Where ‘1:1’ will do an exact 1 to 1 pixel image, it produces a smaller image on the screen; ‘aspect’ will reproduce the image with no stretching and with bars at the top and bottom; ‘fit’ will stretch the image to fit the screen. Now, I noticed that the 1920×1080 vga signal does not have the option to change these settings and it is stuck on fit. This is frustrating, as it may be part of the problem of why it looks so bad in this resolution.

I finally settled on the vga cable with 1360×768 using the ‘aspect’ option on the Dell. It looks fantastic, as I get a little better than 720p for less than 700 bucks.

UPDATE: I settled on 1920×1080 signal through the vga cable.
The only gripe I have right now with this setup is that the color settings are maxed. I prefer to have the option of increasing it if I wanted to. Also a choice for 1:1 aspect ratio in 1080 would be nice.

Screen Lag: I have tried a few games on this monitor and have not noticed any perceivable screen lag so far. This is make or break for me because I have not ever been able to compensate my gameplay for lag; some people can; I can’t. I have heard horror stories of people buying great TV’s, only to find out when they get them home that the lag is terrible. I used Halo 2 as a test and I still have not detected screen lag, which in my case is a good thing.

For the price I think this monitor performs pretty well with the 360. I probably plan on migrating this monitor over to my computer one day, and I couldn’t do that with a TV. I am much awaiting an Xbox dvi cable to see what happens when I connect that, but until then, I think I’ll be fine. If any of you THX’ers know of a better display for the price, let me know, as I am not against returning the Dell if there’s something better out there.

Compatible resolutions between the Xbox 360 and the Dell 2407 (rev A03):

1280×720
720p, VGA-Yes, Component-Yes

1280×768
WXGA *, VGA-Yes, Component-NA

1280×1024
SXGA, VGA-Yes, Component-NA

1360×768
WXGA * VGA-Yes, Component-NA

1920×1080
1080p, VGA-Yes (in ‘Fit’ mode), Component-No

I just recently purchased a 24" Dell 2407 (rev A03) widescreen monitor specifically to play games on and thought I’d share my thoughts on it so far, and maybe ask for any opinions. I have seen a lot of conflicting information on the web about this monitor, so maybe this will help somebody. Now that the fall update (2006) for the 360 has been released, you can see the 1080p resolution in the 360’s display options. I first tried this option with the monitor hooked up by the component cable that came with the 360, it appears that the monitor’s component chip will not accept a 1080p signal. It gave me an error saying that it could not display the input resolution. This is probably due to the monitor’s designers anticipating that anything coming into component will not be more than 720 because of the coming hdcp restrictions. The 720p option does work with component however.

I was curious to see what resolutions the 360 will offer with a vga cable so I went to Circuit City and got it. The vga cable unlocks some other resolutions for the 360. Some of them are the equivalent to the 720p and 1080p signals, just with a different designation such as 1280×720 or 1920×1080. Other resolutions are the 1024×768, and the WXGA resolutions, one being 1360×768. I first tried the 1280×720 setting. Now let me tell you, the signal on vga looks eons better than the component, at least on this monitor. I don’t quite know why this is, as component and vga are supposed to be very similar. The color on the vga looks a little less pronounced than on the component. The component looked super saturated and I had to turn down the color. The vga had no artifacts and the resolutions looked much cleaner.

I turned up the 360’s resolution to the new 1920×1080 vga resolution offered after the fall update. It looked horrible on this monitor. As far as I can tell, the monitor is downscaling the resolution to something like 720p, and then it’s producing these lines or banding artifacts in some colors on the screen. It is quite noticeable in the xbox 360’s dashboard. I will get to why I think this is happening later.

UPDATE: I have found a workaround to the 1080p problem I was having earlier. Apparently it is known that turning the sharpness to 30 will get rid of most of your 2407 resolution problems. When I did this, the artifacts disappeared and I am now getting a full 1080p signal to the monitor through VGA. The only thing left to be desired is a 1:1 aspect ratio, but I will put up with the slight stretching, as I feel a lot better now that the 1080 signal is coming through fine.

The monitor’s aspect ration is 16:10, as most people know the signal coming out of the 360 is 16:9. The question most people ask is will their monitor stretch the signal to make it fit, or will there be the two black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The 2407 gives you the option to choose. As far as the 1360×768 vga resolution, I found it slightly better than 720p, and it’s a little closer to the 16:10 of my monitor. I found the options [1:1, aspect, fit] in the Dell’s settings. Where ‘1:1’ will do an exact 1 to 1 pixel image, it produces a smaller image on the screen; ‘aspect’ will reproduce the image with no stretching and with bars at the top and bottom; ‘fit’ will stretch the image to fit the screen. Now, I noticed that the 1920×1080 vga signal does not have the option to change these settings and it is stuck on fit. This is frustrating, as it may be part of the problem of why it looks so bad in this resolution.

I finally settled on the vga cable with 1360×768 using the ‘aspect’ option on the Dell. It looks fantastic, as I get a little better than 720p for less than 700 bucks.

UPDATE: I settled on 1920×1080 signal through the vga cable.
The only gripe I have right now with this setup is that the color settings are maxed. I prefer to have the option of increasing it if I wanted to. Also a choice for 1:1 aspect ratio in 1080 would be nice.

Screen Lag: I have tried a few games on this monitor and have not noticed any perceivable screen lag so far. This is make or break for me because I have not ever been able to compensate my gameplay for lag; some people can; I can’t. I have heard horror stories of people buying great TV’s, only to find out when they get them home that the lag is terrible. I used Halo 2 as a test and I still have not detected screen lag, which in my case is a good thing.

For the price I think this monitor performs pretty well with the 360. I probably plan on migrating this monitor over to my computer one day, and I couldn’t do that with a TV. I am much awaiting an Xbox dvi cable to see what happens when I connect that, but until then, I think I’ll be fine. If any of you THX’ers know of a better display for the price, let me know, as I am not against returning the Dell if there’s something better out there.

Compatible resolutions between the Xbox 360 and the Dell 2407 (rev A03):

1280×720
720p, VGA-Yes, Component-Yes

1280×768
WXGA *, VGA-Yes, Component-NA

1280×1024
SXGA, VGA-Yes, Component-NA

1360×768
WXGA * VGA-Yes, Component-NA

1920×1080
1080p, VGA-Yes (in ‘Fit’ mode), Component-No