Microsoft Xbox 360 Black HDMI Cable (Retail Packaging) Reviews

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List Price: $49.99
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I Love my XBOX 360 with it's Microsoft VGA Cable.

Just wanted to Clear this up for people with the older 360's looking to boost their graphics. (This Cable dose exactly what it is meant to do, that is why I give it 5 Stars).

I have a non-HDMI XBOX 360 core system mfg. 7/2007, the picture doesn't show it well, but all this package contains is a Standard HDMI cable and a adapter that connects to the large A/V port on the back of the 360 and goes out to SOUND ONLY.

This WILL NOT Adapt your Standard 360 A/V port to HDMI.

This product only works if your XBOX 360 Already has a HDMI port in the back and it just gives you ports for audio so you can attach your 360 to HDMI and your surround sound receiver. where as with just HDMI cable, the sound is just coming from your TV's speakers.

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What you see is what you get. Take a look at the package. You see two ends of an HDMI cable. That is a plain vanilla HDMI cable that you could get anywhere. Over on the right is the audio dongle, and you are seeing just about the whole thing except for the part that connects to the Xbox 360. It all works fine. This audio dongle is slimmer that the standard Microsoft A/V progressive cable, which is what gives you the room to put the HDMI cable in.

Don't get this unless you have one of the newer HDMI Xbox's. This is not a conversion kit.

Don't get this if you plan on running the HDMI cable from the Xbox 360 to your receiver, with another HDMI out from your receiver to your TV. If that is your setup, just get a plain HDMI cable and save money.

Don't get this if you plan on running the HDMI cable from the Xbox 360 to your TV, AND you have a Digital Audio Out on your TV that you can run to your receiver, AND you have verified that the Digital Audio Out will not truncate any Dolby Digital 5.1 HDMI signal down to 2 channel audio, which can happen with some TVs. Of course, you'll need a spare HDMI cable to test with first, but if you still get DD 5.1 out of the Digital out on your TV, then no need to get this.

Otherwise, if you still need this for the separate optical audio connection between the Xbox 360 and your receiver, then this is perfectly acceptable, though much more expensive than a plain HDMI cable you can get online.

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Maybe I'm dumb, but it wasn't clear from the other reviews that all you need to hook up your XBox360 elite to a HDMI connection is a regular $5 HDMI cable. Period.

The only reason you need to buy this (except if you're dumb like me and didn't pay enough attention to the other reviews) is if you want to hook up video to one place (like your tv) but have the audio go somewhere else (like a receiver that doesn't have any HDMI inputs, or has run out of them).

Unless you are in this rare case, go to your cable closet, pull out a spare HDMI cable, and you'll be fine without wasting your money on this.

Oh, it works fine, just like any $5 HDMI cable would. :-P

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To clarify and hopefully help some of you; from what I understand, the Xbox HDMI only supports 2-channel PCM audio over HDMI. Also, if your tv happens to have an optical output, it most likely only outputs 2 channels and not 5.1. It is therefore that microsoft includes the adapter in this package so that you can get 5.1 true the optical output. There is a hack you can do if you have a component cable, however, leaving the metal part exposed, increases the chance of a short circuit. In short, if you'd like to have Surround sound, you may need this, else, you don't need the adapter and are better off buying a cheap $5 HDMI cable.

It is unfortunate that MSFT didn't build this into the system and is charging this much for it.

Edit: As T Berry clarifies in his comment, you can get 5.1 through the HDMI cable if you have a reciever that supports hdmi (which I don't) and go from there to your tv. This cable is needed if you need optical audio. The xbox supports HDMI 1.2 and not 1.3 and so you cannot get Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams through HDMI (if that's important to you).

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The HDMI AV kit includes an HDMI cable (which you can find online for about $5.00 if you look around) and the XBox HDMI AV adapter. The reason they sell this kit is because they designed the standard HD-AV (component) cable connector to be too big to work in conjunction with an HDMI cable, so if you want HDMI video -ANDoptical or Red/White RCA audio, you have to use this adapter to get the audio connections into the XBox 360's rear port.

...Or so they want you to think.

The truth is that this is just the same connector as the HD-AV cable (Component cable) but it lacks the video connection, and the housing is slightly smaller. No technological wizardry involved. It's just a smaller plastic box, and thus your HDMI cable will fit next to this in your XBox 360's connector port.

You could spend the money for this if you're not very handy. By all means, I'm sure Microsoft needs the money!

OR, you could take a dremel to a used XBox 360 HD-AV (component) cable, cut out some of the extra plastic, and use THAT in conjunction with your HDMI cable.

I take no responsibility for your clumsiness or if you mess up your XBox 360, but I can attest to the fact that a cut-away HD-AV cable works fine for transmitting audio while your HDMI cable transmits video.

So the choice is yours: $50 for this thing, or use your existing cable (the one that came with your XBox 360) and a Dremel, and save yourself some cash.