Just got a 360 and am plugging it into my 37" LCD via HDMI cable.
Its just a regular HDMI to HDMI cable, not xbox360 branded or anything.

The TV supports 1080i, and when I use the HDMI cable it defaults to widescreen... but its widescreen crammed into 4x3 with black bars on the sides.

I've tried all the different HD resolutions but its always the same... and the format option is greyed out when using HDMI.


Using the crapola composite cable that comes with it will go into widescreen no problems.

What the f***?

(yes i have googled around a bit, but turned up nothing specific that sounded like what I am experiencing... just how good HD cables will make your s*** look :/ )

got it setup on the TV -and- the 360?
i use normal jaycar hdmi cables on my 360 <-> 720p setup, works fine - so that kind of rules out the problem being non-genuine s***

I looked in the tv settings but i couldnt see s*** relating to aspect/stretching/etc

Its a cheapo Viewsonic 37"

I have in the past run a mates 360 with the VGA cable in widescreen without a drama. I just happened to have the HDMI cable and thought it should be even better.

It looks great its just crammed into 4:3

Probably cos it's LCD.

I forgot to tell Scott but I've also got a spare MS official component cable and a spare VGA cable for the 360 if you want to borrow those.

last edited by reso at 23:21:48 11/Jun/08

Yeah, with a VGA cable you can choose an exact resolution, so you can set it up to use your LCDs native resolution (it may even auto detect and set itself to the native resolution, can't remember), so thats prolly why you had no problems with VGA.

You won't really get any benefit at all out of running 1080i over HDMI on the 360 vs VGA cables anyway, so if all else fails, just go back to VGA cables, it'll look just as good.

+1 for vga cable

On my composite cables there's a HDTV - TV switch. I don't suppose there's one of those if you're using HDMI cabes, but it might be something that simple.

perhaps your TV doesn't support that resolution via HDMI properly...i'd suggest contacting them.

I'd suggest that your TV isn't set to display HDMI in "16:9".

Try searching the manual for aspect ratio settings on the TV.

Alternatively I have a spare VGA cable for xbox that you can use if you want - its not doing me any good :D

Mongie if he doesn't want it, throw it my way please. PM me how much you want for it :)