Sceptre X37SV-Naga Widescreen HDTV

The Xbox 360 was connected to the display using the Microsoft HDTV component cables. We tested both 720p and 1080i, and can say they both looked equally good. Since 360 produces a 1280x720 resolution internally, and has to scale to any other resolution, we decided to just use 720p for all tests. This avoids scaling and interlacing to 1080i and then de-interlacing and scaling again to 1080p.

First let's take a look at a photo of the 360 dashboard. You can notice just how clear everything is. We then loaded one of the preloaded Xbox Arcade games called Hexic HD. This game has shapes of different colors which all looked very vibrant and sharp.

Next we have the menu of the Outfit demo and in game shots of Madden 06. The slight blurring in the Madden photos is due to the camera shutter time and not the ghosting of the display. The game suffered from no ghosting at all. Because of the slow shutter limit, we weren't able to get good photos of fast moving games such as Fight Night 3. Fight Night 3 was the only game that we did noticed a hint of ghosting, but it was so slight that it did not distract from the game. When we tested the game on a Samsung 26" HDTV, we noticed greater amounts of ghosting. The really rapid movement of the hands when punches are thrown in the game will cause slight ghosting on even the best of today's sets.

These two photos are from the Outfit demo. The game has many vivid textures and looked really good on the Sceptre X37. We did not see any ghosting at all in this game either. We also tested other 360 games such as FIFA, Kameo, NBA Live, and Condemned, all of which looked great.

Finally, we fired up Halo 2. When playing on the 360, the game is rendered in 720p. It was almost like playing a brand new game. Everything was so clear and large. Sniping was much easier when you could spot an enemy's head sticking out from across the map. When playing in split screen, instead of the up/down split like on regular TVs, on a widescreen TV the screens are split left/right, giving each person roughly their own 4:3 TV screen.