Connecting the XBox to a Monitor?

purple asks: "I'm looking to find a way to connect my new XBox to a computer monitor. I understand that the XBox has HDTV out, with up to 1900 lines of resolution. Since I have a standard television, but a large high quality monitor, I wanted to figure out how to do this. There were "VGA Adapters" for the Dreamcast, but as I understand it, they were only available because the Dreamcast had explicit internal support to output VGA; the adapter itself had very little electronics in it. My question is, 1, can the XBox itself output a VGA signal? and 2, is there a standard HDTV->VGA adapter that I can purchase, perhaps from an AV store."

Comments

From the Horse's Mouth: NO

[Cy Guy]

According to the XBOX.com Support Page:

Can I use the console with my computer?

The Xbox console is a dedicated video game console. Its sole purpose is to provide you with the best video game experience available on the market while connected to your television. You can also use Xbox as a DVD home theater system if you purchase the DVD Playback Kit.

Can the Xbox hook up to a computer monitor

The Xbox video game system is intended for use with television sets or television/VCR setups. This focus allows gamers to enjoy the superior visual and sound capacity of high-definition and high-resolution television sets.

But personally, it seems like it should be trivial to convert the 720p signal to be viewed on a standard PC monitor - IANAEE but primarily it just involves converting the YPrPb 720p signal to RGB 720p. (a product that roughly does the reverse is available here for $159) I would hope some EE geek here on SlashDot could look at specs and come up with the necessary wiring diagram and release as an open source solution.

The 1020i signal (the 1900x1020 max resolution XBox is capable of) would likely pose a much greater challenge since you would need scan-converter circuitry, and thus a buffer.

Finally, don't forget you still need the HDTV adaptor add-on just to get the HDTV signal out of the XBox.