Xbox 360 Connection FAQ - Video, Audio & Live

[TrinityJayOne]

This guide is intended as a fairly casual walkthrough to help my fellow Xboxians get everything working, as it isn't always easy. Getting online is probably what causes the most grief when setting the thing up, likely because configuring a network isn't nearly as simple as plugging in a video/sound cable and everyone's network is different. For this reason the networking section is far longer than the others. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong somewhere and/or post questions, which I'll add into the guide if it's something that I've left out.

--- VIDEO & AUDIO ---

This section is about choosing the best way to make the best audiovisual connections possible for your personal setup, mainly the visual part because there's really not a whole lot to audio here. What I won't go into is whether you should get plasma or LCD, Sony or Samsung, etc, as that's all personal preference.


Choosing a Display

In my mind, the most important part of your video setup is making sure that you're playing in high definition. Xbox games are specifically designed with HD displays in mind, every game supports it and you really are missing out if you don't make use of this generation-defining feature. Contrary to popular belief, a HD display does not have to cost an arm & a leg, and buying a massive TV that barely fits in your loungeroom is not the only option! For those on a budget, it's almost a guarantee that the very screen you're reading this on is HD capable. PC monitors are HD capable by nature, even old CRTs, and are far cheaper than buying that loungeroom-dominating TV. They're obviously better suited to smaller spaces though, such as a bedroom setup, so if the Xbox just has to be in the loungeroom then perhaps a big TV is the choice for you. Enough about displays though, there's already an abundance of info about monitors/TVs on the internet for potential buyers to look at.


Video Connections

The Xbox supports several connections for video, although the ones at the business end of the range are not standard and can be a bit pricey. What you likely got with Xbox was a single cable with the proprietary AV connection on one end and six male RCA connectors on the other end of varying colors - yellow, white and red in one cluster, then green, blue and another red in a separate cluster.

• The single yellow cable is known as "composite" and is the most basic connection for video.
• The green, blue and red cables (in the one cluster) are known as "component", and they're the Power Rangers of the connection world - useless by themselves but better than composite when they team up.
• The white & red cables are for sound and will be discussed later.
• You may have also gotten an adaptor with three female RCA jacks colored red, green & blue, and on the other side is a great big plug with lots of teeth. That's a component-to-SCART adaptor, which you'll probably never use because SCART is a European thing. It's basically just a different form of component connection.

Composite is old news and not invited to the HD party. Component will get you HD resolutions, but it's still analogue and therefore not quite as good as the big boys, that being VGA & HDMI.

• VGA is actually analogue like component, but it allows for more varied resolutions. With component you have the options of 480p, 720p (what the Xbox plays games at), 1080i and 1080p. The VGA cable instead gives you actual resolutions to choose from, including both 4:3 and 16:9 formats. The other good thing about VGA is that a PC monitor is almost guaranteed to support it, whereas component is more of a TV thing and much less likely to be compatible.
• HDMI is the grand daddy, boasting all the big resolutions and being a digital signal to boot. It carries sound too, but more on that later. The HDMI cable can also be converted to DVI on the display end with an adaptor, which is convenient for PC monitors that don't support HDMI. Note that there is no official DVI Xbox cable, so this method is the only way you can get DVI output.

IMPORTANT!! Before rushing out and buying the Xbox HDMI cable, make sure your model has the HDMI port! If you're sporting a launch model or one released shortly after launch, you won't have the port and HDMI is sadly not an option for you. If you aren't sure, it should be visible directly under the normal AV port and the letters "HDMI" will be engraved to the side of it.


Audio Connections

The cable choices here are fairly limited, so this will mostly be about the how rather than the what. But in case you were wondering, your choices are the white & red RCA connectors that I mentioned earlier (monaural & stereo output), or digital optical (surround output). For the latter, all the Xbox gives you is the optical port on the back of the standard AV cable - you need to supply your own TOSLINK cable. Similarly, you'll need to buy an adaptor if you want to turn the two RCA connectors into a 3.5mm one should you want to run the sound through your PC's line-in jack (a fantastic idea if you're using your PC monitor for video). Using this method means that your PC needs to be on if you want sound though.

If you're using HDMI for your video then you can also get your sound through that, but this presents its own challenges if you're using a PC monitor, as not all have speakers. In these cases a HDMI audio passthrough feature is often provided, which strips the sound from the HDMI signal and pumps it out through a 3.5mm jack, allowing you to connect the relevant cable and run the sound to another device (at the cost of limiting the sound to stereo). There's no real need for this with the Xbox though, because the official HDMI cable from Microsoft comes with an audio-only version of the standard AV cable. This is due to a well know "feature" of the original cable's design, in that it's too fat to allow a HDMI cable to be connected at the same time (the audio-only version is much slimmer and avoids this problem). There's a workaround for this that involves removing part of the connector case to reduce the size, meaning you can use any old HDMI cable for video and the standard AV cable for sound, ignoring the video cables completely. I'm not going to explain how the modification is done though, you'll have to research it yourself and you'll be doing it at your own risk!

--- NETWORKING ---

For this topic I'll be focusing on networks that have more than just the Xbox on it, because I doubt many people have an internet connection solely for Live. I also don't really cover wireless setups, but most things here should apply to them anyway. Finally, I'm assuming you're running Windows XP, as that's what I know best.


The Connection

There's a few ways you can make the physical connections, some better than others and all of which depend on your setup. First of all, you can connect your Xbox up to your PC and use the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) that's built into Windows. I've never used this method and I probably wouldn't recommend it, because afaik you get very little (if any) control over what ports & protocols are available, which is important later on. Alternatively you can run a proxy server on the PC instead, which does the same thing as ICS but with more customisation. This would be difficult for a novice to setup though, and still may not support the UDP protocol that is absolutely essential to Live. Note that both these methods require your PC to have two network cards - one for the modem running to the PC, and one for the Xbox to plug into. They also have the downside of requiring your PC to be turned on for the Xbox to get online.

By far the best option is to buy a router to place behind your modem. A router is like a set of traffic lights at the end of a freeway - it separates a single stream of data (from the modem) and redirects it in an orderly fashion based on where each piece of data came from and where it's supposed to go.

"Why can't I just buy an adaptor of some kind and plug two (or more) devices directly into my modem?"

This is a good question, and one that was presented to me many moons ago. Here's my (hilarious) answer-

Originally Posted by Me in 2006

Nope, because the data would become mixed together. To put it in a (hopefully) more understandable context, it would be like two identical twins giving a single blindfolded Maccas employee two different orders simultaneously, then expecting the employee to differentiate the orders and get them correct (not factoring in the general ineptitude of Maccas employees :P).

[TrinityJayOne]

Originally Posted by Me in 2006

Now imagine that each customer orders from their own unique register, and that the lone Maccas employee is Superman so you get your order almost as quickly as you would if you were the only customer. Each register is unique so Superman knows who ordered what, and consequently who each order goes to when it's ready.

In the above situation Superman is a router, and having one is essential if you want your device to have internet access regardless of your computer's state. Say your computer is on register 1 and your Xbox is on register 2, then register 1 goes offline, your Xbox can still place an order with Superman. However, in a setup where your computer is running a proxy server (see above), Superman is replaced by Batman. He's not a real superhero (router), but his utility belt lets him fill the role just as well (Batman wore his prototype rocket boots today and is just as fast as Superman). Now if Batman goes home for the day (you turn your computer off), who is going to take orders from the registers? Nobody, that's who.

So hopefully you're now sold on a router, hooray! If not, here's some fun facts to help tip the scales-

• A router is far more customisable than any proxy server program and infinitely more so than ICS.
• If you ever decide to extend your network, a simple router with 4 ports (fairly standard these days) will probably end up cheaper than buying more network cards to put in your PC.
• As a physical entity between your modem and all your other devices, a (decent) router makes a capable firewall and helps keep your network safe.
• There are many routers on the market that have standard ethernet ports and can act as a wireless access point (WAP), if that floats your boat.
• A router gives you a great level of control over your network in general.

To make it clear, you connect the internet feed from your ISP into your modem as per normal, then your modem connects to the router, and from there you connect each individual PC/console/whatever to the router as if it was the modem. No PC/console/whatever should ever be connected to anything but the router in a typical setup.


Basic Configuration

(Even if you already have a functional network using a router, read through this bit)

So you've got all the physical connections in place, now what? Well either one of two things will happen- A. Windows will detect a gateway (the router) and try to connect automatically with default settings, or B. nothing is working and you're ready to belt my head in with your new router. Let's focus on option B. Open up your Network Connections window, which you can find in control panel somewhere. This is the setup we'll be going for on your PC/s-



Chances are that you already have an icon there for your old network connection, which likely tells you "a network cable is unplugged". You need to get your PC to acknowledge the router as your new internet gateway, which you can do by starting the "network setup wizard". Click next until you're presented with the first set of options, which should be asking you about your network layout. If it asks you about using ICS, choose "no" and click next to get to the right stage. Now choose the second option (it's long and mentions a residential gateway) and click next. Enter in the name to appear on the network so that you can tell what is what when it comes to configuring your router. When asked for a workgroup name on the next screen, the default is fine. Click next a few times and let Windows do its thing. If you get asked about creating a setup disk to run on other devices, choose the "no" option. Now with any luck, you have a gateway listed in your Network Connections window as in the above image.

Now you need to ensure your PC and your router are able to talk to eachother. Right click the icon your internet connection (the one that was already there) and click properties. In the window that pops up, there'll be a list of funny names with one of them being "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)". Select it and click properties, then make sure that both "obtain XXX address automatically" options are selected. Close all those windows now, it's time to configure the router.

Open up your favorite browser and type in "http://192.168.0.1", which will hopefully bring up your router's configuration screen. If not, another popular default is "http://192.168.1.1", but really it could be just about anything. If neither of these work, hit windows key + r to open the Run dialog (or go to Start -> Run) and type in "cmd" to open a command prompt. Now type "ipconfig" and hit enter. The resulting list will have an item there that says "default gateway" followed by an IP address. That's the IP address you want to put into your browser. If that doesn't work, you'll need to consult your router's manual and find out how to access the configuration.

Now that you're in, You'll have to poke around for an option called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, although it'll probably just be labelled DHCP. DHCP is a neat trick that allows the router to dynamically assign IP addresses to devices as they connect to it, and you want to turn this on. Once you've done that, save settings and restart the router (it may do this automatically), after which point your PC should report that it's connected to the net.


Ports, Protocols and You

Now that we're through all the basics, it's time to get down to what you're here for - the Xbox. By default the Xbox let's the router assign it an IP (DCHP is enabled in other words), and you should be able to connect to Live without hassles. However if you try to actually play a game or chat with friends, you'll likely find that you can't connect and/or you get errors from the Xbox, and some games like Halo 3 will even tell you about some prude girl named "Nat" who apparently isn't "open", but we'll get to her shortly. Back on your PC, you may also find that some online games and things like BitTorrent aren't working properly. By default, a router is a little more strict on what it let's in and out than your modem, and this messes with things that rely on being able to receive anonymous requests on certain ports (like BitTorrent and Live). The problem with a router is that it only knows who to send things to when the device that sent the request tells it this information. An anonymous request doesn't do this, so you have to tell the router what to do with these manually, before it receives such requests. Now we come to the often talked about subject of port forwarding, which is when you tell the router that any anonymous request of <protocol> on <port number> is to always be forward to a specific IP address.

To facilitate port forwarding, it's best if you assign the devices that require it their own static (non changing) IP address through DHCP reservation, which will be somewhere in your router's configuration. How this is done will vary on your router, but it's generally the same regardless. The router needs a way to identify the device, which is the MAC address. Your router may give you a list of currently connected devices to use as a template (your Xbox will appear as "unknown"), but if not you'll need to find the MAC address from the Xbox's network settings. Go to "network settings" on the system blade, then "edit settings", then the "additional settings" tab and scroll down to the bottom set of options labelled "advanced settings". Press the ok button and at the bottom left you'll see a hexadecimal string labelled "wired MAC address", which is what you need. Now enter this in and assign it whatever IP you like, within the range your router is using (again this will vary, check the router options or the manual). Repeat this for your PC if needed (you can find the MAC address in your network card properties). You have now reserved an IP address for your Xbox, meaning it will always get given that IP address when it connects, yet the router can still use DHCP to assign other devices an IP address as the need arises.

Now you need to locate the port forwarding part of your router. Again this will vary from router to router, but the four things it will likely want are a name for the rule you create, the number of the port/s you're forwarding, the protocol/s to forward and the IP address to forward them to. For things like BitTorrent the ports used will vary from client to client, but an Xbox will always need the following ports forwarded to it (the ports it uses can't be changed unfortunately, getting to that shortly)-

• Port 88, UDP protocol
• Port 3074, TCP & UDP protocols (depending on your router you may need to create separate rules for this port, one for TCP and one for UDP)

Remember the IP address you assigned to your Xbox a minute ago? Send the ports to that IP address. If there is a checkbox to activate these rules, check it and save the settings.

[TrinityJayOne]

Now remember that Nat girl? NAT stands for Network Address Translation, and it's what your router uses to work out who asked for what and where to send requests that come back from the internet. But as I said earlier, it can't do anything if it doesn't know where things are supposed to be going, hence the port forwarding. Without this, your Xbox will tell you have a NAT type of "moderate" or "strict", which means that people in games very likely won't be able to connect to you because the router won't know why they're trying to talk to it. With your ports forwarded, you should get a NAT type of "open". If not, check the router configuration to make sure that NAT is actually enabled, and that any built-in filters aren't blocking things altogether (specifically look for something labelled "filter anonymous requests", which needs to be off).

If you're comprehending all the jargon and have an understanding of what's happening here, you may have noticed that having two Xboxes is going to pose a problem. If both Xboxes are using the same ports, how is the router going to know which Xbox an anonymous request was intended for? It's not going to know, which is why you can only ever forward a specific port to a single IP address, never two or more. But if you only forward the required ports to one Xbox, the other will have extremely limited Live functionality! The solution to this problem is another trick routers (usually) have called UPnP, or Universal Plug'n'Play.

UPnP is sort of like DHCP, in that it allows compatible devices and programs to talk to the router and tell it directly which ports it needs to use, saving you the hassle of forwarding ports manually. Why not just use it in the first place? Because UPnP and port forwarding seem to conflict, and you can't use both at once (at least in my experience). Additionally, not everything supports it, so you might find your favorite PC game or BitTorrent client suddenly doesn't connect properly. But back on track, the reason we use this if you have more than one Xbox is because the second Xbox to connect will see that the ports I mentioned before are already taken (by the first Xbox), so it will use some different ones. How does everyone else's Xbox know that your Xbox is using non-standard ports? I have no idea, and quite frankly I'm not going to question it as long as it keeps working. It's worth noting that should your router be reset for any reason, it may have to be re-acquire all the UPnP instructions again. If this is the case, it's best to force your Xboxes into telling it which ports it's using again, as they can be a bit stubborn about it for some odd reason. One sure fire way I've found to do this is to perform the Live connection test from "network settings" on the system blade. If for any reason you want to double check what UPnP data your router has saved, open up the Network Connections window on your PC again, right click the internet gateway icon and go to "properties". On the window that appears click "settings", and another window will appear showing a bunch of names, IP address and ports. You'll probably see the Xbox there with the same ports that we manually forwarded before, another entry called svchost that Windows uses, and possibly some PC games or BitTorrent clients.


NOTE- This is the old version I wrote before the NXE came out, needs to be updated to that and I'll also add Windows 7 connection info at some stage.

[FrozenSoul80]

Ah, good to see you still had a copy of this. I must have spent a whole day looking for the old thread but it looks like the hacker got to it. I've stickied this for everyones reference.

[Saxby]

Anyone got a link to those cheap yet reliable HDMI cables?

[adam_91vn]

http://www.ezyhd.com.au/

[Saxby]

Just for those who might be interested...

Bought a HDMI audio + video cable from Harvey Norman today for fifty bucks. Works a charm, very happy with the results.

[Saxby]

I have one of these babies and am wondering if I am able to connect my Xbox 360 to it using my 360 VGA cable. Pretty sure the visuals will work, just wondering about sound? I guess I need an adapter to plug into my headphones.

[TrinityJayOne]

Video would absolutely work, audio will as well if it has speakers. For sound it will either have the red & white female RCA ports, or (more likely) a female 3.5mm port. If it's RCA then any RCA cables will work, and for 3.5mm you can use the small Y-adaptor that Microsoft supply with the VGA cable itself.

[Saxby]

Can I get a two sided headphone jack that will allow me to plug my headphones in one side and the audio out in the other? Just standard headphone jacks...