How to connect an HD PVR to the Xbox 360?

[MasterBlaster76]

My nephew has just bought a Hauppauge HD PVR High-Definition Video Recorder but we're having trouble hooking it up to the Xbox 360. I don't think we have the required cable. According to the videos I've watched,

you need this:

which is the Xbox 360 component cable - or similar. The Xbox 360 we've got only came with this:

And that's just the AV cable. The HD PVR has five on both the output and input as you can see in the video. I've tried hooking up just the AV cable, but it doesn't seem to work - and I don't think it will as there's a component in/out, not an AV in/out.

So just to make sure before he spends any unnecessary money, would buying that component cable solve the problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[angryangy]

Unless you use HDMI or DVI, YPbPr cables are never unnecessary! The regulation composite AV cable carries an analog signal over one line, meaning there is much room for signal degradation in that short length. At low resolution you might sometimes find the natural blending and smoothing is beneficial, but if you game in HD, you'll be able to see the difference.

YPbPr (less cryptically but more vaguely known as component video) carries an analog signal over three cables. The green 'Y' cable carries the luminescence information. The blue 'Pb' cable indicates what is not blue in the luminescence signal, while the red 'Pr' cable indicates what is not red. Colour information which is neither blue nor red must be green, so all signals are in effect sent. This is done instead of just sending RGB because it is backwards-compatible with black and white monitors.

The only better way to ensure signal quality is with digital cables. DVI cables send a digital video signal and are what is normally used for PCs, while HDMI more or less integrates that with a digital audio signal. However, digital signals are subject to HDCP, in other words, they can be copy protected, so they're of little use on a PVR, where copying is the exact purpose.

Moreover, the video explains that you need to loopback to the TV, so the cable from the xbox goes into the PVR, and then you need another component cable to plug the PVR into the TV. This is the same sort of thing that might be done with terrestrial antenna cables.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Thanks for the reply.

Anyway, it's all good now - got a component cable so now he can use his HD PVR and component's picture is a million times better than AV, so that's two issues sorted.