Is it just me or does 480p look terrible?

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Is it just because I have a larger TV or what? Any of my XBOX games in 480p look like I'm playing a 640x480 game on my PC. There's very few XBOX games that I can stand to play on a 46" TV anymore. I can't find anyone complaining about 480p so I feel like I'm all alone.
 
Dead or Alive Ultimate and Ninja Gaiden look amazing in 480p on my TV, and with the surround sound i can feel the surrounding literally around me

Played DOA:U with a friend yesterday and on the fire level in versus, i can feel the actually fire around us like we were in the game, just amazing
 
[quote name='greyzieoriental']Dead or Alive Ultimate and Ninja Gaiden look amazing in 480p on my TV, and with the surround sound i can feel the surrounding literally around me

Played DOA:U with a friend yesterday and on the fire level in versus, i can feel the actually fire around us like we were in the game, just amazing[/QUOTE]

What kind of TV do you have? I hear everyone rave about 480p, so I wonder what I'm doing wrong.
 
If you are used to playing games in high-res on your PC then it probably will seem pretty crummy looking. Keep in mind that Xbox is the equivalent of about a 5 year old PC/graphics card. And on a 46" HDTV the jaggies are pretty noticeable (I have a 46" also). 480 lines of resolution on a small TV or monitor is pretty tolerable, but blow it up to 50"- 60" or more and it gets pretty ugly.
 
[quote name='redline']If you are used to playing games in high-res on your PC then it probably will seem pretty crummy looking. Keep in mind that Xbox is the equivalent of about a 5 year old PC/graphics card. And on a 46" HDTV the jaggies are pretty noticeable (I have a 46" also). 480 lines of resolution on a small TV or monitor is pretty tolerable, but blow it up to 50"- 60" or more and it gets pretty ugly.[/QUOTE]

Well, it's good to know that I'm not just seeing things, then. It was a massive disappointment to me.
 
It really depends on the game, but I was also shocked to see that quite a few games actually look worse in 480p. I think the worst offender I've ever seen Is EA's Fight Night 2004. It looks fantastic in 480i, but put that shit in 480p... the boxers look like they're made out of fucking Legos.
 
Games look great on my 51" HDTV. (My Hitachi scales everything to 1080i, so this might explain why even SD TV looks pretty good.) Do you have the correct settings in the dashboard? Do DVD's look terrible on your TV? (Not played through xbox as it only does 480i for movies, but rather through a progressive scan DVD player)
 
Yeah, my dashboard is all set up. I've actually got to disable 480p to be able to stand any of my games that don't support 720p+. I've got a progressive scan DVD player and movies look great.

My TV's a Sony WEGA, I guess it doesn't do the upscaling.
 
[quote name='Michaellvortega']It think because it is 640x480.[/QUOTE]
Yeah:
480p = 853 x 480
720p = 1280 x 720
1080i = 1920 x 1080 (I could be wrong but last time I check this is an actual resolution and IS the best.)

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EDITED for correctness (thanks brendan424)

I love how I do have an HDTV with all of this and I still got it wrong.
 
It's actually 1080i (and there's also 1080p but that isn't a broadcast standard). And 1080i is 1920x1080

720 is actually 1280x720.

(remember we aren't using 4:3 televisions anymore but 16:9)

So 480p is actually 853x480

480i is the original broadcast standard (used from the start of television) and was
(480/3) *4 = 640 640x480 pixels.
 
What's probably wrong with your games looking like butt on your TV (unless you aren't realizing the limitations of the xbox only being able to display in 640x480, hence why they look like a CPU game in that resolution) is that your TV is probably running the signal through a sloppy algorithm that does edge enhancement to upscale a signal from 480p to 720p or 1080i. Unless you have a CRT based television (aka direct view) you're going to run into this problem. I'm not quite sure if plasma can do anything about changing its native resolution but I know for a fact that LCD TVs have to run every signal they get through a upscale/downscale process to get it in their native res. So if there's a menu where you can display things in actual 480p you might want to try that. It should make the image a little softer.
 
Maybe a little OT, but I just got an HD pack (new style with permanent component cables) for the Xbox and everything in 480p that was somewhat dark in SD is so dark now it's unplayable without turning the brightness way the hell up on the TV. I'm pretty sure it's not the TV because the 360 looks bright and beautiful at default settings. I'm using Halo 2 as a test game. I might be able to try a couple more tonight. Is there any chance there's something wrong with the HD pack cables?

MjC
 
my RCA 50" widescreen HDTV displays my games great, its less than a year old but my brother has a 60" sony that is at least 4 years old and the picture quality for video games(even dvds) kinda blows.
 
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