( 36 reviews )
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Posted: Aug 16 2009
Normally, I review products so people know how they compare to the competition. I also want to give customers a feeling about whether the product is worth buying. It's tough to do in this case. There are no competing products, and you end up with standard connectors. If you need them, you have no other choice. HDMI is a standard. Microsoft hates standards because they allow you to buy things from other vendors. Their HDMI cable is probably fine. I don't know because I don't need it. I have plenty of standard HDMI cables. What I didn't have was the dongle. Instead of building a standard Toslink connector into the XBOX, Microsoft gives you a proprietary connector and a standard HDMI connector. They give you an SD cable when you buy the XBOX, which defeats the point of HD graphics. If your XBOX came with component cables too, you got the Toslink connector BUT the cable blocks the HDMI port. Why would Microsoft design it that way except to force you to buy their dongle? This way, even though you already have both connectors you need, one blocks the other like the school bully who wants your lunch money. You can use any good HDMI cable you want and get the same results. It will give you the best picture and sound. But if you need to hook an HDMI cable to your TV and need a Toslink connection for your audio system, you get ripped off paying for this dongle. The dongle itself works fine. I now get full surround sound for my XBOX and for any HD DVDs it plays. It's no better than from the component cable's Toslink jack except it no longer blocks the HDMI port. In my case, I have a top of the line Sony HDTV. Sony designed it to accept three HDMI connections, and its Toslink output gives full surround, EXCEPT when the input is from an HDMI source instead of their built in tuner. This has nothing to do with this cable, except that's the situation that would require you needing one. If you can plug an HDMI cable into your audio system and have it send HDMI output to your TV, then you don't need this cable/dongle. If you are using your TV's audio, or if it sends the full digital audio signal to your audio system, you don't need this cable either. This cable also gives you analog stereo output. It's fairly pointless. If you have an HDMI input on your TV, you can use its analog audio outputs if your audio system has no digital inputs or surround sound.
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Posted: Jun 28 2009
This cable is just what I needed. I don't run sound through my TV at all, so having the optical out was perfect.
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Posted: Jun 10 2009
I expected the HDMI cable to be specific for XBox 360 use. I couldn't use it due to the short length (approximately 6 ft.) There are other HDMI cables available that are 1/3 the price that I ended up purchasing that I recommend.
