Microsoft has a strategy to sell their Xbox 360 consoles at throwaway prices and make it up by selling overpriced accessories.

I wanted to get a VGA Cable by which I could could connect my Xbox 360 to my monitor (Fights over the TV is quite normal in my place). I looked at the price tag of the Official VGA cable ($40!). At the end of of the its just a cable and it doesn’t deserve $40. So, I got myself a third party cable from this chinese website called play-asia for $10. It was of the worst build quality. Ghosting images all over the monitor (Bad shielding I would say). Even Gears of War looked like Left4Dead :D.

I had all the parts lying around. So, thought I would do it myself. Initially, I thought that building it myself would mean bad quality. It turned out to be a pretty good after all.

Shielding is basically a protective layer over your cables which prevent signal loss. If that is bad, ghosting would be evident. Also, Microsoft was kind (or cheap) enough to provide all the pins in all the connectors (use it or not) unlike PS2’s connector. So, you can try this with any cables. Standard Definition AV cable, HD component, VGA cable (though I see no point in doing that :D) .. anything!

One surprising thing is that, I didn’t even use shielding cable and still didn’t get any ghost images. How? you may ask me? Simple, I just made the cable as short as possible. Leaving little scope for signal loss.

Also read: Connect headphones to your Xbox 360 VGA cable

1) Any standard Xbox 360 video cable. SD AV cable, HD component, etc. Even a third party cable would do. You just need the port.

2) Female VGA connector / port. (see the last pic)

3) 3.5 mm stereo connector (for audio). I got mine from an old tape recorder. 😀

Here’s how you can do it:

1) Open up the Xbox 360 connector by cutting the sides of the head. I did a shabby job, here, but it didn’t matter.

2) After that, you’ll get a piece like this. Solder the connection according to the corresponding pinouts. Red to red, green to green etc. That is, VGA cable to the original Xbox 360 connector (I think you get the idea).

Don’t forget to solder the connections of your Stereo port. 😛

3) Use some insulated tapes between the terminals (in the VGA port). To prevent shorts.

4) I put some super glue on the metal plate and fixed it on the plastic thing.

5) And Tada! (This is going to be my signature statement from now on :D)

It worked like a charm. No ghosting no matter what!

Also, thanks to Ben Heck @Engadget for the nice article.