A question for XBOX360 owners

[Pumpkinstew]

I'm thinking of getting one in the near future.

The most likely place for me to hook it up is in the study next to my PC, so the TV is still free for my better half to veg in front of desperate housewives, plus it means I don't have to pay silly money for the wrieless doohickey as the router is also close by.

I'm probably going to invest in a larger monitor soon too, so I was thinking if I get a full HD job with VGA/DVI and HDMI connections I could hook up the PC and the XBOX to the same monitor and just switch between the two.

Which is fine for picture but I still need sound. Is there a separate audio output on the back of the 360? Is it a simple 3.5mm jack? I can simply run this to the aux in of my speakers and I'm good to go if this is the case.

Many Thanks

[NokkonWud]

All connectors for the Xbox360 have Optical out, so you could connect to any AV unit. Alternately, they all contain a Red/White stereo output (Component/Composite and VGA all have this), if you get the official Xbox360 VGA cable you will get a twin phono to 3.5mm jack with it, but your local Maplins will sell these in abundance for about £1.50 anyway, so you can output sound like that.

I have 2 sound options, I usually use optical out straight to my z-5500 speakers, but if I take my Xbox360 to a friends house or a LAN I use the method mentioned above and connect it to a Dell Soundbar for my monitor.

[Pumpkinstew]

Alternately, they all contain a Red/White stereo output (Component/Composite and VGA all have this), if you get the official Xbox360 VGA cable you will get a twin phono to 3.5mm jack with it, but your local Maplins will sell these in abundance for about £1.50 anyway, so you can output sound like that.

Bingo. That's what I wanted to hear. I already have three leads to do the job.
Cheers :)

[NokkonWud]

If you plan to use HDMI out then it can get interesting, you have to put your Component cable in to get the R/W output, but due to the position of the HDMI port being above the AV out port you can't fit both in together - the easy solution is simply cracking the surrounding frame to make it smaller, it's very easy to do and I'd guess you can find a lot of video tutorials on YouTube.

There may be (and probably is) an easier method.

[NokkonWud]

Or if you get the official HDMI cable you get a thinner adapter than the one on the end of all AV output devices, which has Red and White ports allowing for your to use your own R/W stereo cables. This is probably the easiest, but predictably, the most expensive method. (more Microsoft craftiness).

[Pumpkinstew]

If all else fails most of the monitors I've looked at have anticipated the problem and include a 3.5mm audio out next to the HDMI. :)