mrbrdo the blog A Microsoft fanboy blog. Well, kind of.

Xbox 360 HDMI to DVI and audio (jack)

Updated version

Preface

Well, a friend bought an Xbox 360 and previously also bought a HDMI to DVI adapter for it. The thing is, the HDMI to DVI adapter only provides the video, but not the audio. You get an adapter with Xbox 360 which has audio cinch connectors, but it’s so big that when you plug in the DVI cable, you can’t plug in this adapter as well, even though it has a separate connector on the Xbox 360. I feel Xbox 360 not having a stand-alone stereo output connector is kind of silly by the way.

I had this genius idea to break the big connector apart so it could fit in together with the HDMI connector plugged in. It actually worked So, yes, even though Microsoft made that big connector which seems to look like “hey, you can only plug in either HDMI or this thing”, you can actually plug in both and get video from HDMI and sound from their proprietary adapter. It’s probably mostly a marketing trick if you ask me (they try to force you to buy another adapter from them).

What you need

• A (male) HDMI to (male) DVI cable or adapter (for the video) – sadly, there is no way around this. I recommend a cable instead of an adapter (with an adapter you need also a HDMI cable and/or a DVI cable – depends on adapter type).
• A cinch (also called RCA, red/white) to jack (stereo, like headphones, for the audio) adapter (cheap and available in most electronics or audio stores) or speakers with cinch inputs – then you don’t need the adapter. Basically, you need an adapter that has female cinch on one end and the other end needs to be such that you can plug in your speakers. Usually that means female jack (that kind of adapter is hard to find), but some (like surround) speakers usually have a female jack input (like mic input on PC). In such a case, the adapter is the easiest to find, female cinch to male jack. In case you can’t plug in a male jack into your speakers, your best bet is to still buy a female cinch to male jack adapter and then a female jack to female jack adapter or (extension) cable, which is much easier to find than a female cinch to female jack adapter.
• Scissors
• Sharp cutting tool such as sharp pliers/pincers
• (optional) duct tape or insulation tape

You can see some examples of the adapters you might want below (you will probably want the first and second one):

Price

Assuming you already have the scissors and pliers (and you could probably improvise anyway if you don’t), in my local store the HDMI to DVI cable costed about 5-10€ and the cinch to jack adapter costed about 5€. However you can find them much cheaper online. If you’re in a big country try Ebay, otherwise if you can wait like 14 days for shipping, you can buy from DealExtreme (free shipping anywhere in the world!):

• Cinch to Jack, $1.44: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.26786
• HDMI to DVI cable, $6.42: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.24301

Total price: around $8, which is around 6€. In a local store, however, expect to pay around 10-15€.

If you already have these adapters (there’s a good chance you have the audio one), then, of course, it’s free for you. You also might need these adapters in the future, so it’s a good investment.

How to do it

You have to break apart the composite connector’s casing. It took me a while to figure out how to do it, so here is how I did it:

• use scissors to cut the rubber around the cable entering the big connector (the connector that plugs into Xbox 360 below the HDMI connector).
• use a screwdriver and try to “pull” as much rubber as you can out of the connector (just shove the screwdriver into the connector through the hole of the cable, press on the rubber and try to pull it out). do this until you clear enough rubber so you can see a bit into the connector.
• now you can use some scissor like (sharp) pliers (pincers) and try to cut and bend the top plastic part of the connector. after I cut a little piece from the left side I was able to just pull the whole top plastic part off (it’s only glued to the bottom part so after you get a good grip it comes off quite easily).
• you can now remove all the plastic that surrounds the connector, and optionally wrap the whole connector in 1 layer of duct tape (for insulation).

If your Xbox 360 and the connector were anything like the one I used, then you can now plug in both the HDMI connector and the Microsoft’s connector. If you have a big HDMI connector you may have to do the same thing for it as well (remove the casing). This kind of setup works very well when you’re connecting Xbox 360 to an LCD monitor with a DVI input and use some kind of speakers for sound. However, like I mentioned, the Microsoft’s cable has two male cinch connectors for sound (white and red), so you will probably need to use some kind of an adapter to a jack connector, or whatever your speakers plug into.

This may also let you get two video outputs (haven’t tried this though) – one through HDMI and one through Microsoft’s adapter (VHS yellow cinch output).

This is a (low quality) image of how both cables look plugged into the Xbox 360. I only removed the top part of the connector’s plastic casing.