Product Overview

This is a heavy-duty AV cable for the Xbox 360 that also gives you a digital optical audio output. For most people that is the whole story: plug the yellow, red and white plugs into the television exactly as you would with the standard lead, and you are done. What you get on top is a much better made cable than the usual replacement, and a TOSLINK optical socket built into the console connector if you want digital sound.

The build is the difference you can see in the photographs. The jacket is thick and heavily insulated rather than the thin flat cable these are usually sold as, there is a moulded ferrite core on the lead to keep interference off the picture, and the console connector has a proper moulded strain relief where the cable enters it. Every one of the four television plugs has gold-plated contacts — not one plug, all four — and each plug has its own moulded body with a ribbed grip, so the plug comes out by the body instead of by the wire. At 1.8 metres it reaches from a shelf or a cabinet to the back of a television without leaving a loop of spare cable on the floor.

The optical audio output. Look at the console connector and you will see a square shuttered port on its side. That is a standard TOSLINK optical digital audio output. Plug an optical cable in there and the console can send digital audio to a soundbar, an AV receiver or a headphone amplifier while the picture goes to the television on the video plugs. This matters most for the original Xbox 360, which has no optical socket on the console body at all — on that machine a lead like this one is the only way to get digital audio out.

The S-Video plug is a bonus, not the point. S-Video is not common on Australian televisions, so most people will simply ignore that plug and use the yellow one. But if your set does have an S-Video input — many CRTs, professional monitors and some older flat panels do — it is worth using, because S-Video carries the brightness and the colour on separate wires instead of squashing them down one. The television never has to pull them apart again, so text looks crisper and strong colours stop bleeding into each other. Use the S-Video plug instead of the yellow one, not as well as it.

The switch on the connector. There is a small two-position slide switch on the side of the console plug and it chooses which video output the cable carries: AV (the yellow composite plug) or S-Video. For normal use leave it on AV. If you are using the S-Video plug and get sound but no picture, slide the switch across. It is a one-off setting — once it is right you never touch it again, and it makes no difference to the audio or to the optical output.

Please check which console you have, because this is the one thing that catches people out. This lead fits the Xbox 360, the original model, and it also fits the Xbox 360 S, the slimmer glossy version. Both of those have the same wide, flat AV multi-out socket at the back, and this lead plugs straight into either one. It is not suitable for the Xbox 360 E. That is the later, squarer model with the flat matte styling, and it dropped the AV multi-out socket completely in favour of a small 3.5 mm jack, so nothing on this lead will plug into it. If the back of your console has a wide flat slot beside the HDMI port, this is the right lead.

Setting it up takes a minute. Push the console connector into the AV multi-out until it seats, then run the yellow plug into the video input on the television and the red and white plugs into the audio inputs beside it, and select that input on the set. If you are using the optical output for sound, connect an optical cable from the port on the console connector to your amplifier and set the console audio output to digital.