So you’ve got hold of an Xbox 360 but don’t want to buy an expensive high-definition television yet? Don’t worry, you can still enjoy high-definition gaming from your Xbox 360 on your regular PC monitor. Using the Xbox 360 - AV/VGA Cable Pack with Optical Input is very easy and here we’ll take you through the steps needed to setup your Xbox 360 using the monitor. Most high-definition televisions also have a VGA input too, so if you’ve purchased one of these great new TVs this guide will just as useful. So let’s get on with the show…

Well here we have my battered six-year-old 17” CRT PC monitor. Yes it’s old but it does the job and should still be great for some high-definition gaming via my Xbox 360.

Here is the connector for the Xbox 360 end of the Xploder VGA cable.

Just plug it into the back of your Xbox 360 as you would a normal cable. You can also plug in an digital optical cable to the Xploder plug if you wish.

Most new monitors and high-definition televisions will allow you to plug the Xploder VGA cable straight in. But my monitor is pretty old and features a permanent monitor cable with no plug on the back of the monitor itself. Here you can see the end of the cable, a female 15-pin plug.

And here you can see the business end of the Xploder VGA cable, another female 15-pin plug. As I said, no problem for most HDTV and newer monitors.

But there’s no need to worry. You can still use these older monitor connections, I just picked up a very cheap (less than £4) adapter from a PC hardware store and connected the two cables together. You can see the small connector plug between the two cables in the middle of this picture.

The Xploder VGA cable for Xbox 360 gives you a choice of two audio options. As previously mentioned, you can connect your optical digital surround cable into the VGA lead at the Xbox 360 end. Or, as you can see me doing here, use the VGA cable's supplied audio right and left leads to connect to a sound system. If your monitor has speakers and line-in inputs, you can connect to those using these cables.

With everything connected it’s time to fire up the Xbox 360. As you can see here, the first time the console is switched on connected to a high-definition output it defaults to a lower resolution. Notice that the image hasn’t filled the screen, we need to make some adjustments and increase the resolution to make use of the monitor.

Move on to the Xbox 360 system blade, it’s the one on the far right.