Component + AV Cable for Xbox 360 & 360 S with Optical Digital Audio Output

Product Overview

This is the HD lead for an Xbox 360 that also carries a normal AV output and a digital optical audio output. Component video is the best picture the console can send to a television with no HDMI input, and it is a clear step up from the single yellow composite plug most replacement leads give you. If your set has no component sockets, the yellow plug is on the same cable, so the lead is useful either way.

What component video actually does. A composite lead squeezes the whole picture – brightness and both colour signals – down one wire, and the television then has to pull them apart again. Component splits that across three: green carries brightness, blue and red carry the colour difference. Nothing has to be separated at the other end, so edges stay crisp, text stays readable and strong colours stop smearing. It also unlocks the higher output modes a composite lead cannot carry at all.

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, and the console connector has a proper moulded strain relief where the cable enters it. Every one of the six television plugs has its own moulded body with a ribbed grip. The gold plating is on both ends – all six television plugs and the contact blade on the console connector – which is unusual on a replacement lead and is worth having on the end that gets plugged and unplugged most.

The optical audio output. There is a square shuttered port on the side of the console connector: a standard TOSLINK optical digital audio output. Plug an optical cable in there and the console’s digital audio can go to a soundbar or an AV receiver while the picture goes to the television. This matters most for the original Xbox 360, which has no optical socket on the console body at all.

About the switch on the connector. A small two-position slide switch on the console plug is marked TV and HDTV. It chooses which video output the cable carries: TV sends the picture out of the yellow composite plug, HDTV sends it out of the green, blue and red component plugs. It is one or the other. If you have wired up the component plugs and get sound but no picture, slide the switch to HDTV – that is almost always the answer.

Please check which console you have. This lead fits the Xbox 360, the original model, and it also fits the Xbox 360 S, the slimmer glossy version – both have the same wide, flat AV multi-out socket at the back. It is not suitable for the Xbox 360 E, the later squarer model, which dropped that socket for a small 3.5 mm jack.