Red vs Red: Off With Microsoft's Head!

Back in late May, I used the PC graphics experience of a friend of mine to illustrate the ‘penny wise, pound foolish’ philosophies of some consumer electronics companies, who by their unwillingness to spend scant incremental cost upfront end up killing any hope of a profit (along with long-term consumer loyalty) by incurring subsequent, substantial technical support expenses. As of yesterday, I have another example to share with you, this one involving Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Ironically, back in mid-March I praised the design of Microsoft’s Wi-Fi adapter for the game console. The company’s A/V cable configuration, on the other hand…

My neighbors Hartley and Pattie Lesser, who I previously mentioned just the other day, generously offered to purchase from me a Magnavox (Philips)-refurbished model 37MF337B 720p 37" LCD TV that I bought in early September and subsequently decided I didn’t need (and hadn’t even taken out of the box). Friday night, they reported to me that several of the audio-plus-video sources they’d connected to the display (such as their cable TV set-top box) were working well, but that their component video-tethered Xbox 360 was exhibiting two seemingly unrelated issues:

• Noise coming from the display’s speakers when switched to the Xbox 360 input set, and
• A blue/green-heavy tint to the corresponding video presentation

Perhaps obviously, I wasn’t going to allow my nearby friends to purchase the 37MF337B if its component video input suite was flawed. I was particularly concerned because the three-month refurbished-unit factory warranty had expired a few weeks earlier. And my suggestions to double-check the solidity of the Cr (i.e. Pr) video connection, and to move the Xbox 360 further away from the TV as a means of potentially reducing/eliminating RF interference (as well as to use aluminum foil as a makeshift Faraday cage), were ineffective.

I told the Lessers that I’d stop by on Saturday morning for some on-site debugging, and in advance I snagged my spare Component HD AV cable out of storage (my two consoles are respectively connected to their displays via HDMI and VGA cables). As soon as I saw it, I suspected I knew what was wrong, and as it turns out I was right. Below is an image of the original cable design. Before reading on, can you guess the root cause of the Lessers’ crisis?

All analog video connections (including VGA i.e. RBG), plus both analog and digital audio, come from a common connector on the console backside (newer HDMI-inclusive Xbox 360 variants leverage a distinct connector for digital video). The Component HD AV cable is 8′ long; optical S/PDIF audio comes directly out of the console-side connector, along with a single-cable bundle of all other signals. 21" before the other end of the cable, the wiring splits into two clusters:

• Right and left audio, plus composite video, and
• Component video (i.e. Y, Cr and Cb; a switch at the console-side connector selects between composite ‘TV’ and component ‘HDTV’)

And each cluster subdivides into its respective three wires 6.5" from the cable end.

Several aspects of the cable design intrigue me. First off, I’m not sure why Microsoft chose to bundle composite video with analog audio, instead of with component video. Although the majority of folks employing low-quality composite video are probably also using their display’s built-in speakers, Microsoft’s design only gives a ~12 spread between composite video and audio, particularly limiting if the sound is instead headed for a separate amplifier unit. And I don’t see any downside to my alternative composite-plus-component video cluster suggestion…nobody would use both connection options, after all.

But the root cause of the Lessers’ problem lies elsewhere. Look at the right (red) audio RCA plug in the above picture. Now look at the Cr component video RCA plug. They look identical, don’t they? Hartley had inadvertently swapped the two plugs when connecting audio and video from the game console to the display, thereby explaining both of his subsequent issues. Another Component HD AV cable photo I found:

more accurately represents the cable set that Hartley and I both own and suggests that Microsoft made a mid-course redesign, likely in response to similar customer problems. Note that the audio plug color scheme is now different than that used for video connections…the audio plugs also have symbols of speakers impressed into the plastic. The revamp improves on its predecessor but, I’d argue (and Hartley’s experience concurs), not enough…why not also attach embossed stickers to relevant ‘audio’ and ‘video’ wires to further reduce consumers’ likelihood of confusing them, especially given that the alternative is an expensive-to-Microsoft and frustrating-to-consumer technical support phone call or few, or even an unnecessary console return?