Depite what people assumed, I wasn't waiting in line at midnight Wednedsay night to pick up a pre-ordered Xbox 360. In fact, I didn't get one 'til yesterday. I almost didn't though, and here's why:

The Xbox 360 in Australia comes with an official adapter to connect the unit to a TV using SCART. SCART is a European standard, but many televisions in Australia use it, since we also have the PAL video format. My TV, in fact, has three SCART inputs, two of which will accept component and RGB video signals.

The problem is, though, that the SCART adapter that comes with the Xbox only supports composite. It can't do the higher-end signals to get a better picture.

Worse still, there are no official accessories in Australia that can do component or RGB via SCART! There weren't even any third-party cables or adapters in stores! Also, if you don't have an "advanced" cable that can do component or RGB, you don't get the digital optical audio output, so you lose the 5.1 sound!

So I was pretty bummed about that. I didn't want to buy an Xbox 360 and be stuck using a composite connection to my TV. I certainly didn't want to be stuck with stereo sound through my TV speakers when I've been playing the original Xbox through my (pretty decent) 5.1 system for years!

So I came home from my shopping expedition yesterday morning empty-handed.

I then jumped online, and after much searching around, found this: An RGB via SCART cable with optical audio out for Xbox 360, from Joytech. Huzzah!

Knowing that the cable is on its way, I went back down the street and bought the Xbox. I picked up Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter too. Now all I have to do is find an online store that'll sell me one of those SCART cables. Amazon.co.uk refuses to ship it to Australia. Yay.

I'll post my thoughts on the Xbox 360 in a future post. Stay Tuned!