I've been wondering this about skyrim and other games that are on both the PC and the 360.

Why are the text and graphics much crisper and clearer on the PC? The best thing I can think of is that the video signal for 360 is somehow optimized by reducing the general quality / crispness of the image.

Even on the 360 dashboard the graphics / text aren't completely clear and crisp like on the PC. Is there something wrong with my HD cables connecting my 360 to my monitor or what exactly is going on?

Or it could just be that the PC is running at a higher resolution than the 360. A higher resolution tends to result in clearer and crisper images due to more pixels per inch and what not. More detail. On top of that, the PC's greater graphical power allows for higher resolution textures that also increase the clarity and crispness.

HDMI cables don't work like audio cables, they're digital so you either get the full picture or nothing.

Because console isn't true 1080 it's just upscaled to fit your TV therefore making it look like that.

Because the 360 renders the game at a smaller resolution than the screen, and then scales it up to fit. It's like looking at a picture on the computer, and hitting zoom.

Higher resolutions. 360 doesn't do true HD. The hardware in the xbox is SIX YEARS old man. The GPU in those things can't handle the kind of desktop standard resolutions even a cheap off the shelf PC runs at now. Not ragging on the xbox, but you got to try and comphrend what SIX YEARS of hardware evolution is in real world terms. Its like comparing a WW2 era VW with an Audi A6, you get me?

FWIW I think that Skyrim looks rich enough on the xbox. Its not bad by any means, but you won't get anything like the fidelity of a PC at true HD res or better. Additionally there's this whole area of graphics optimisation called 'post processing' which consoles simply cannot handle.

Oh and there's a nice script for PC you can bolt on to the D3d.dll in windows to get rid of that nasty console low res blur. As obviously the low pixel count doesn't scale up so well either ..

It's pretty much the low resolution combined with a larger (usually) screen. Neither the Xbox 360 nor the PS3 actually output games in 1920 x 1080.

Also, in my experience a DVI computer monitor cable is more lossless than an HDMI cable.

I own both a gaming PC and a 360, so no fanboyism.

A PC can be as powerful or as simply as it built to be. So the graphics can be tuned as such.

The xbox 360 was unveiled on May 12, 2005. That means (despite whatever newer models come out) every 360 game released *HAS TO* be able to run decently on nearly 7 yr old hardware.