Hmm, you mean that in theory, in the case of a 360* I could...
- Plug an hdmi cable from the 360 to the monitor second hdmi slot (uguu, it also has a shitty source selection but hey...)
- Plug a proprietary VGA or YUV cable to the console, but in order to use the audio jack-thingies and plug them in a "Tulip" (what sorcery are you talking about) in order to make them plug in a classic headphone plug ? .
- Configure the console so that it use the hdmi video with the jack audio.
A quick unearthing in my cable box revealed so many mysterious things. I have a VGA 360 cable with audio jacks, a YUV one, some optic audio cables, even what looks like stereo "tulips" to plug on a pc.
Basically, yes.
The 'tulips' are the red/white plugs (if you hold the male ones up, they sort of vaguely look like tulip flowers) on the VGA/component cables, which give you stereo sound (the best you're going to get without moving to SPDIF)
The thing in the top right corner looks like a female tulip to 3.5mm jack, which you should be able to use to plug it into your 2.1 set's line in.
Basically plug in the HDMI cable, plug in the other cable next to it (possibly by breaking open its casing, which is what I had to do with my component one) and then just use the audio leads for that one, ignoring the rest.