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Geek Culture / Newer xbox's VS Older xbox's

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Dot Merix
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Posted: 1st Jun 2005 23:27 Edited at: 1st Jun 2005 23:29
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Hey guys,

Just recently i got a new xbox. I tried a burnt dvd i created a day before on it and it worked great. I assumed because i tested it on that machine the dvd would be perfect.

I brought it upstairs to my older xbox and slipped it in to watch the movie before going to sleep, and it said the xbox didnt find it to be a valid dvd, audio, or game cd.

I wasnt aware there was a difference in between the older and newer xbox's towards being able to read this stuff...

Could anyone tell me for sure that there is a difference?

[edit] Did a quick search on the net, and it seems that there may be different dvd drives inside each xbox, which could be the difference as some are apparently -better- drives.. I find it extremely frustrating, though i suppose i'm glad atleast one of the xbox's work.



WindowsXP Home(Service pack 2), Athlon XP 2400+(2.1Ghz), 1GIG Ram, Ati Radeon 9800Pro 128MB.
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Van B
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Posted: 1st Jun 2005 23:42
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Most older XBoxes will choke on a burned DVD unless the box is chipped - you should have better luck with burned CD's though (for adding your own soundtracks). The DVD player that is supplied with replacement dashboards (for chipped boxes) is real good, like the analogues pan and zoom the screen very smoothly, stuff like that.


Van-B

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Raven
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Posted: 1st Jun 2005 23:46
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X-Box uses one of the first generation 2-Layer DVD-Rom.
For the most part like the Playstation 2, it's a hit'n'miss affair getting non-Retail DVD's to work.

X-Box 360 has a current generation DVD-Rom, which allows it to basically read every format under the sun.

Games on the other hand are a different story. Both machines have BIOS based Anti-Piracy Protection.. the X-Box 360 is rumoured to use Hardware AES, which allows it to protect using the CPU like the GameCube does. Though if that's true is yet to be seen.

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Peter H
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 01:38 Edited at: 2nd Jun 2005 01:38
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@Raven- did you read his post? he wasn't talking about XBox 360 (though that is what i thought when i read the title)

"We make the worst games in the universe."

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Raven
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 02:45
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nope, just skimmed. ^_^
all of the X-boxs' have the same hardware; just some have new versions. heh

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Dot Merix
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 07:07
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New versions of the software or hardware... I dont really understand why i can read the disk on one xbox, but not the other unless there is something different in it.

Both xbox's are completely non-modded... straight out of the box.



WindowsXP Home(Service pack 2), Athlon XP 2400+(2.1Ghz), 1GIG Ram, Ati Radeon 9800Pro 128MB.
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Avan Madisen
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 07:38
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The problem, it seems, is not all XBox's have identicle dvd drives, so some will read discs that others won't. I've got a perfectly legitimate DVD that my XBox won't recognise, but it'll run fine on my brother's one, and every other DVD player I've tested it on. Another DVD I bought (which I eventually discovered was a copy) runs without any trouble! Go figure.

I don't suffer from insanity - I enjoy every minute of it!
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Raven
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 07:57
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you want to know something weird.. our PS2 has never run CDRW/DVDRW discs; but my mates who bought his the same day from the same shop can.

God knows why.

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Scilynt
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 08:05 Edited at: 2nd Jun 2005 08:07
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The Xbox uses, AFAIK, 3 different DVD drives, a Thomson (I have in my original Xbox), a Philips (I have in my second LE Xbox) and a Samsung (in my Dad's Xbox). And they are apparently in that order of quality from lowest to highest.

There may be newer drives used in later revisions, but these are the ones I know of.

[EDIT]Typos[/EDIT]
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MiR
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 08:09 Edited at: 2nd Jun 2005 08:12
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Mmm. Don´t get me started with the old Xboxes dvd reading capacity. Mine´s unfortunatly one of the first ones and it features the thompson dvd drive.(There are 3 in total:Thompson(crap but strangly works wellish with cd-rw, Philips(Ok. Can´t read cds at all though),Samsumg(The best. Though can´t read cds much and it´s still not briliant)
The drive in my Xbox is so bad it doesn´t even read the games well. Halo loads then the scanning cursor goes back to the begining and loads again and some games don´t load at all-PGR2,Ninja Gaiden).

Ohhh. Beat me to it. I think there are 2 versions of the Philips drive but I´m pretty sure the other 2 only have one version.


¿Como estas you el dia de today?
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Scilynt
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 09:03
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I don't know what your experience is with CD's, but I believe most drives have been fine, I know mine work fine, no problems so far in the 3 (Original) / 2 (LE) years I've had them. The drives do prefer CD-RWs rather than CD-Rs though. I've only had one major problem with the games side of things, my Fuzion Frenzy refuses to play in anything but a Samsung.
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Jeku
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 15:17
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Let this be a lesson to us all not to buy any of the new consoles until at least a year after they're out to save crappy first-run quality.


--[R.O.B.O.I. and FireTris Coming Soon]--
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Raven
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 22:13
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GameCube has never had a problem..
Actually I doubt thier DVD-Reading capabilities will be an issue now they support the larger discs.

Sony, I'm never buying brand new again. NEVER! Aside from the fact that thier price is just ridiculous; they throw low-quality hardware into thier first edition. Ridiculous.

X-Box well, hmm not sure my original X-Box has worked since release; but the one I bought here hasn't been so great.

At the end of the day the X-Box doesn't actually matter much, because if you have too many DVD-Rom problems then just open it up; and replace it with a cheap Sony/Panasonic or Philips.

That's what my dad did cause he didn't like the loading times.

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Dazzag
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 23:07
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Quote: "That's what my dad did cause he didn't like the loading times"
Hmmm. That's not a bad idea. Never thought of it. Esp. considering I have at least 2 old DVD drives that are probably faster. Out of interest, did it all work ok? I mean I would be worried that a game may actually require that amount of time loading for some reason. I don't know, perhaps to show an intro movie or something, that they know runs exactly the same time as the level takes to load. But because of the faster drive you miss half of it.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
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Dave J
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 23:10
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Why would you need 2 X-Box's anyway?


"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers."
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Raven
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 23:17
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dunno. the only game i've played on there since he did it has been Doom 3, and didn't notice any difference; except for the fact I don't have enough time to grab a beer between levels.

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Jeku
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 02:08
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Quote: "Why would you need 2 X-Box's anyway?"


Didn't Raven mean NTSC and PAL?


--[R.O.B.O.I. and FireTris Coming Soon]--
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Raven
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 02:19
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yeah, when you have several places in different counteries; just easier to buy new hardware for that country rather than constantly packing up each console and game.

That said we have 2 GameCubes here; cause sometimes me and my brother both have mates around and sometimes they wanna play on the consoles; so generally we have one each, so we don't have to borrow each others. my stuff tends to be in the living room, so like anyone can play whenever; his is in his room cause that's about all he does all day.

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MiR
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 03:00
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mmm. Are you sure about replacing the drive? I thought it wasn´t posible with the built-in protection the power cable has. You always need to boot with the Xboxes drive plugged in. You can have 2 drives but you can only turn the second on after boot. I think there is way to get a pc samsung drive and replace it´s firmware with the Xbox´s but I didn´t look into it much. I found it much easier to buy a bigger harddrive and put the games on that. That really improves the loading times!
One thing that has always stumped me. Why on earth are the GC drives so much better than the Ps2 and Xbox ones? I´ve never heard complaints about the GC drive but the console is alot cheaper than the PS2.


¿Como estas you el dia de today?
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geecee3
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 03:35
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Toshiba, Samsung and Thompson, mechanisims are used inside Xboxes, check your Xbox DVD type. If it's anything other than the samsung flavour of drive then problems are to be expected. if your going to replace the drive, make sure you don't get a thompson drive, they are the worst of the three types.

cheers, geecee3.
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Raven
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 05:30
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The GameCube uses a Panasonic DVD-RAM Drive, while the DVD-ROM of the X-Box and Playstation 2 are 4x DVD 2-Layer.

DVD-RAM is just simply better than DVD-ROM, there are no two ways around it. The main reason for this is the CAV (Constant Asyncronous Velocity), it allows the disc to be constantly moving and read from several points at any given moment.

It allows the drive to constantly be streaming data, much like a Hard-Disk can.

Also you factor in the speeds at which these drives can read at.
DVD-ROM reads at 4.2MByte Per Second, DVD-RAM read at 23MByte Per Second.

It doesn't sound like much but given that even a SATA 150 Hard Disk is only capable of 18.8MByte Per Second, it's not hard to see why the DVD-RAM is such a good choice as the drive.

Hard Disks Tend to overcome thier slower speed with Cache, to a degree so do DVD-ROM; but as I said above the DVD-RAM doesn't need Cache because it just streams directly to memory.

It's a shame that Panasonic weren't the ones who won the DVD Format battle; because DVD-RAM is just better.

Designed to read despite scratches, Capable of Seemless I/O, Capable of Multi-Track I/O, Upto 4-Layers Providing almost 17GB of Space.

BluRay has achieve what DVD-RAM did, simply by enhancing the beam; so you can image what Panasonic have done for DVD-RAM+
Look forward to thier BluRay edition of DVD-RAM over the next year, should prove to be very interesting.

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the_winch
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 07:09
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Quote: "The main reason for this is the CAV (Constant Asyncronous Velocity), it allows the disc to be constantly moving and read from several points at any given moment."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_Angular_Velocity


dbhelp - online dbpro help files with user comments
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Dazzag
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 07:51
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Fair enough, but I have all 3 consoles, and haven't noticed much difference between each when it comes to loading times. Do like the 'ickle GC disks though

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
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Raven
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 07:59
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You should try playing Resident Evil 4 sometimes. The games environments are complexity and shader wise on par with Half-Life 2, yet while Half-Life 2 takes my computer around 6 minutes to load each new area; Resident Evil 4 has no loading times at all.
The entire game just flows.

It's so different from the previous games which used a door cut-scene for areas to pre-load images.

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