Xbox 360's Seriously Flawed DVD Playback

[Zeus]

ExtremeTech seem to think the Xbox 360's DVD player is WORSE than the poorest quality DVD players on the market. The Xbox 360 has failed some kind of DVD bench mark test, with even a $50 player scoring twice as high. Do you feel the same way too?

<center><a href="http://www.maxconsole.net/content_img/360dvdte.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.maxconsole.net/content_img/360dvdte_1.jpg"></center></a>


As you can see, the Xbox 360 is basically a total failure at the HQV benchmark disc. Even a typical $50 DVD player usually has a score of 35 or better. A score over 100 is considered quite good, and few video processors score 120 or more. The latest ATI and Nvidia graphics cards (even the fairly inexpensive ones), with the latest drivers, score well over 100 in the HQV benchmark.

Of course, if we've learned anything about the HQV benchmark DVD, is it this: You have to take it in context. Some of the features on the disc are things you don't really need your DVD player to do. For example, while noise reduction is nice in a DVD player, that's really something you want the display to do. Some of those film cadence detection tests are really quite rare on DVDs, too. They're important for the video processors in TVs, because broadcast TV will often squash commercials to fit a certain length of time by stripping out frames and such, but you'll realistically only encounter DVDs with a few different cadence patterns.


News Source: <A href="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2088533,00.asp" target="_blank">Extremetech.com</a>

[Aeond]

Old news. We already know that the Xbox360 has a poor DVD playpack performance, but seriously: Who damn fucking cares?
Did i buy a Xbox360 to watch DVD movies?
Honestly, no i don't. (Almost) Everyone has a DVD-player at home. And those who don't: Don't moan about X360's dvd-player, just go out and buy a 30$ player. doesn't hurt...

[shakoor_h]

i've never heard this before, i'm wondering what the PS2 got for this test, coz people used to say that was a bad DVD player.

Although glad to see that the news on 360 flaws aren't being filtered like before

[Robotron]

People will always *****.
"the Wii doesn't play DVDs"...."the 360 isn't a good DVD player"

Well guess what? They're game consoles.

[gopherbob]

cd media consoles always have crappy drives

ps1 - junk
ps2 - junk
360 - junk

But like the guy said above who cares. It doesn't have a problem with games and all the dvds I have tried play fine... burned porn works great as well. Popping in a hardcore porn dvd in the 360 is a great party killer.

[Aeond]

cd media consoles always have crappy drives

ps1 - junk
ps2 - junk
360 - junk

But like the guy said above who cares. It doesn't have a problem with games and all the dvds I have tried play fine... burned porn works great as well. Popping in a hardcore porn dvd in the 360 is a great party killer.

Obviously the PS3 drive is even better than common Blu-ray players, but it's an exception.

[crono]

???I have a perfect picture whit my 360 and hd ready tv,at least 360 gave 480p image,standaard 30 euro or dollar players mostly only gave 480i.

[Yackom]

I have the vga cable and with that it does the upscaling. Honestly It looks fantastic. I don't care much for the component output for DVD playback. I would like to see the results of the upscaled version.

[RiPPn]

I agree, my 360 doesn't play any +r and -r media, but seems to do okay with retail DVDs. However the HD-DVD add on is something else, that drive plays everything and anything thrown it's way, so now I use the 360 drive for games and the HD-DVD drive for movies, simple as that.

[peppers]

the dvd player in the 360 is ok its not as good as the xbox 1 but it dose not lock up a lot when you try to do stuff like the real cheap ones tend to I give it a 7 out of 20
btw there are some dam nice dvd players for $15 if you buy at just the right time and know were to look witch are far better than it that can play anything you stick in there from vcd to divx but who cares console ones are not great anyway

[Colmino]

The irony is that because the DVD playback is software on a rather powerful gaming console with a 12x drive, if Microsoft really cared, they could make it just about the best player there is. The only thing that would be better would be very high-dollar players with motion adaptive deinterlacers like the Gennum.

[Trashcat]

Using 360 to play DVD both on non-HD tv and through VGA can't complain about the quality, plays any kind of recordable discs just fine.

[DugFreez]

Popping in a hardcore porn dvd in the 360 is a great party killer.

Then you're not hosting that right kind of parties! ;)

[rstyled]

I think the dvd-player in x360 is just great. It isn't the best i've seen in times, but with the VGA cable upscaling the movies it looks just fantastic. In some cases, the dvd's come even close to hd-dvd quality.

[MaDDaWg836]

It has played every DVD i threw at it so I love that i have a dvd player in my room.

[chukz]

Old news. We already know that the Xbox360 has a poor DVD playpack performance, but seriously: Who damn fucking cares?
Did i buy a Xbox360 to watch DVD movies?
Honestly, no i don't. (Almost) Everyone has a DVD-player at home. And those who don't: Don't moan about X360's dvd-player, just go out and buy a 30$ player. doesn't hurt...

Yes but Xbox360 people been saying all along how Wii doesn't even have DVD Playback, this just shows that having DVD playback doesn't mean anything if it's poor quality.

I agree with you though, I think people have about 2-3 ways of playing DVD movies already, I would put Xbox360 as videogames mainly.

But also reviewers like IGN say it's a shame Wii didn't come with a DVD playback, but considering Nintendo's value plan (read: saving money as much as possible) it would probably not have been the best DVD playback anyhow.

I agree with you very much though, there are a lot of different sources to play DVDs from, let your videogame system play the games :)

[Templedog]

Buy an Oppo Upconverting DVD player- hook it up via HDMI, and don't bother with console dvd players ever, ever again.

[Turbojugend]

Who cares? I didn't buy my 360 to playback DVDs. Anybody that buys consoles for DVD playback is an idiot.

[WeSiDe]

All This God Damn Sony Bashing And Xbox Fan Boyism Has Got To Stop Or I Will Blow Myself Up At The Local Eb!

[MadonnaProject]

not that i ever watch dvds using my xbox 360, but at least it plays dvds. unlike the nintendo menstrual discharge.

[spongey]

It doesnt have many options but for those out there who arent complete nerds about the latest dvd player i find it pretty good. some of these people need to get out more...;)

[SegaCD]

Old news. We already know that the Xbox360 has a poor DVD playpack performance, but seriously: Who damn fucking cares?
Did i buy a Xbox360 to watch DVD movies?
Honestly, no i don't. (Almost) Everyone has a DVD-player at home. And those who don't: Don't moan about X360's dvd-player, just go out and buy a 30$ player. doesn't hurt...

Yep exactly

[put4558350]

hope MS quickly upgrade it
just scale dvd to 1080 isn't enough to best ps3

[Trashcat]

Yes but Xbox360 people been saying all along how Wii doesn't even have DVD Playback, this just shows that having DVD playback doesn't mean anything if it's poor quality.
I doubt you can seriously put lack of DVD playback as a disadvantage for the Wii, sure its aimed at the people who never owned a console before but even those who don't have a PC still got a DVD player so only those who want to put 2nd/3rd/10th DVD player somewhere in their household will really benefit from DVD playback in the Wii. Also I noticed a lot of people are talking about how 360 and ps3 fanboys talk the Wii down for not having DVD playback but I don't recall actually seeing many of these fanboys talking. Seems like Wii fanboys just like the opportunity to accuse other fanboys of being shallow by pointing out that console is meant for games even without being provoked to do so.
hope MS quickly upgrade it just scale dvd to 1080 isn't enough to best ps3
Best ps3? You make it sound like sony is in the lead while in fact the situation is quite the opposite, its ps3 that has yet to prove itself worth buying for some1 besides sony fanboys.

[GigaClon]

yeah the interface to the PS2 DVD player is horrid.

[Xenogears V]

The xbox out of the entertaiment of the games and very scarce, I believe that the fact is serious even more that the reader Hd-dvd is not already included in the console!.:(

[Monkey01]

Yes but Xbox360 people been saying all along how Wii doesn't even have DVD Playback, this just shows that having DVD playback doesn't mean anything if it's poor quality.

So, before these results were out, it was a nice feauture to play DVD's on it, but now the specs tell us it's bad, so it doesn't mean anything anymore?
How can a feauture suddenly become nothing when the specs come out?
I mean, come on, when you watched dvd movies on your 360 before, did the thought ever come through your mind: "A damn, this movie looks so bad when the 3:2:3:2:2 Film cadence is missing". Honestly, I don't know what the **** a 3:2:3:2:2 Film cadence is and I don't give a **** either. It plays movies fine, they don't look bad, fine then, **** the specs...

[Scorpion3]

I just got the HD-DVD add-on and it works a LOT better then the standard DVD Player in the console. It's even read every single Xvid movie I've tried. Once there's a firmware update for the HD-DVD player to make it play games, I'll just remove the old DVD Drive and replace it with the add-on.

[swisstony123]

Yep the 360 DVD player is whack and then so was my ps2 (lipsink) But to be honest I certainly didn't buy my 360 or PS2 for DVD playback!! Though if there are some good games for the PS3 eventually... then It would be a bonus having a blu-ray player without really fully committing myself to a HD gen player!