Star Wars DVDs on the Xbox. Help!

Cafe Society
1

I watch DVDs on my Xbox. My other, better DVD player died, and I have’t got around to replacing it.

I bought the new Star Wars DVDs the other day. So far, I’ve only watched the first movie. But now I hear from a friend about this problem with the Special Features disc. Apparently, it updates the BIOS as soon as you load it in.

How can I tell if it’s safe to watch this disc? Is it going to mess up my Xbox?

thwartme

2

I’m pretty sure it won’t, from what I can tell. It simply updates the BIOS to a newer version, which should only affect you if you’ve modded your Xbox in some way (which it sounds like you haven’t).

I wouldn’t sweat it.

3

That’s what I thought, too Duderdude2 . But then I see this bit:

How can I tell what BIOS I’m running? My machine is about two years old. Is that old enough to be affected? Anyone know?

thwartme

4

I’m not certain, but it shouldn’t matter. My Xbox is two years old as well, and I know that when I picked up Xbox Live, it installed an updated version of the dashboard. Whether that included a new bios or not, I can’t be certain, but I can’t imagine Lucasarts would update the BIOS without extensive testing performed by Microsoft.

5

You’re probably right. Maybe I’m just being alarmist.

Mind you, if this thing fries my ‘box, Lucas better duck and run. He thinks people were mad about Greedo shooting first? He ain’t seen nothin’ yet…

thwartme

6

The disc in question is the fourth disc, the one with the Star Wars: Battlefront demo. Saying it updates the BIOS is misleading, as it really updates the Dashboard. The Xbox’s BIOS is burned into ROM, exactly like your PC’s (Although software updatable BIOSes exist, the Xbox’s BIOS can’t be updated without a hardware modification). It would seem that this is to screw with modders (whom Microsoft really dislikes), since most modders have custom Dashboards installed. The update would overwrite such custom Dashboards.

7

Addendum: It probably wasn’t LucasArts’s decision to add the update, but Microsoft’s.

In case you’re interested, a modded Xbox’s primary feature is the ability to run unsigned (i.e. non-Microsoft approved) code. Microsoft has a significant interest in ensuring users only use their Xboxes to play games, since each Xbox is sold at a loss. Since modded Xboxes can be used to do other things, like run Linux, every person who buys an Xbox but doesn’t buy games (using it to play DivX movies or stream MP3s to an entertainment center, for example) costs Microsoft some money.