[Mods: This could be IMHO material, but it involves gaming and movies, so more people who can answer this are going to see it. Move as you see fit.]
My DVD player is on it’s last legs. It’s been stuttering and stopping a lot recently, and that’s unacceptable. I have an X-Box, which can double as a DVD player.
But I’m wondering if it’s worth the $25 to get the components necessary to do so, or if I should spend some more money and get a new DVD player. Is using an X-box as your primary DVD player:
I have an X-box in my bedroom and sometimes I use it to play DVDs if someone’s watching something else in the other room. I haven’t noticed any difference in quality. In fact, I can skip forward a lot faster with the X-box than I can with my dvd player.
Playing DVDs is hard on the Xbox, I doubt much harder than a game, but it’s not really designed for that and any PS2 owner will tell you how much harder their PS2 has to whir to get that disc to play. I’d assume an Xbox is similar.
Second, an Xbox will never play as good as a standalone DVD player, even a $40 Apex model.
Which leads me to number 3: Buy a $40 Apex model. It won’t be top of the line, but it’ll play everything and Apex’s are actually very good about handling scratches, which an Xbox (or PS2) are not.
Just remember, it’s $40, so if it breaks in a year, don’t be surprised.
But mine is going strong on it’s 4th year and I’ve never had any problems.
A friend of mine uses his x-box to play DVD’s. He’s complained to me a few times though that
a) burned DVDs usually don’t work (not pirated, but home movies and stuff)
b) supposedly region free discs may or may not work - it’s really hit or miss. For the most part correct region dvd’s work but I think he’s had problems with those as well.
He likes a lot of Japanese and Chinese movies, but is always afraid to order the region free versions as it could be a waste of money for him.
Not to pose a silly question, but where is your DVD player located? I was having the same problems your’re reporting and it was due to overheating. My DVD player was on top of the cable box, which in turn was on top of the television. The whole shebang was then inside of my entertainment center, which left at best maybe 1/4 of an inch clearance from the top of the television space. Every time it was on for more than an hour, it went spastic. A quick restructuring of my components aleviated said difficulties.
That being said, why spend $20-$25 on a conversion kit for your X-box when a stand alone player can be had for $40 or less at Mal-Wart? It’s not worth burning up your gaming system just so you can watch movies.
Got an Xbox for Xmas, and was Xtremely surprised to find that the DVD remote got tossed into the stocking. I looked over the buttons, functionality, available on the Xbox remote, and there were simply things that I do use on my regular DVD player that aren’t (clearly) there on the Xbox remote. Also, I do have a number of burned home movies (both DVD and mpgs), and I know that they run on the old player. Didn’t want to open up the remote for the Xbox and find out that it was not playing them right. So, I guess I really don’t know how it would work, but when faced with the option of replacing a cheapo DVD player or just using a signal splitter to use whichever device is needed at that moment, I made my choice…
Went back to Circuit City and Xchanged the remote for Queen’s Greatest Hits.