Weak point exposed: 360 DVD player

by Christopher Grant { Nov 29th 2005 at 3:30PM }

ArsTechnica has posted their impressions of the 360's DVD playback and it's good and bad. The good news: it's progressive scan and it had no problem playing burnt DVD's; the bad: "very apparent dithering and artifacts in the black areas of the screen."

In other words, its a good but not great DVD player. It seems to me that those who would care would already have a better dedicated DVD player. Any fanboys displeased with the 360's DVD player?

[Via digg]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Eric Hendrix @ Nov 29th 2005 3:46PM

I have yet to run into this problem.

CHILL_down @ Nov 29th 2005 4:09PM

Im hoping things get upgraded/work better in future versions of the console.

Kaedryl @ Nov 29th 2005 4:15PM

I don't use it to watch movies, but when I used it with DVE to calibrate the geometry on the feed the 360 is on, I had no flicker or artifacts.

Tim @ Nov 29th 2005 4:33PM

I tend to agree with statements about blacks. Colours seem alright, but dark scenes seem a little bit washed out.

I watched Skeleton Key last night and the whole time it just felt like it could look better.

John @ Nov 29th 2005 4:42PM

I should think the noise factor would preclude the 360 (and possibly the PS3) from use in any serious home theatre system.

Cheatah @ Nov 29th 2005 4:53PM

I wish it had upconvert option with HDMI inputs it'd be SOOO NICE! My Toshiba 179 upconvert DVD player works just fine :-)

Pete @ Nov 29th 2005 5:28PM

My 360 DVD player doesn't even work. It starts playing and then freezes the whole system. I have yet to have this problem with games only movie playback. Any suggestions?

Jenson @ Nov 29th 2005 5:36PM

My 360's DVD playback works fine and looks absolutly stellar...don't know what the problem is for those people...Defective 360 maybe?

Black Guy @ Nov 29th 2005 6:18PM

Who cares? The Xbox 360's primary function is to be a great game system; additional features are secondary. And because of their secondary nature, those features cannot be expected to hold up very well to a dedicated device. I don't hear anybody complaining about not being able to play Project Gotham 3 on their DVD players.

If you need high level functionality for a particular application, get a dedicated unit. If you're strapped for cash, Walmart sells DVD players for as little as $17.00. I for one only use my box for gaming, I'm not going to wear out my drive watching movies when I got 4 others in the house or I can buy one on the cheap.

Dan @ Nov 29th 2005 10:21PM

its from a journal on ars... and it actually looks really good on my HDTV. A decent dvd player though. I have noticed no artifacting at all

Julio @ Nov 30th 2005 12:18AM

My complaint is that I wish it would upscale to 720p and 1080i, instead of dropping down to 480p output while playing DVDs.

Why? THX calibration! I want to use my calibration tools to calibrate my HDTV's settings on the same XBOX360, same settings, same resolution as the games I'll be playing.

Eliot Phillips @ Nov 30th 2005 2:43AM

I haven't watched an entire movie yet, but I can say it is better than the overly red picture from my other DVD player: the Playstation 2

Scott @ Nov 30th 2005 1:18PM

I've mostly tried kids movies because I have kids and can't seem to find the time to watch my movies anymore (still yet to see Batman Begins which I purchased at release). Anyways, the colors on my JVC 48" HDTV looked fine during playback from the 360. Probably not as good as some of the more expensive dedicated DVD players but it looked fine.

PublicDeviance @ Nov 30th 2005 8:16PM

I strongly support the xbox and still do, but this is bothersome to me. With the xbox live notifications i was looking forward to replacing my dvd player to use the 360 as a one for all kind of device. I am still waiting for my 360 preorder so i will find out soon how bad it is. I hope this is something they can release a fix for. Oh well...

Abs @ Dec 7th 2005 6:35PM

I definetly noticed a poorer picture quality while playing "War of the Worlds" on my Xbox 360! I popped it in, and the VERY first thing I noticed was that a diagonal cable on the screen look pixelated and Jaggy! WTF? To make sure it wasn't my eyes, I popped it into my Computer and the cable looked normal. Oh well, I guess I'll manage.

Bertrand @ Dec 12th 2005 4:20PM

Strange that you'd say "in other words, it's a good but not great DVD player", whereas the Ars article's title is precisely "It's just not good"... Oh, yes, fanboy, I forgot...

shauna @ Dec 14th 2005 8:32AM

my games play great but the 360 won't play any of my dvd's. the screan just goes black

kingy harris @ Dec 24th 2005 6:13PM

My 360 plays DVDs quite nicely in my opinion but I do have a problem- sometimes when the camera pans quickly you get a juddering on the screen; its not a smooth movement. This only happens on rare occasions, for example pirates of the caribbean plays fine but the bonus lost disc judders.Any ideas?