All XBoxes can use any of the XBox drives just fine. XBox-scene just posted a
news snippet about a device that lets you easily convert a PC LG-8164 drive into a XBox compatible one. With future firmware upgrades the LG-8164 drive would be able to read any type of media.
As far as Thompsons are concerned, they are the ones that have cause the most trouble with Dirty Disc Errors and the like, but I find the ones that are good to be real good at reading different DVD brands (Verbatim 16x are the best) and different DVD types (+ and -). Samsungs are supposidly good, but again it's a crap shoot. I've had a few that haven't been able to read both dvd+r's and dvd-r's, which is annoying when you have multiple XBoxes and already have a ton of DVDs burned.