Xbox lasers

drewey10 · #1 27-05-2004, 21:44

Hope you guys can offer an opinion. The guy who chiped my xbox claims that if you use cheap media in your box ie Princo it will ruin your laser.
I asked the IT guy who comes into work about it, he said thats crap. Can anyone help.

rms2001 · #2 27-05-2004, 22:01

I dont think its true. It may take longer for the laser to read data from the cheap media, but I don't think it will ruin it.

ihaveanosebleed · #3 28-05-2004, 03:57

My Xbox with Samsung 605 will not read cheap DVD-R’s like Princo’s. Some cheap media will work if you burn under 2Gig of data on it. Save yourself a bunch of headaches and use good media, for anything you do.

JiveTurkey · #4 28-05-2004, 13:27

I don't see how much you pay for media determines how long your laser lasts? I've used Princo for a couple years and they work fine.

TylerDurden · #5 28-05-2004, 14:03

Quote:

Originally posted by JiveTurkey
I don't see how much you pay for media determines how long your laser lasts? I've used Princo for a couple years and they work fine.

Ill explain:

Usually when companies sell cheap media, its because they themselves use lower grade products when making the media. This in effect makes these discs a poorer grade than others.

Now with that in mind Princo more than likely uses a lower grade dye and other matierials. Thus giving their discs lower reflectivity as compaired to other high end discs.

Eventually due to the strain a laser has to go through just to read data your laser will burn out. Now this doesnt mean it will happen tomorrow, (especially in Xbox's case) but it can mean a lesser overall lifespan of your laser.

Tyler!

JiveTurkey · #6 28-05-2004, 21:58

Yes I've heard theories like that since the PS1 days. Unfortunately, I've never seen any measured proof either.

The typical laser's lifetime is longer than any typical gaming console's life anyway. Even if it knocks off a hundred hours outta the mean time to failure it'll last thousands of hours.

I would think that more expensive media would have a longer shelf life though which might be worth the investment for important data.

TylerDurden · #7 29-05-2004, 02:08

Quote:

Originally posted by JiveTurkey
Yes I've heard theories like that since the PS1 days. Unfortunately, I've never seen any measured proof either.

Please understand that I too have been through the ps1 days. But I have old memorex cdr's that required replacing as well as ps1 lasers. If the proof you require demands that someone take a cosole to your house and spend the entire lifetime of the cosole with and without crap media then dont expect anyone to be in a hurry to do so.

Tyler!

spedmetal · #8 04-06-2004, 22:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiveTurkey

Unfortunately, I've never seen any measured proof either.

What proof is needed?!? What Tyler has stated is common sense and he who understands electronics should be easy for him to comprehend.

However if you want proof I've got it...just let me know.

JiveTurkey · #9 05-06-2004, 00:57

Oh so it's common sense? and how exactly is common sense measured to ensure that this is fact instead of internet rumor?

Are you saying you are familiar with electronics but dont measure anything? I'm not really sure what your point is here?

If you've got proof then I'd love to see it. I honestly dont know how you can show it makes any respectable difference in the life of the laser considering the expected life of the unit and normal failure rates of the laser.

ihaveanosebleed · #10 05-06-2004, 06:08

FACT: I have a PS2 with a dead DVD laser because of Princo disks. I ignored warnings from these guys when I started burning and Princo games were running fine. That did not last long, I watched the performance of my laser drop during use of these Disks within weeks and eventually I had to increase laser power and adjust the drive to read these disks and soon the laser was so bad original DVD’s would not read.

The Xbox drives are better quality drive than the old PS2 drives but that does not mean it will be immune to bad DVD-R media. No two lasers , and no two burners are created equal as well as no two media are exactly the same. Where cheap media is concerned, the surface quality of these disks can be very irregular and burn quality unpredictable from one burn to the next . I have tried princo’s on the xbox for testing purposes. I found that some Xbox’s will read the princo’s better than others but most will start to choke on data half way through the DVD-R. Exactly the same way PS2’s choke on data half way through a cheap DVD-R, as media gets more unreliable towards the outside edge of the disks.

If you can burn full 4.7 gigs worth of data on cheap media and have smooth reading through the whole DVD-R. If you can do that with consistently good success disk after disk, consider yourself lucky because you are definitely a minority and lucked out with a good batch of disks or an extraordinary burner. For most of the people out there Princo’s (cheap media) are a very bad idea, and that is a fact!

seaneyb2003 · #11 05-06-2004, 06:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by drewey10

Hope you guys can offer an opinion. The guy who chiped my xbox claims that if you use cheap media in your box ie Princo it will ruin your laser.
I asked the IT guy who comes into work about it, he said thats crap. Can anyone help.

Well the modders theory is correct, you friends theory is wrong. Princo disk have a very light purple base and better quality disk Riteks are very dark purple base. Darker disks have a higher reflectivness and the laser doesnt strugle to read the data. With princo it doesnt have as good reflectivness so it just strugles and makes noise this is the laser struggling to focus on the disk and this wears it out in no time. I also found this outon my old ps1 where i used crap media and the laser was making lots of noise. I recommend u just use Ritek or verbatim media as its most reliable.

When i first got my dvd burner i didnt know what media was best so i bought some bulkpaq crap and within a month i killed my dvd players laser due to crap disks! dont use them my friend

spedmetal · #12 05-06-2004, 10:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiveTurkey

Oh so it's common sense? and how exactly is common sense measured to ensure that this is fact instead of internet rumor?

Are you saying you are familiar with electronics but dont measure anything? I'm not really sure what your point is here?

If you've got proof then I'd love to see it. I honestly dont know how you can show it makes any respectable difference in the life of the laser considering the expected life of the unit and normal failure rates of the laser.

Ok here you go. Once upon a time back before I realised the crap princos are silly ol' me purchased some cheap princo media and backed up every single game I own to the princos. They where played ins a brand new V7 PS2 with a Sanyo laser for about 3 months (heavily by my kids) before I noticed some reading problems form the laser. Soon after that if wouldn’t read DVD-R media at all, and struggled with PS2 original DVD based games. I then had to adjust the laser for it to read, (little note here I did some measuring hmmm) but silly old me though like you...nahhh these discs are fine and kept using them. Well guess what after about another 2 months the laser went out all together.

I finally replaced the laser with a brand new laser and re-burned all my media to Ritek and it has been going good for over a year with out an adjustment or reading problems what so ever. Proof is in the pudding.

Now granted the Xbox has a much better type of laser, but the same principles apply here. This concept shouldn’t be hard to understand, if you have to strain your eyes to read small righting on dark colored paper day in and day out for mouths you’re going to go blind. Now put that same righting on bright colored paper with large righting and you will be good for years to come. This same analogy explains what will happen with your laser when using cheap media guaranteed! No back-up will be even close to the quality of stamped originals, they don’t design the lasers in our consoles to read recordable media. In fact in the early days of the PS2 (before the V9 and V10) Sony in fact made the lasers poorly just for the fact that they didn’t want the lasers to read recordable media. Now they have made the v9/v10 capable of reading recordable media so they claim, but this has opened a whole new can of worms with lasers frying in minutes and chips blowing up.

This is not the only proof I have but I'm tried of typing right now. If you want more just ask and I'll feed you some more.

Oh by the way don’t get mad at me just cuz I have something different to say then you

seaneyb2003 · #13 05-06-2004, 10:55

sped ur right i backed up my pro evo 3 and splinter cell 2 princo and the noise it made was bad! just as bad as rips do. The good thing is with xbox is that the drives are cheaper than the lasers for ps2 and that xbox ones are so easy 2 install. I have a samsung drive so im gonna be happy for a long time

JiveTurkey · #14 05-06-2004, 18:01

Oh no I won't get mad Sped. I think the main purpose of this forum is to exchange ideas or info and if we all thought the same it wouldnt be any fun anyway. You made a statement and have some experience to support it and I'm more than happy to listen. I can't say I agree 100% but I will gladly listen to any intelligent argument.

I just find this very strange that the reflectivity of the media gets blamed for destroying lasers when I have worked on computers for many years and never heard this theory once. Even on this thread it seems the only "bad" lasers were found on PS2s? and Sony has had a reputation for questionable lasers.

Either way the bottom line is that the amount of money I have saved on media over the last 2 years could easily buy me a new Xbox if I have to. So doing the math it works out - compared to rumors that it *might* be bad for the machine.

spedmetal · #15 05-06-2004, 18:22

Well thank you for that Jive, and I agree with you that with out disagreements the forum would be rather boring, so we agree to disagree

. With that said, I know for a fact that PC drives have lasers that are optimized to read recordable media, like I said previously the PS2's laser wasn’t until recently.... was in fact made to be hard to read recordable media.

Now the Xbox has a DVD drive very similar to a PC drive as you all know, and this is why you may be having better luck with it. I also know that there are guys in the Xbox scene that remove the original drives with PC based drives that they have reworked to make compatible with the Xbox and they read recordable media without a hiccup! Now I only wish some one could come up with this same solution for the PS2.