Saturday, December 03, 2005
XBOX 360 grinding discs
I just found this incredibly... stupid. It turns out that if you move the xbox 360 even slightly while it is turned on (tilting it, actually), it makes a VERY loud noise and gouges a big chunk out of the DVD in the drive, all the way around the disc.
You might actually want to tilt the unit, since it is designed to stand both on its side, and down flat.
Anyhow, check out the report here: http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/Xbox-360-Game-Disc-Scratched.htm
Watch the video. Yeah, it is WMV, but it is worth it. You won't believe how loud the noise is, or how little movement it takes to destroy a disc.
This isn't an isolated incident either. the guys at llamma.com only tried it out after it happened to them on another 360. I'm having trouble believing that Microsoft didn't pick this up in QA. I guess they decided that replacing a few scratched discs was cheaper than using a different DVD drive.
UPDATE: Microsoft has said that they WILL NOT replace scratched discs, because they burried a warning on page 11 of the manual that says "Remove the disc before moving the console or tilting it between horizontal and vertical positions".
You might actually want to tilt the unit, since it is designed to stand both on its side, and down flat.
Anyhow, check out the report here: http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/Xbox-360-Game-Disc-Scratched.htm
Watch the video. Yeah, it is WMV, but it is worth it. You won't believe how loud the noise is, or how little movement it takes to destroy a disc.
This isn't an isolated incident either. the guys at llamma.com only tried it out after it happened to them on another 360. I'm having trouble believing that Microsoft didn't pick this up in QA. I guess they decided that replacing a few scratched discs was cheaper than using a different DVD drive.
UPDATE: Microsoft has said that they WILL NOT replace scratched discs, because they burried a warning on page 11 of the manual that says "Remove the disc before moving the console or tilting it between horizontal and vertical positions".
