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| Grave 579th Post
 
New Red Carpet Member
 
    
    
|  "Re(2):PS2 playing movie DVDs"
, posted Wed 20 Aug 23:02
quote:
To get the most out of the DVD player you should get the remote, as the software it comes with upgrades the DVD player (AFAIK the only way to do that other than buying a new PS2) and the remote - albeit not a great remote - adds some improvements.
Agreed. Makes it a lot more usable, and it's available for $20 or so... I think it's a pretty nice remote, anyway. Small, fully featured... Not bad. I like it better than the Xbox remote, which is kinda bulky in comparasion.
quote:
I've never heard of DVDs breaking the system. Well actually I have but I think it's a bunch of bullshit. Anything can break the PS2. If you're afraid of breaking your PS2 don't do the following: play games, play DVDs, play CDs, open and close the drive door, leave it turned on, touch it or move it. -_-
Yeah, complete BS, as far as I know. PS2s seem to have all kinds of problems, ranging from voltage adjustment being necessary (though I'm unsure of why and what causes this), the magnetic assembly that holds discs while they're being played (don't want to weaken this? don't leave discs in your PS2 when it's off!), all kinds of stuff. I've been pretty good with my PS2, and I've had it from launch wit no incidents whatsoever. But then again, I've kept it in horizontal mode and I don't leave discs in it, and I've watched a LOT of movies.
But some people take immaculate care of their PS2s, and they drop dead anyway.
And sometimes bees come out and attack you.
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| DarkZero
221th Post
Frequent Customer
| "Re(4):PS2 playing movie DVDs" , posted Thu 21 Aug 02:31
Every console has its rumors, but for some reason the PS2 ones just won't die. My PS2 works. Everyone else I know has a working PS2. Some PS2s, somewhere, have broken, but then again, all of the consoles break. It sounds like Undead Fred has a broken (or semi-broken) Xbox, but a working PS2. I have a broken GameCube, but a working PS2. They're complex machines that have been cheaply mass produced by machines and factory labor, so it is unfortunately just the nature of the beast.
I wouldn't believe anything that tells you how to "extend the life of your PS2". Some are put together well, others are not, and most of the guidelines for keeping your PS2 alive are probably just mythology. Someone had a DVD in their drive when their PS2 finally gave up and died, so they assumed it was the DVD that did it. This is no different than foolish ancient tribesman witnessing their crops grow better after slaughtering a young virgin. It's a lack of simple logic, commonly known as "being a dumbass".
It's true that the PS2 isn't a great DVD player, though. However, this is only a problem if you can actually use a great DVD player, which most people can't. If you don't have surround sound and a giant HDTV screen, you don't need a great DVD player with all the bells and whistles. It's also incompatible with poorly made DVDs, which means that you can't use it with some anime DVDs that were released before the PS2 came out. If you were hoping to whip out your old Outlaw Star DVDs tonight, then you're SOL. Otherwise, you're fine.
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| suichi
86th Post
Occasional Customer
| "Re(5):PS2 playing movie DVDs" , posted Thu 21 Aug 05:01
I have two friends who work at different game stores, one is GameStop, the other Electronics Boutique. Both of them say that they see more PS2s coming in for repair or replacement because of the DVD drive being bad. 1 in 4 comes back within a few months.
The DVD drive in a PS2 just wasn't meant to play DVDs properly. The motor is a quick read motor that's meant to spin up fast, read the DVD info for the game it's processing, and then spin down again. A very common thing for CD format systems. But it can't handle spinning at high speeds for long extended periods of time. After a while of hard use, it burns out. When or if yours will, is debateable, but the average PS2 will it seems. The XBox is more sensitive to playing certain formats and can be very picky about clean DVDs or unbalanced disks, but it's motor was meant to be similar to the average long spinning DVD reader. So it can handle the playing of DVD movies for long periods of time much better than the PS2 hardware can.
Whether you like one or the other is pointless, honestly. But myself and my two friends do not recommend playing DVD movies on your PS2 or using it's vertical or upright stand. The vertical position puts stress on the spinning motor in an unbalanced way and will burn out the motor quicker than the normal horizontal position.
--Suichiro
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| DarkZero
222th Post
Frequent Customer
| "Re(6):PS2 playing movie DVDs" , posted Thu 21 Aug 12:53
quote:
I have two friends who work at different game stores, one is GameStop, the other Electronics Boutique. Both of them say that they see more PS2s coming in for repair or replacement because of the DVD drive being bad. 1 in 4 comes back within a few months.
The DVD drive in a PS2 just wasn't meant to play DVDs properly. The motor is a quick read motor that's meant to spin up fast, read the DVD info for the game it's processing, and then spin down again. A very common thing for CD format systems. But it can't handle spinning at high speeds for long extended periods of time. After a while of hard use, it burns out. When or if yours will, is debateable, but the average PS2 will it seems.
That doesn't make a lot of sense, though. Sony has already modified the chips in the PS2 to combine them and therefore make them cheaper, as well as making other small modifications to the hardware that many mod chip afficionados have catalogued. But yet, they haven't changed the DVD drive motor over the course of the system's life, even though they're supposedly suffering greater refund costs than any other console manufacturer? Or actually, let me rephrase that. They're losing money on refunds for 25% of their systems, which easily dwarfs the profits gained from the other 75% of the systems that they sell, which would give them a negative cashflow... but they've never addressed this problem which has supposedly been around since the PS2's inception.
I also find it odd that there is no documentation of this supposedly widespread problem with the PS2. When the Xbox and GameCube debuted at nearly the same time in the United States, there were detailed analyses on major news sites (I remember MSNBC had it, but I forget which others) of the refund statistics for both consoles. The result was that the Xbox was temporarily higher in the beginning and then quickly came down to the GameCube's level, but that's beside the point. The point is that that data was available before and should be available now. If one out of every four PS2s required a refund, you'd think someone would've noticed.
quote:
The vertical position puts stress on the spinning motor in an unbalanced way and will burn out the motor quicker than the normal horizontal position.
I agree with this, though. I'm not sure how the whole "vertical PS2" thing got started, but it seems about as brilliant as giving your GameCube a bath.
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"Re(3):PS2 playing movie DVDs" 
