Which oXBox is the best for my purposes?

[gtmtnbiker]

The thomson drive is by far the worst as far as playing copied discs. It's incompatible with almost every single type of recordable media. My Phillips drive is compatible with everything I've thrown at it, including DVD+R and DVD-R, even CD-R and CD-RW.

I have a Thompson drive. I had no issues with DVD-R, DVD+R, and CD-R. I could not use CD-RW. I do agree that they're the worst of the bunch.

[lisalover1]

I also have a Thompson drive, which barely even plays legitimate discs. I really want to upgrade to a Phillips one.

[zerexerez]

Owned a few xboxes, 2 had Samsungs and 1 had Philips. Contrary to online claims that the Samsung drives are the best, the Samsungs only worked with DVDs, while the Philips read even the lowest quality CD-Rs.

[Niode]

I agree that the phillips drive is by far the best and most compatible drive. The Thomson, unfortunately is very common, the Samsung is quite rare and the Phillips one is just uncommon. So chances are you're going to end up with a Thomson, you can get replacements from ebay though, and it's as easy as changed an IDE optical drive in a PC, in fact it's identical apart from you needing Torx security drivers to open the console.

[gtmtnbiker]

It's about $30-$40 to get a Philips drive from Ebay. Is it really worth it to replace it? As I said before, I never use my drive so I don't care how crappy it is.

[Niode]

It's about $30-$40 to get a Philips drive from Ebay. Is it really worth it to replace it? As I said before, I never use my drive so I don't care how crappy it is.

The replacement was more of a general idea for people who have a thomson drive and want to upgrade. If you don't have any need for a better drive then there's no point in upgrading.