Home >> Internet Games >> Xbox 360

Xbox 360 Compatible DVD Drives

The Microsoft Xbox 360 was released in 2005 and has since become one of the popular video game consoles available on the market, contending with heavyweights such as Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii. The game's DVD drive supports a wide variety of disc formats, including DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD and JPEG Photo CD. As of October 2010, there are three different DVD drives that are fully compatible and come factory-installed with the Xbox 360.

Hitachi-LG
- The first of the three compatible DVD drives is the Hitachi-LG DVD drive. The Hitachi-LG drive is one of the two drives that were included as standard fare when Microsoft introduced the Xbox 360. The only way to discern which DVD drive your console has without actually opening the Xbox and removing the drive is by examining the disc tray. The Hitachi-LG drive has small notches cut out of the center and two square holes at the front of the tray.
Toshiba-Samsung
- The Toshiba-Samsung DVD drive is the other DVD drive that was installed in the original Xbox 360 and is the more commonly sought after among video game aficionados. The Toshiba-Samsung is favored over the Hitachi-LG because of its flexibility with modifications and durability when flashing firmware. As with the Hitachi-LG, you can determine whether your Xbox has a Toshiba-Samsung DVD drive by looking at the disc tray. The Toshiba-Samsung tray doesn't have any holes in it, but does have unsymmetrical chunk taken out of the left side of the tray.
BenQ
- In 2007, Microsoft released the Xbox 360 Elite, which came installed with a BenQ DVD Drive. The BenQ was also installed in the Arcade and Premium Xbox 360s that were released later. The BenQ DVD drive is often considered to be the fastest and most silent of all the factory installed 360 DVD drives and also currently can't be modified, unlike the other two drives.

Xbox 360