Can you play AVI DVD's on the Xbox 360 Slim. HOW?

[UmmAddan]

I know nothing about xbox's, i purely bought it for my children to play several games that i bought them.
My Multi Region DVD player has messed up & before i buy a new one i want to know if it is possible for the Xbox to play AVI's on DVD's.
It is connected via HDMI... when i put the disk on it says "Mixed Media Disc" on the "Home" page; and when i select it nothing happens.
Do I need to go on a different page/setting?
Thank You in Advance.

[yoda313]

Go into the video section and check my video apps. go to video player and select mixed media disc (or whatever the disc icon is). Then you can go in and select the files on the disc.

Please note that the 360 is a bit picky on the file types it will read. Just because it might be a divx/xvid or h264 file does not necessarily mean it will play all of them. If they have too many reference frames or are the wrong profile it won't like them.

But you can't play it from the main tab like you can a regular dvd. Go into the video tab and select my video apps and select video player and you can access them there.

(this is assuming you have the latest dashboard update. I think the slims came out with these already installed. But if you are online a lot you probably have already updated to it)

[UmmAddan]

No i am never online a lot but i purchased it several months ago and im sure i went through the installing process so i am sure it is up to date

yes i did eventually figure that out but what happened was the video played for approx 5 minutes and then stopped and the message said something along the lines of not being supported... how does that work since it played the first 5 mins?

thanks for the response.

UPDATE: Again i put on another AVI and it said not supported, but what is funny is that 5 mins later i played this same AVI again and it worked...
It's a funny thing this xbox, it cant make its mind up!

[yoda313]

It's a funny thing this xbox, it cant make its mind up!

I just posted this in another thread and will repeat it:

The xbox 360 (and the ps3 for that matter) is a game console first and a media player second.

It is not going to push hard to read and support every file format that has ever been made. Also there are lots of variations within each file format and just because file x is this format doesn't mean that the xbox 360 will play it. There are certain "under the hood" (edit sorry that should read "bonnet" for you since you hail from the UK - I've been watching a lot of the "Wheeler Dealers" show on the velocity cable channel Great show by the way --- specs it has to meet for it to be read.

You talk about this 5 minute mark. This could be a bad disc. Is it a full disc and could this be on the outside edge of the disc? Its hard to say if you have a bunch of small files filling up the disc.

However I'd try copying the same file onto another disc and try that and give it a go. If you have a different brand of blank disc available I'd try that too. Sometimes you can get a bad disc especially if its of a lesser brand.