Bad Idea #2 - "Using an XBOX will break it" and Bad Idea #3 - "Will you buy a DVD player for the room"

My roommate purchased an Xbox 360 right before we moved in together. He then had the bad idea of only buying one Xbox 360 game, and then forgetting to actually bring it when he moved. But that is not one of the bad ideas featured in this blog post. Soon afterward, my roommate began asking me advice on what to look for in a DVD player. I inquired, "Why don't you just use your Xbox - it plays DVDs." His response was as follows:

2. Using an Xbox to play DVDs will shorten the life of the system

I could not understand this belief. I asked him where he read such a thing, and he responded that "that's how my old Xbox broke. I used it as a DVD player all the time and it stopped working in December. That's why I bought the Xbox 360 for Christmas."
Alright - it looks like my roommate has fallen for a classic logical fallacy Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. That is, he believes that because two events occur in sequence, the first event must be the cause of the second. Color me unconvinced. Besides, his sample size is exactly 1. He isn't exactly quoting scientific studies demonstrating that
the probability of console failure increases with hours of use, instead of just the age of system. After all, the Xbox 360, like all other consoles, probably has to pass a test in quality control that probably lets the system play a disc for thousands of hours straight without overheating. Granted, the Xbox does look like it has a few QA problems, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a built in lifespan in hours, like where after 100,000 hours of operation, the console just stops working. This is roughly equivalent to buying a truck to move stuff on the weekends and then refusing to use the truck for daily commuting, opting instead to buy another compact car for passenger driving.
While it sometimes makes a little bit sense, it doesn't make enough sense to justify the added costs, including insurance and parking. He doesn't play his Xbox nearly as much the video game nerds do - I'd say he plays games on the Xbox about an hour per week. That's right. An hour per week. He barely uses it at all.
And also, what was he thinking anyway? Who cares if his Xbox 360 stops working properly 5 years from now? If there are any Xbox 360 games worth playing then (unlikely - how many PS1 games do you play on your PS2 anymore), he'll be playing them on the next generation Xbox anyway.
I gave my roommate advice on things to look for, and mentioned casually that I was considering buying a DVD player capable of playing burned data DVDs with DivX files on it. He looks at me, then says "oh ok, if you're going to buy one, I'm not going to buy one then." I thought the issue was dead, but a few weeks later he asks me a ridiculous question:

3. "So, can I ask you a favor? Can I ask you to buy the DVD player sooner rather than later? I kinda wanted to start watching DVDs on a dedicated DVD player."

You have got to be kidding me. Who the hell asks this? I looked at him, incredulous. I don't ask my friends to hurry up and buy a car so that I can start getting rides from them. It's not normal to ask someone to buy something on YOUR OWN schedule so that you can start leeching off of them right away. After all, I had used his Xbox a grand total of 3 times to watch 3 different DVDs the 3 months we had lived together. I didn't actually feel that I OWED him this favor, because I don't use his television or game consoles.
I don't know why I was so surprised. A month or so earlier, he had observed out loud that he bought all the cleaning solutions (bleach, etc) for the bathroom and bought all the toilet paper, as well as a trash can and trash bags for the room. He then tried to segue this into a recommendation that I buy a computer mouse for his computer. I responded with "you bought that stuff before I moved in. I'll just get that common use stuff the next time around. Plus it's ridiculous to make up for things you bought for the two of us with things that I buy for you. Plus this mouse you want is $30. I don't believe that toilet cleaner, bleach, trash bags, and toilet paper cost you that much." He backed down, of course, but I became wary of his poor sense of appropriate roommate roles. I ended up buying some stuff for the room a few days later, when our shower became completely clogged, probably because of him (more on this in the future).