Over this past weekend I softmodded my old XBOX which has been in the closet for the last few years. Soft Mod meaning, you just load some software on the XBOX and it's hacked, no soldering or stuff like that. Perfect for me!! I stumbled across this article and then this one not really looking for it but it got me going in the right direction. Here is the XBMC for XBOX software Last update was yesterday. This also works on Windows PCs, MACs and Linux!! Oh and it's FREE too!! Look on Lifehacker if you want that version. I already had the xbox and the correct version of Mechassault so I gathered the necessary software then also modded my controller so I could get the softmod file from my PC to my memory card and on to the XBOX. That was the hardest part (not really). After I followed the steps in that article I rebooted and I now had a media center connected to my HDTV. All in all I spent $15 total and that was so I could terminate some cat5e cables I had in my walls when the house was built. Now my XBMC is under the TV and my router and PC are in my office. You can duplicate this for under $60ish.... $50 for a used XBOX (maybe cheaper) and $10-ish for the game needed for the softmod hack. So what is an XBOX Media Center (XBMC) why would I want to do this you ask? Well I can now stream my Pictures, Videos/ Movies and Music (iTunes) from my PC or MAC to the XBOX. I can also connect to the web and get RSS feeds, watch YouTube videos, stream Shoutcast or Last.FM internet radio all with album art. You can still play your XBOX games (Live acct still works) or watch DVDs/ listen to CD via the player in the XBOX. The coolest thing is that the DVD player and ripped movies are upscaled to 720p or 1080i depending on what you configure in the settings area and you also need the HDTV cables for the XBOX. Another cool thing is you get your album art and lyrics from iTunes right on the screen. Even the playlists are there!! XBMC Features: * XBMC (Online Manual/Support) * Large online user community * FTP & Telnet & HTTP access directly to Xbox * User customization including skinning and scripting * CD/DVD media playback from internal DVD ROM drive * Audio, video or game playback from internal hard-drive * Media streaming from network shares (including i-Tunes shares) * Media streaming from Internet (net radio, movies clips/trailers, etc) * IMDB & FreeDB support (for movie reviews, audio track listings and DVD and CD cover thumbnails) * Media playlist features * Subtitles support * Karaoke function * Image sideshows function * XLink Kai (an XBox Live alternative) * RSS Feeds * BitTorrent downloads directly to Xbox using script * Weather Forecast * CD/DVD ripping directly to XBox from internal DVD drive * Major format/codec support ( AVI, MPEG, RealAudio/Video, Quicktime, MP3, AC3, OGG, BMP, JPEG; see here for full list) * Scripting support (create your own or go to XBMCScripts to see and download what others have created) * Emulator support (SNES, GBA, MAMEox, N64 add more) allowing you to play old console and arcade favorites * ...and lots, lots more! After messing with this for five days, this is what I have so far.... More 1920 x 1080i pics here!!
When I recover from all this and get some more spare time, I plan to change the skin to the Aeon one that is beautiful!! All rendered in 1080p for the Mac, PC and Linux ports. XBOX runs best at 720p so "they" say. http://www.aeonproject.com/
waiting on them to port this (successfully) to the PS3. I don't really use my xbox1 much anymore (it has a modchip) because it doesn't have the horsepower to playback HD content. PS3 pretty much plays any format nowadays
THANKS! Ive had this running on my xbox for years... best thing out there... though i tend to use my new xbox more..
That girl looks like Shania Twain to me. Yeah When I was reading about all this, most of the posts were from 2004-2006. I laughed thinking I've been under a rock all this time. I will add that the weekly SVN builds have some nice enhancements vs. the last major build from 2006. Might want to update if you haven't already. If they can get this to run on a PS3 I'll finally bite the bullet and get one.
the ps3 and the xbox 360 sadly already have Some of the features of this... ie any format playing... if i run Tversity with my 360 i can play any format that my PC can. .Tvesrsity works with ps3 and any other device that supports its protocol( which are ALOT) even other computers can view the media as flash files..
this is great! I have been wanting to do something like this forever to my old xbox. I don't have an HDTV and don't plan on getting one for a few years, and I am too stingy to look at buying a 360 or ps3 until they are old technology. Thanks!
tversity is not garbage imho.. What do you say that? I use it for just about everything.. sure you have to have a decently powerful CPU to get real use out of it..
The three games mentioned, Mech Assault, Splinter Cell or 007 have an exploit where you load a linux image that basically runs an application (like a game) which in this case allows you to FTP into the box. Once you have access to your hard drive, you can now add files like XBMC. After those files are loaded and you reboot, you have a new dashboard that is what you see above. You can still get to the original XBOX dashboard. Without using the three games mentioned above, you would need to hack you XBOX using a mod chip and soldering and all that painfull stuff. Did you miss this link in my first post labled "this link"? It is a step by step guide to do the soft(ware) mod. http://www.productwiki.com/microsof...-xbox-to-xbox-media-center-in-30-minutes.html
I forgot to mention you can control the XBMC via a webpage too or via the iPhone. http://tlrobinson.net/projects/xbmciphone/
many months ago when they added support on the PS3 for home media servers, I gave tversity a whirl. the UI sucks, the program is slow and laggy, and transcoding didn't work half the time (if at all). almost noone could get transcoding to really work, and if they did it was purely accidental it seemed. they tried releasing a "ps3 specific" version of it and it still sucked. some people had guides written where you had to uninstall all your codec packs, uninstall tversity, and install specific versions of ffdshow and various other codecs in some wonky ass order to get it to work and most of the time it didnt. so that's why it sucks.
you gotta install the right codes on your computer for the thing to work... i think you may just have had a bad experience.. i know my brother and i both use this together sometimes and its not laggy... The settings are REALLY complicated but once you have them right.. its works like a charm... ( if you have a cpu powerful enough.. im running a q9300)
I use medialink on my mac, it enables steaming of music, video, podcast pictures etc. from my mac also lets you select folders to monitor. So I download races and videos from torrent sites on my computer and either stream or transfer to my ps3 for playback. If only they would add support for mkv format I would be completely set.
You can strip the .mkv now with Requiem for video and audio. Better hurry before it's impossible to find. Worked like a charm on the version of iTunes before 7.7. Luckily I never upgraded.