I am considering getting an xbox and running XBMC to use as a media extender to stream my photos, videos and music from my PC to my TV/stereo. Although it would be a fun project to do it all myself, I am somewhat limitted on time currently. Can anyone recommend a reputable online vendor from whom I can buy a hardware modded xbox with XBMC 2.0 pre loaded? Also any recommendations on a chip? Alternatively, If I can just buy the hardware modded console, how much work is the install? I am not interested in a hard drive upgrade, as I will be streaming everything from a PC (looking at getting a ReadyNAS at some point).

PM Sent.

could you send me the same info? Thanks in advance.

Ummm... Me too? Thanks in advance.

me too...i am very interested in getting one too...

thanks!

Guy’s
A softmod is easy to do, search your local Craig's list for used xBox units.
I pick them up all the time locally and softmod them and offer free hard drive upgrades.
All my buyer has to do is bring his ide drive they want installed.
It takes maybe 30 minutes from start to finish.
They leave with a custom-made CD to rebuild or upgrade the HD again if ever needed.
It also will let them unlock their larger drive if they ever wanted to sell the xbox without the new ide drive.

I saw the instructions for the softmod. I bet it would take me hours the first time. It might take longer. I don't even know where to buy one of those games you need to do it.

I've seen hard modded Xboxes with upgraded hard drives selling for around $200.

They charge an extra $45 for an Xecuter 3 mod chip instead of the DuoX2. What is the advantage of the Xecuter?

Not sure where the OP lives.. but I was at Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale (metro Chicago) and there is a xbox mod store there, believe it or not.

I definitely do not have time to do this myself right now. Heck, I'm trying to find time to program my new URC remote at this point. So any info about getting an XBMC Xbox ready to go "out of the carton" would be great! Thanks!

Jay B.

you can get used xbox's at any EB Games or Gamestop for $99 that come with a 30 day warranty if you don't want to deal with craigslist. They also sell the action replay and used games for the softmod for another ~30 dollars.

Not sure where the OP lives.. but I was at Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale (metro Chicago) and there is a xbox mod store there, believe it or not.

That Mod Source store?

I'm in Hoffman (on Barrington), that may be worth the lunch break to check out! :D

I got a used one in the mail today. I still haven't figured out how to get it to work. It's connected to my Ethernet network and a small TV in my home office. I'm just getting an orange light around the eject button and a menu on screen that I can't control.

I got a used one in the mail today. I still haven't figured out how to get it to work. It's connected to my Ethernet network and a small TV in my home office. I'm just getting an orange light around the eject button and a menu on screen that I can't control.

do you have a game controller or the DVD remote with IR eye... you will definetly need one of those two...

Sean

Yes, I have the DVD remote and the Xbox is now responding. I found the menu where you can select the color of the light on the eject button and I changed it to green. I don't see what version number I have, nor do I see how to get this thing to play the videos from my Mac nor my Buffalo Terrastation NAS. It looks like I'll be spending a weekend with the on-line manual to figure all this out.

I got my Xbox set up now. It's a lot more complicated than setting up an Apple device. I had to learn a little about networking beyond just plugging in the cables. Anyway, it is streaming photos, music, and videos from my Buffalo Terrastation NAS using SMB. DVD menus on the image files work just as well as if the DVD were loaded in a DVD player. FF and RW are very robust. Navigating the menus is usually very fast. I'm very happy so far.

I don't have much content in true 720p, so that isn't an issue for me. I might be able to hold out for the first revision of Apple TV before I have enough HD content on my Mac to justify buying it. Meanwhile, I don't feel like I'm depriving myself.

"I don't feel like I'm depriving myself"

You shouldn't since you are now using one of the most forgiving all encompassing (codec wise) media streamers available. Once the 360 is fully hacked you will have the holy grail of media streamers available to you! Yes, the legacy xbox can't stream HD.... Big f'n deal, 95% of the media that users have available is still DVD format and XBMC handles this better than any out of the box streaming solution.....

Xbox 360 is running linux currently and will only be a matter of time before an xbmc type solution will be running. (hoping for a porting of xbmc to the 360 but not holding my breath)

I'm not sure that XBMC can be ported to Xbox360. It's on a totally different platform with an incompatible CPU, right? I think that x86 compatible code doesn't do anything on a cell processor.

The Apple TV looks like a more likely candidate for XBMC code. At least it's running on a Pentium M which is fully compatible with the PIII that Xbox uses.

Neil, yes you are absolutely correct. Ported was a bad choice of words. XBMC would basically have to be rebuilt from the ground up for the 360. The encouraging news is that the developers of xbmc have said in the past that they do not feel that it will be as huge a task as it was with the development of the original in that they were developing the program as they went along. All new development will come in the form of taking advantage of the 360's powerful potential.

Your comment about Apple TV and xbmc is very intriguing. I will be following these new hacks closely!

Sadly, a large part of the reason XBMC can play almost anything under the sun is that it uses mplayer internally for everything but the DVD player. Mplayer is capable of loading and using many Windows codecs. Since the 360 runs on the PowerPC platform (like Macs before the switch to Intel, only dual core and faster), it won't be able to use the Windows codecs.

Much of XBMC could be easily ported to the 360, but it will be much more limited in what it can play. Also, MS quickly patched the bug in the hypervisor that allowed people to run 3rd party code, and there's currently no known way (nor is there likely to be due to some of the 360's security features) to downgrade.

If the Xbox could reliably play HD content, I'd never have a want for anything else. :(

BTW, PS3 is the one that uses Cell. It's open enough that it's likely that someone will get a decent media player on the thing using Linux, but it probably won't be for a good long while, as the PPE (the general purpose CPU) isn't really all that fast; it's slower than just one of the 360's two cores. That means that somebody is going to have to invest the time to refactor the decoding tasks to run on the simplistic SPEs. That's hard because they don't support all the instructions a general purpose CPU does.

The other roadblock on the PS3 side is that XBMC does a surprising amount of work on the GPU itself, and the PS3's GPU is locked down in Linux (all that's available is the frame buffer), so all the work has to be done on the Cell, which is probably possible, but much harder.

Maybe someone can get "backward compatibility" working with XBMC on the 360...least that will port xbmc to the 360, but likely no HD still....

Wierdo, thanks for the clarification. I've heard many times that the Xbox 360 and PS3 don't make good platforms for an open source media player. That leaves us looking at the Apple TV for the future. It's a standard Intel notebook motherboard with a nice gpu, and doesn't seem to be locked down at all. I'm sure Apple will add surround sound soon to address the main hardware shortcoming.

Anyway, at least we still have XBMC for now to play all of our SD media.

hey guys been reading a lot about the x-box as a media streamer and am completely sold...but am just not able to find one...can someone help me?

i would prefer to buy one that is completely modded and ready to stream...please help me! either reply to this post or PM me.

thanks a ton!!!

hey guys been reading a lot about the x-box as a media streamer and am completely sold...but am just not able to find one...can someone help me?

i would prefer to buy one that is completely modded and ready to stream...please help me! either reply to this post or PM me.

thanks a ton!!!

Craigslist

http://www.sell.com/2MWGH

Sean

xbmc is the way to go. I currently have 3 xboxs running it and love it. i used an older pc and used Naslite+ to store all my media (music,pictures,movies). I have everything networked using FastEthernet switch, but it works just as well over wireless. Softmodding is the way to go. I got 2 off of ebay. Also got the HD packs for them and dont even use my upscaling DVD player anymore. If anyone needs help or has questions....let me know.

Can those of you who consider yourself a videophile please comment on the subjective video quality aspects of XMBC on xbox? Specifically, I'd like to hear comments on the quality of 1080i and 720p as compared to highly regarded DVD players from Denon and Panasonic.

For me I want the features of XMBC but only if they don't impose a qualitative difference in the video quality when compared to the higher-end DVD players.

Thanks!

-brad

Can those of you who consider yourself a videophile please comment on the subjective video quality aspects of XMBC on xbox? Specifically, I'd like to hear comments on the quality of 1080i and 720p as compared to highly regarded DVD players from Denon and Panasonic.

For me I want the features of XMBC but only if they don't impose a qualitative difference in the video quality when compared to the higher-end DVD players.

Thanks!

-brad

Its doesn't compare... The animal you want does not exist... I doubt it will ever exist...

XBMC does a good job with scaling. Where it falls down is de-interlacing. 480i and 1080i look great... 480p and 720p look like poorly due to the poor deinterlacing in xbmc. good news you can run the GUI and Video at different resolutions. So I generally run the GUI at 720P or 1080i depending on which of my HDTV's its connected to and output video at 480i or 1080i and let my TV or projector do the de-interlacing...

Sean

Its doesn't compare... The animal you want does not exist... I doubt it will ever exist...

XBMC does a good job with scaling. Where it falls down is de-interlacing. 480i and 1080i look great... 480p and 720p look like poorly due to the poor deinterlacing in xbmc. good news you can run the GUI and Video at different resolutions. So I generally run the GUI at 720P or 1080i depending on which of my HDTV's its connected to and output video at 480i or 1080i and let my TV or projector do the de-interlacing...

Sean

How can you set for the GUI to 720p and output video at 1080i?

Doesn't $99 for a used X-Box seem like a lot of money? Maybe I'm just being cheap, but I figured they go for a lot less than that. E-Bay seems to be overpriced too....

Doesn't $99 for a used X-Box seem like a lot of money? Maybe I'm just being cheap, but I figured they go for a lot less than that. E-Bay seems to be overpriced too....

Seems like the best streamer deal in the universe to me... Guess it depends on how you look at it. What else can you get for $99? used or new?

Sean

How can you set for the GUI to 720p and output video at 1080i?


The GUI resolution is under appeareance settings and there is a seperate resolution setting under the video settings. This is not a new feature and has been in there for about 2 years.

Sean

Doesn't $99 for a used X-Box seem like a lot of money? Maybe I'm just being cheap, but I figured they go for a lot less than that. E-Bay seems to be overpriced too....

Are these things still available new for around $130?

Are these things still available new for around $130?

They were new at $150 but have not been available new since the 360 came out (about 17 months now). at $150 MS was selling these at a substantial loss and hoping to make money back on royalties for games they were losing on the HW. It never worked out for the xbox but they should make money on the 360.

Sean

when playing dvds, will xbmc pass the dd5.1 audio.. do you need the hd av kit to connect it to a av receiver..

when playing dvds, will xbmc pass the dd5.1 audio.. do you need the hd av kit to connect it to a av receiver..

yes, it will pass the 5.1 audio. Yes you need the HD kit or some other kit offering optical out.

when playing dvds, will xbmc pass the dd5.1 audio.. do you need the hd av kit to connect it to a av receiver..

XBMC will pass DD and DTS audio. You don't need the HD AV kit to get 5.1 to your receiver, you can also get the Advance AV Kit (which has s-video/composite in addition to optical output) instead. So your options are the HD component AV kit or advanced svideo/composite av kit. I wouldn't recommend using a 3rd party adapter unless it's Monster. With monster howerver, you not only have to buy the video cable but also the extra audio cable for 5.1 sound.

Can those of you who consider yourself a videophile please comment on the subjective video quality aspects of XMBC on xbox? Specifically, I'd like to hear comments on the quality of 1080i and 720p as compared to highly regarded DVD players from Denon and Panasonic.

For me I want the features of XMBC but only if they don't impose a qualitative difference in the video quality when compared to the higher-end DVD players.

Thanks!

-brad

As said before, it doesn't compare - not for DVDs at least. Since high end DVD players offer no network streaming, the xbox crushes them there. Right now there is no high end network streamer but this does as good a job as possible with anything other than a native HD video file (too CPU/RAM/GPU intensive). Actually, as long as the source video is good it does a very passable job. Using the HR.HDTV rip of Rome (so around 576p source with AC3 5.1) then scaled to 1080i and display and xbox reasonably well set up - I'm not able to find much in the way of flaws. Granted I'm not pausing the screen to look into every pattern edge and dark area but everything is quite sharp and well balanced. Granted, I'm sure it could be made better but given a good source the hardware is surprisingly capable.

Literally everyone who's seen it in action, had been amazed. I know at least 4-5 people who bought these and had them modded after coming over to my house. None of them were under 30, only 1 had any interest in games. I would have never dreamed that spur of the moment console purchase would have netted me so much non-gaming enjoyment. It's integral to our household at this point.

If anyone wants a guy who will work through the mail, mod, install the software you need and provide a level of consultation, support and instruction - I know a guy in my area who is an electrical technician who's done a ton of these from all over the country. If anyone is interested, shoot me a PM.

The GUI resolution is under appeareance settings and there is a seperate resolution setting under the video settings. This is not a new feature and has been in there for about 2 years.

Sean
I've never seen this option but I'll be switching it as soon as I get home today!! I agree that streaming a DVD at 480p looks pretty poor - I can see lines in fast moving video. Now that I know I can run it at 1080i I'll do that and let my TV to the scaling.

I have a Pioneer Elite 50" plasma so I'm sure it will do a better job than the Xbox at scaling.

Thanks for the tip!

I've never seen this option but I'll be switching it as soon as I get home today!! I agree that streaming a DVD at 480p looks pretty poor - I can see lines in fast moving video. Now that I know I can run it at 1080i I'll do that and let my TV to the scaling.

I have a Pioneer Elite 50" plasma so I'm sure it will do a better job than the Xbox at scaling.

Thanks for the tip!


Good luck if 1080i doesn't work out. Try setting it to 480i which is labeled as NTSC 16:9 and those lines will go away...

Sean

I want to have my XBOX modded and XBMC loaded on it. Does anyone know of someboy that does the modding. I dont want to have t go into all of the modding and loadng of the software I had rather pay someone else to do it.


Rich

I want to have my XBOX modded and XBMC loaded on it. Does anyone know of someboy that does the modding. I dont want to have t go into all of the modding and loadng of the software I had rather pay someone else to do it.

This was posted to this very thread:

Not sure where the OP lives.. but I was at Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale (metro Chicago) and there is a xbox mod store there, believe it or not.

I want to have my XBOX modded and XBMC loaded on it. Does anyone know of someboy that does the modding. I dont want to have t go into all of the modding and loadng of the software I had rather pay someone else to do it.


Rich

Yes. Scroll up 3 posts and read the last paragraph I wrote (it's a description of the service he does so be sure to read it). PM me as I don't want to put some guy's name and email on a forum. He's done a ton of work through mail though as well as a few jobs for myself and close friends of mine. He's an electrical tech so he started out as fixing motherboards and botched Xbox mods (meaning, he can do it right as those repairs are A LOT harder than a basic install).

Yes. Scroll up 3 posts and read the last paragraph I wrote (it's a description of the service he does so be sure to read it). PM me as I don't want to put some guy's name and email on a forum. He's done a ton of work through mail though as well as a few jobs for myself and close friends of mine. He's an electrical tech so he started out as fixing motherboards and botched Xbox mods (meaning, he can do it right as those repairs are A LOT harder than a basic install).

I might be willing to help out someone who lives in the area, but if you don't have where you live in your profile, it makes it kinda difficult . . . :rolleyes:

I might be willing to help out someone who lives in the area, but if you don't have where you live in your profile, it makes it kinda difficult . . . :rolleyes:

:rolleyes: back at you ;)

Thanks but I don't need any help. I've had a modded box for years and done 3-4 mods for others (I don't do it anymore). That quote was for a guy in my area who is a tech and has been working by mail for years. I figure most forum members don't live within driving distance of him so it can make sense if they don't know anyone.

:rolleyes: back at you ;)

Thanks but I don't need any help.

I wasn't referring to you - I was referring to the other people asking for help modding their xboxes. If they lived close, I wouldn't mind helping . . . . You're probably right though, the odds that people live reasonably close together on a thread like this is probably remote .. .

Craigslist

http://www.sell.com/2MWGH

Sean

Is this someone you have worked with and trust?

Anyone in the Twin Cities Minneapolis proper area.
I will also softmod your xbox for free.
You will leave with a custom made CD for backup - rebuild & upgrade. You bring the Xbox and your hard drive size of choice.
In under one hour you will be on your way with a modded box & xbmc installed.
Just PM me.

Is this someone you have worked with and trust?

yes

Way to go Diode1!

My first modded box was done for me for free by Goofygrin who frequents these forums on occasion and by shear luck lives less than 5 miles from me...

I have modded several boxes for free to kind of pay it forward if you will...