[Ja Phule]

Some quicklinks for more info about XBMC and XBOX:


xbox-scene forums
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showforum=180


Xbox MediaCenter Official web site
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/forum/


XBMC Wiki
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/..._Online_Manual

T3CH Site to DL XBMC


Xbins FTP
ftp://xbins:[email protected]


XBMC Scripts
http://www.xbmcscripts.com/


10 Minute Guide to mod your xbox
http://www.techfreaks.org/articles/modxbox.shtml


Softmod your XBOX in 30 minutes
http://www.productwiki.com/microsoft...0_minutes.html


Replacing your xbox hard drive with a larger one
http://www.techfreaks.org/articles/modxbox2.shtml


EVOX Boot disc info
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.p...T&f=16&t=89545


MORE SCREENSHOTS
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post12509085

Original Post

I recently got my xbox modded and I am quite surprised on how well it acts as a media center. I know many people here recommend the Xbox Media Center as a media center but I figure some people can get a good idea of what it is capable with some pics of what I'm currently doing with it.


DVD Collection was created with DVDProfiler2XBMC .


XBMC Main Menu (this is just one skin of the various skins you can dl)

My Videos - My DVDs

I wrote a program that will read my DVD Profiler data to create a fake iso image of all my dvds and at the same time copy the dvd cover images from DVD Profiler and create the thumbnails for each movie. For the real DVD iso, I simply overwrite the fake one with the real one and I can play it straight off the network. You can download the program here .

Another view of my DVD library with IMDB rating

Movie Info with Poster taking from IMDB. The xbox has a crawler that will look at the movie titles and grab info and poster from IMDB and store it on the xbox.

DVD is playing in the bottom left corner while you browse other dvds.

 

[Ja Phule]

Weather plugin

Another DVD Listing View

I didn't have much time to take pictures of the Music and Photo gallery interface but it too is quite nice. Not only will it play mp3s (and other music types) but it will connect to winamp shoutcast radio to give you access to 500 online radio stations. Here's a picture of an MP3 playing with a visualizer in the background. It's showing the album info along with album cover from the ID3 tag.

Apple Movie Trailers, CNN News, and Launch Music Videos. There are also downloadable plugins for many things including these sites. You can connect to the Apple movie trailer website and stream the quicktime movie to the xbox. You can also connect to the CNN Video news to view video news for various reports. You can also connect to Yahoo Launch to stream the latest music videos.

 

[carguy84]

I have yet to get my XBMC playing movies. I click on the movie to play it over the network and it just hangs. they're ifo/vob. I'll try playing an iso and see if that helps.

 

[Scotty6595]

Truely awsome man! I was wanting to be able to use my 360 to run a media server with DVD playback capabilities but it looks like we will have to wait for the "work arounds" to get hashed out. I have my old XBox just sitting on a speaker and I think you have inspired me to get it modded. What chip did you use for the mod and what dashboard are you using. I will primarely use it for a XBMC. Also, being able to play your iso's is very cool. Are there app's available for this or did you make it yourself?


Thanks for the great show!


Scott

 

[Scotty6595]

Carguy,

I am still working on this myself, I must have downloaded 10 MPEG converters and 10 kinds of codecs this weekend and all I got was a pain in the neck. I ended up having to perform a system restore to clean up all the codec crap. At one point my WMP 10 would not even open up!


Keep on trying, I know I will!

 

[bjhess]

Thanks for the pictures. I still don't entirely grasp the advantage of grabbing info from DVD Profiler rather than IMDB, but I'll continue playing with things.


I do see now how it could be more convenient ripping to ISO rather than VOB. Tossing all the ISO's in a directory would make it easier to start up movies (less "clicks"). Maybe getting the thumbnails on the ISO's is part of the DVD Profiler vs IMDB question now that I think about it.

 

[Ja Phule]

I'm using the UnleashX dashboard with the Duox2 mod chip. The version I have was compiled in late December 2005 (I had someone do the mod for me). Playing the isos worked for me automatically. I may have had 1 dvd so far where I couldn't navigate the menu.


Scott, the only app I used was the one i created only because I wanted to use the dvd profiler dvd covers and also have it quickly create a listing of my collection into xbmc to easily browse. It's not fun having to manually create a fake iso or video file of each movie when you've got over 200 movies. Those fake isos are simply an empty text file with and iso extension. You can simply put the dvd isos in a directory and xbmc will scan all the isos with imdb and it will grab movie info and movie poster which will be used as the thumbnail. The scan isn't always perfect but you can manually and easily update the movie info for each movie using the imdb search.


I want the dvd profiler dvd covers because I have in some cases, 3 or 4 versions of the same movie and I just like the idea of seeing the actual dvd cover as opposed to the movie poster or dvd cover provided by IMDB.

 

[bjhess]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Ja Phule /forum/post/0


I want the dvd profiler dvd covers because I have in some cases, 3 or 4 versions of the same movie and I just like the idea of seeing the actual dvd cover as opposed to the movie poster or dvd cover provided by IMDB.

It also sounds like you wanted to play with writing some code.

 

[Slack]

Japhule - You should use the snapshot feature in XBMC to capture those images. It'll look a million times better. Search the XBMC manual wiki for snapshot. It'll save jpgs on the hdd. [Left Thumbstick]

As an example...

FYI & buyer beware...

XBMC is the greatest reason to own an xbox IMHO. That being said, it seems the newer builds are breaking some functionality with respect to streaming VOBs that I had come to know & love.


VOB Navigation: The build I'm using (couple of months old) still allows VOB nav. Play a VOB, right/left nav on remote does ~30 seconds skip. Back button does ~7 second back up. Up/Down nav on remote does ~10 minute skip. None of these worked the last time I tried a newer build. I had to revert, because that is a 'deal breaker' It's a shame too because the newer builds have the My pictures Slideshow screen saver option that I'd like to use. (The NAV breaking only affected VOBs all my Xvid/Divx naved just fine)


VOBsub subtitles: Time was you could enable disable any subtitles on-the-fly via the OSD. But that hasn;t worked in ages. It's very convenient when that center channel dialog is not up to par.

 

[thericky]

The new builds work fine for me, even on VOBs. I love my XBMC. Aside from the occasional buggyness, the only complains I have lie with the XBox itself. It's noisy (from the fan) and you cannot turn it on via a remote (without a soldered mod). You can turn it off or reboot it, but not power it on.

 

[Ja Phule]

Slack,

Thanks for the tip. I knew screen capture was somewhere in xbmc but never thought about how it is done.

 

[Slack]



Quote:
Originally Posted by thericky /forum/post/0


The new builds work fine for me, even on VOBs. I love my XBMC. Aside from the occasional buggyness, the only complains I have lie with the XBox itself. It's noisy (from the fan) and you cannot turn it on via a remote (without a soldered mod). You can turn it off or reboot it, but not power it on.

I'll have to re-try the latest build tonight. BTW are you using the T3CH package, or some other??

 

[loot87]

I just got mine modded last night with Xecuter3. I launch straight into XBMC rather than fooling with a dashboard. I am amazed by the quality of XBMC. It blows away the BLT (though XBMC definately has better hardware to run on).


I'm using it to link to my PC where I have about 1 TB of VOB files. I need to play with SMB some more since it doesn't follow Windows shortcuts like the BLT and my VOBs are spread over 5 drives.


Ja Phule, can you give me info on your code? That looks awesome!!!

Chris

 

[Ja Phule]



Quote:
Originally Posted by loot87 /forum/post/0


I just got mine modded last night with Xecuter3. I launch straight into XBMC rather than fooling with a dashboard. I am amazed by the quality of XBMC. It blows away the BLT (though XBMC definately has better hardware to run on).


I'm using it to link to my PC where I have about 1 TB of VOB files. I need to play with SMB some more since it doesn't follow Windows shortcuts like the BLT and my VOBs are spread over 5 drives.


Ja Phule, can you give me info on your code? That looks awesome!!!

Chris

My app just creates the fake isos and copies over and rename the dvd cover image to a thumbnail using your dvd collection data from DVD Profiler. If you are interested, I can make the app public for everyone to use.

 

[thericky]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Slack /forum/post/0


I'll have to re-try the latest build tonight. BTW are you using the T3CH package, or some other??

I am using the T3CH package. The only issue I have is a bit of video choppiness. I think that is caused by serving up my files via SMB on an iMac. I'm going to get a NAS soon... should work fine then.

 

[rjgarcia]

I would have to agree that it works really well..


I have mine play ISOs, and it is great..


Ja Phule, you can disable the showing of the file extensions so they don't appear in the title.. ;-)


-Robert

 

[drew138]

Japhule, that is a very impressive UI. What type of TV are you using for display device? Does XBMC support HDTV resolutions and aspect ration (16:9). I know it can't stream HD files, I'm just curious if the User Interface supports HD?


Would it be possible to get an Xbox up and running to support both XBMC and XMAME?


I wish I had the time to set it up and get it going. I'll have to look into local shops that will do the mods for me.


What do you use to control the system? Is there a standard XBOX Remote?


Lastly, does the XBMC upscale DVD's to HD resolutoins? I've read that it does.


Drew

 

[loot87]

Ja Phule,

Please do if you don't mind.

Chris

 

[Ja Phule]



Quote:
Originally Posted by rjgarcia /forum/post/0


Ja Phule, you can disable the showing of the file extensions so they don't appear in the title.. ;-)

Yeah, I believe there's an option in XBMC to disable extensions. I'm also in File view when the extensions are shown. If I was in Title view, it would show just the title (seen in some of the screenshots). My only issue with the Title view, is that it's based off of IMDB's title, and I have a lot of foreign movies, many of which show up as their foreign name as opposed to their english translated name.

Quote:
Originally Posted by drew138 /forum/post/0


Japhule, that is a very impressive UI. What type of TV are you using for display device? Does XBMC support HDTV resolutions and aspect ration (16:9). I know it can't stream HD files, I'm just curious if the User Interface supports HD?


Would it be possible to get an Xbox up and running to support both XBMC and XMAME?


I wish I had the time to set it up and get it going. I'll have to look into local shops that will do the mods for me.


What do you use to control the system? Is there a standard XBOX Remote?


Lastly, does the XBMC upscale DVD's to HD resolutoins? I've read that it does.


Drew

I'm using the Infocus 4805 16:9 projector. XBMC does support widescreen resolutions as you can see in the screenshots. It supports 480p, 720p, and 1080i as well as 4:3. Before I load up XBMC, the xbox loads the dashboard where I can access MAME. MAME can also be accessed via XBMC with some tweaking.


XBMC can be controlled by the xbox controller, the xbox dvd remote, and the xbox media center extender remote (which uses the same IR codes as the xbox dvd remote). The xbox dvd remote MSRP is $30 and I found the xbox media center remote online for around $30 so I got that remote and learned the commands onto my Osiris MX-350 and it works great.


XBMC does upscale DVD.

Quote:
Ja Phule,

Please do if you don't mind.

Chris

I'll clean up my app a little bit and make it a little more user friendly, then I'll share it when it is ready.

 

[drew138]

Thanks for the clarifications.


How much for the xbox plus the pre-modding? I'm interested.


Drew