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you need to chip that xbox and put xbmc on it., turns the xbox from a somewhat average games box into the most easy to set up, zero-artificial-restriction media center money can buy. streaming content to your tv doesnt get much easier :)

it sounds like your confusing Xbox Media Centre with Microsoft's official offering. one of them is a fantastic piece of software that can do nearly anything you want and the other is a crippled piece of crap. the only real flaw in xbmc is it's reliance on the original xbox hardware, which isnt really up to playing back 720p content, but they're in the process of porting to linux apparently

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Linux_port_project

Mine is running on Mythbuntu 7.10 from SVN. Nearly feature complete and on a good CPU will play 1080P just fine. This is on x86 PC hardware and is under VERY active development.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52 for more info.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Linux_port_project

Mine is running on Mythbuntu 7.10 from SVN. Nearly feature complete and on a good CPU will play 1080P just fine. This is on x86 PC hardware and is under VERY active development.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52 for more info.

I'm sure you're aware but I would recommend buying an Xbox and install Xbox Media Center on it. It can do everything you want plus more (hard drive built in opens many opportunities), and they're really cheap right now. I run an Xbox at home and use it as my media center, great stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/

Xbox Media Center has a built-in SHOUTcast interface. And after falling in love with that, I found streamtuner to bring that and others to the PC realm.

XBMC is an example of an excellent media application. It plays everything you throw at it, supports network shares, hard disk and CD/DVD media. It's really too bad XBOX1 does not have the CPU power to play h264 HD media...

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ Oh wait, they don't have it for 360 yet? Ok, give them some time.

I simply use EZTV to find the torrents and RSS feeds, uTorrent to download them automatically with its built in RSS reader, and XBMC on my Xbox to watch them comfortably in my living room.

With the Linux port of XBMC underway, and very usable at this stage, Myth will have serious competition soon for (currently) its non-PVR functionality. The linux port of XBMC is completely OpenGL 2.0 optimized. Currently, in terms of UI and user friendliness, there's very little that compares to XBMC.

Modchips can be used for more than just playing copied games. I have a modchip on my XBox for the sole purpose of being able to run XBox Media Center. I bought a piece of hardware -- shouldn't I be able to modify it as I see fit?

Xbox Media Center of course!

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/

It ain't Linux, but it's a very good piece of software that will do everything you want, and more.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediaportal/

If you are really set on Linux, XBMC is being ported to Linux but you will have to wait a while.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/?title=Linux_p ort_project

I run an old Gen 1 XBOX modded with XBMC and it does everying I need for CD, DVD, media management. The only draw back is the low end hardware of the XBOX. There are limitations with running HD video etc... It may address your needs too.

Cheers.

From what I've heard part of the reason they're working on a Linux port is so that they can have this fine software running on the Xbox 360 (seeing as it's possible to run Linux on a limited number of Xbox 360 consoles) as well as the PS3 which can run Linux out of the box.

Another possible motivation is departing from using the XDK. As you may or may not know the XDK (Xbox Development Kit) is not publicly available and thus the XBMC team does not distribute binaries, but only source code. Then various groups with illicit copies of the XDK compile this code into the XBMC that we know and love. You have to know where to go to get it, et cetera. In addition, to even run it you either need it to either be signed, which is only done by Microsoft, or to have a hacked Xbox. In order to run unsigned Xbox (XDK) programs on the Xbox, you need a hacked BIOS. And these are by definition modified copies of the original BIOS, which are in turn illegal to distribute, and possibly to create or possess (depending on how valid the Xbox EULA is.) Work proceeds on an Open XDK replacement, but it's not up to most tasks yet.

However, it is possible to run Linux on the Xbox using an alternative BIOS known as Cromwell. This is an entirely Free/free solution, and is completely legal. You can flash it to the system in the same way as you would any other BIOS, so if you have an early Xbox you can do the internal TSOP reflash and you don't even need a modchip.

(Pardon my linkage; might as well make some links for posterity, and they support my argument) :)

Anyway, HTPC, Xbox 360 (and Playstation 3!) compatibility were probably the primary goals. But it also has a dandy side-benefit.

There is however still no legal way to do DVD menus (at least in the USA.)

If you want network transparency and scripting, why the hell are you using windows? Use the right tool for the job and you'll find that there's no end of solutions. You might find you'd like the Music Player Daemon or MythTV. Or enable X forwarding and run Amarok across the network. Or just ssh in and use mplayer.

And if you're seriously set on using Windows for this, why not enable file sharing and let the network transfer your MP3s on the fly?

Anyway, to answer your question, you can do this with FTP Site commands. There's also a web API but I haven't used it.

LOFI press announcement that might work (our regular news is forum based, and well...) http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/XBMC_recruiting_dev elopers_for_Linux_port.html

I decided that seeing as I didn't record much TV, I'd change to running Xbox Media Centre, and use its MythTV scripts to control another backend if ever I needed. Today, it seems they've announced a Linux port, which might be an excellent way for all the people who want a Linux media centre, but just don't like MythTV for one reason or another, to contribute.

Fluendo are also working on a media centre called Elisa, built on their GTK/Gstreamer platform.

Things are looking up overall on the Linux media centre front.

Well, the Xbox definitely isn't powerful enough to play 1080p60 H.264 video, for example, but the Xbox 360 should be able to. Therefore, porting XBMC to the 360 would help make a superb HD HTPC (minus recording from TV of course, but that could be dealt with via USB-based TV tuners or similar).

Also, the Elite model has a much larger hard drive, so it requires less tinkering to get a decent amount of space on it for all your music, TV shows, films, etc.

The total time to download, copy, and install XBMC is about an hour and there sure as hell is a remote for the Xbox, it costs about $15 new from EB/Gamestop. Good luck getting Apple to help you try and play a non-Apple format on the device. Believe it or not, the majority of the world does not use iTunes, but even so XBMC *will* stream Apple's DAAP, but like any other non-Apple device, cannot play back DRM-encumbered media. As for photos, you can browse any variety of network protocols to view images from a remote machine, not much different than the Apple product. Anyone interested in watching HD content sure isn't storing much on the 40GB Apple product either.

So far I'm not convinced that spending 2X money for DRM-compatibility for media I don't own is a good investment. XBMC has plenty of features you ignore like RSS readers, the ability to search/browse/watch video from Google/YouTube, meta-data scraping, DVD support (both DVD video and data discs with files on them -- very useful if you store backups on disc), the ability to rip CDs, DTS audio CD playback, incredible subtitle support, calibration for A/V delay and video output, and most important of all is support for a variety of more popular, open codecs such as XviD, FLAC, APE, Real, etc.

... for half the cost you get a crazy additional amount of functionality.

Let's see. For "half the cost", I can buy a used device, take the time to modify it myself, and come up with a box that doesn't include a remote, support, or warranty; doesn't sync with or stream from iTunes; doesn't sync my photo library; doesn't have wireless; is about five hundred times larger; has 1/5th the capacity; and doesn't actually support playing back HD video .

Awesome.

er, XBMC runs on a standard Xbox which is an x86 platform and costs like $100 used these days. It can playback video at 720p/1080i and supports any formats that mplayer does. Also has tons of streaming plug-ins for shit like Google Video and YouTube, as well as remote control/fileserving capability. Modding the Xbox requires a USB memory card reader (about $20) and any one of a number of common games (the one I used, Splinter Cell, cost like $2). Add in the remote (another $15) and for half the cost you get a crazy additional amount of functionality.

Just do what I do. I have a media server that uses samba to share media files. I use my XBox to stream the video from my server over the LAN and display it to my TV with XBMC (XBox Media Center http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/). Although the original XBox does not do HD, the XBox 360 does. Wait a few year(s) for XBMC 360 to come out (after they figure out how to hack the damn thing to run unsigned software) and the only thing you'll have to run from your basement is an ethernet cable to the XBox 360, which then interfaces with your HD display via a short cable. I'm sure 100 meters is long enough for you to work with ;).

Having said that, both the GC and XBox are dying or on their last legs, and the PS2 seems the only moderately healthy last-gen console.

I bet that none of the next-gen consoles will genuinely offer playing most types of media over a network without any silly add-ons or restrictions. I think my Xbox, with the help of XBMC, will long outlast the usage of my PS2 or GC.

Although I imagine my usage may not be the norm, I don't think it's all that rare, either.

Actually from what I've seen Nintendo has hosted contests for small indie developers to design on the DS, and Sony has talked about allowing Linux and full homebrew applications on the PS3.

If Microsoft has smart, they'd allow indie developers to submit apps to them to get signed for XBox Live. I know they are pushing XBox Live Arcade games, but most of these are ports of old arcade games.

I don't know if any of you actually have modded consoles, but my favorite aspect of my hacked XBox is XBoxMediaCenter (XBMC). I'd love to have this functionality on the 360. Quite frankly, the main reason I haven't bought a 360 because it many areas of functionality, it would be a step back from what I get with my hacked XBox.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/

XboxMediaCenter is a free open source (GPL) multimedia player for the Xbox(TM) from Microsoft. Currently XboxMediaCenter can be used to play/view most common video/audio/picture formats such as MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, MP3, AAC, JPG, GIF plus many more less known formats directly from a CD/DVD in Xbox DVD-ROM drive or of Xbox hard-drive, XBMC can also stream files from a PC over a local network and even stream media streams directly from the internet. XBMC has playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast and many audio visualizations

Hmm... just two months ago, Xbox Media Center came out with their new DVD-player core, including menus. XBMC is built around MPlayer, I wonder if they sent some code back to the MPlayer guys for that (or perhaps vice versa)?

The better way would be to run XBMC (XBox Media Center), and xbmcmythtv. It's not perfect yet, but it's definately getting there. It requires a modded xbox (which you have), and doesn't require installing/booting linux, so it's quicker. It's a bit tricky to get ahold of the programs, since the source is distributable, but the binaries are not (MS won't sign them [hence mod required], and the xbox SDK forbids the distribution of non-signed binaries). They can be found with some digging.

Here's some links that might help you out:

http://waltercedric.com/Mambo/index.php?option=com _content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=40
http://forums.designtechnica.com/archive/index.php /t-4278.html
http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonb oard.pl?act=ST;f=8;t=5934
http://hardware.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/07 /01/0353218&from=rss
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/archive/index.ph p/t-40168.html
http://www.xbins.org/

Another thing, I don't think anyone ever intended for a living-room media-pc to be used as a normal, everyday computer. TFA mentions surfing the internet and typing papers, which leads me to believe the author has never even used MCE before. While MCE can be used on a dektop pc, the "media" UI is dominated by exactly what you are going to use a set-top or living room pc for...media. And the current HTPC offerings are not necessarily designed to host every type of media you have, and there is nothing keeping them from streaming media from your server/desktop. Most are designed to be PVR and DVD player replacements, so there is nothing stopping you from using the included hdd for the sole purpose of recording tv shows, while you back up dvd's and host your music library on your server/desktop.

Personally, I think CNET is just a bunch of morons who get paid to act like journalists to advertise the highest bidder's product.

XBMC. The Xbox may be a PC a heart, but everything about it, from the (fairly inconspicous) case to the interface, remote control support, instant-on, low noise and 5-minute setup tell a different story. The best part is that it plays fair with protocols and standards, so you can stream from Mac/Win/Linux over Samba pretty much any format of video or audio you care to choose. Only downside is having to softmod the Xbox in the first place.

It already has caught on in a big way for some. I use XBMC to stream audio and video from a media server, and there are other devices out there built to do the same, like MediaMVP, Avel LinkPlayer, D-link DSM-520, and many others. Heck, there's even an entire forum dedicated to such devices over at avsforum.

Give up on MCE and run MediaPortal, which is basically Xbox Media Center for Windows. (Go to sourceforge to download it without beating up their likely-anemic webserver.) I just downloaded and installed it so I could actually give some useful information - I use an Xbox as my media center, so I run XBMC. It's true that the fan is way noisy but the video output is very high quality if you are still on an old school video output device, as I am.

The install is done through a Windows Installer file with a .exe stub which I ignored. There is a configuration utility that [optionally] scans for your files, sets up weather and TV listings, and remote control configuration. (It supports four remotes, forget which now, but Hauppage is one of 'em.)

I made a quick run of the program just now and it seems to work. So, go get it, and forget about MCE.

MS intended System Link (think LAN Party) to be local only, but by running the XLink Kai client on a local PC and tunneling the Xbox's LAN packets across the internet, you get exactly what you asked for: free, online multiplayer with your friends.

If you want it, you can have buddy lists, server arenas a la GameSpy, basic messaging and even voice comms on many games. It works on Xbox and Xbox 360. And best of all, it supports an even wider range of games than Xbox Live does.

Makes a great alternative to Live - and importantly (for me), it works well with XBMC.

I;m currenty building my linux based media server.
I'm buying a old xbox, throwing Xbox Media Center on it and running one of the many linux based content servers to feed the xbox media over the network. It can even play direct isos and it uses the remote to browse whats on your server.

I just purchased a 8 port raid 5 sata card so I am going to eventually hit 2 terabytes with it.

What pisses me off is you CANNOT get an xbox now that doesn't include the Forza racing game. I just want to softmod it and use it as an entertainment center. XBMC is awesome. I have little to no desire to play games on it.

I have about 6GB of music that I bought (I'm very picky about my encoding.) And about 1-2GB of audiobooks from http://www.audible.com/, not to mention movies *coughporncough*.

But think about it - not that much thought is required - A $29.99 game "included" with the xbox for $30 MORE than an xbox with no game.

That's right!

A $149.99 game system + $29.99 game being sold for $179.99.

You're just FORCED to buy a game at full price with the system whether you want it or not.

I asked the local Game Rush/Blockbuster how much they'd give in trade for the game, because I was planning on trading it in before I left the store with my new xbox.

Try looking for Forza on ebay. There are like 100 copies. Nobody wants the fucking thing, but we're forced to buy it at full price if we want a new xbox.

What the fuck?

"Next Gen" can have several meanings. If you were to have a child, that child would be the next generation. The child in not entirely different from you, but it is a compeltely different offspring, making it "v2.0". While they might use market hype to convince you their "next gen" system blows current consoles away (which is the point of marketing, no one wants to buy a console that is 'kind of better, and sort of faster'), it does not mean that the system truly is next generation. At the same time, it seems the lines between what a generation is, in terms of consoles, has begun to blur. It was easy to see when graphics went from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit, and when the graphics went from 2d to 3d. What do you use now to draw that line? HD resolution? DVD drive? HD-DVD drive? Multi Core Processor? I think there is no clear answer.

While I'm at it, I'm pretty fed up with people singing to the tune of "no one wants to use the media center capabilities, i just want a sweet ass gaming rig." Well, believe it or not, Microsoft actually learned something from the original XBOX. Maybe some of you have been in a cave or actively turn your heads away from all things XBOX, but two of the main reasons to mod an original XBOX is for the use of Linux and for XBOX Media Center (not counting the added bonus of playing 4-player RC Pro Am Torunaments). While Microsoft will never condone the use of Linux on a Microsoft product (save the future release of Microsoft 'Nix 2006), the new incarnation of XBOX takes away the need to modigy the product to use it as a media center. The other side of opposition is people using Tunnelling software to play games over the internet for free instead of paying for Xbox-Live. Microsoft also addressed that by making some form of Xbox-Live free for all users of Xbox 360. So congrats to Micosoft on taking suggestions.

Having said all that, I see no reason for me to shell out money on the Xbox 360. I have all of those features on my current xbox. The only benefit to me would be if the game quality was leaps and bounds above the current Xbox, which it doesn't look like to me. Sure the games look good, but so do my current Xbox games when hooked up to my plasma screen with component cables and my surround sound with an optical cord.

Here's my chance to blab about the PVR I built myself. It's not pretty, but it runs great.
Here are the specs: Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 TV/FM tuner card; P4 2.8E / ASUS P4P800; onboard sound; 512MB RAM; 80GB + 120GB HD; WinXP Pro.
The software I built uses: Windows Media Encoder SDK; Visual Basic 6; PHP; FireBird; Apache.
Using VB, I wrote code that goes to Zap2It and downloads 12 days worth of TV show programming and parses it into my FireBird DB. From there I have a web front end that lets you search/sort though shows. You can choose to record one show or create a rule that would record a certain show every time it's on. It also handles scheduling conflicts by prioritizing rules and doesn't record a show if it's been previously recorded.
The back end is a VB app that runs all the time and checks the FireBird DB for the next show to be recorded. When it finds one and it's time to start recording it issues a command line request to the Windows Media Encoder to start recording on channel x for x number of seconds. The size and audio/video bitrate are set using the encoder's profile editor.
The profile settings I use consist of: Windows Media Audio 9.1/Video 9; VBR quality base of 90 (usually has a video bitrate of just over 1000kbps); Video size 320 x 240. At these settings the CPU uses about 20% and 1hr worth of video is about half a GB.
I play the shows by streaming them to the Xbox running xbmc.
I also have a command line script that runs every night and deletes any shows that are older than 15 days. If I haven't watched it by then, it's not worth watching.
This setup has worked great for me for the last year. The next step would be to replace the whole setup with MythTV. I'd have the back end on my computer and the front end on the Xbox.

I really want to put the biggest IDE hard drive than I can find into my TIVO

While I do know someone who just finished putting 2 400GB Seagates into their Replay box, I take a looser approach. DVArchive is a Java client that uses uPNP to impersonate a Replay over the network. So any attached disk storage with a CPU that can run Java appears as a virtual ReplayTV and can be used to store and stream shows. I have a 1TB media server that does double duty for audio and ReplayTV, and a HTPC with 500GB that serves up basically nothing but RTV content and its own video captures. Because RTVs are so network friendly, and can be controlled easily from any web browser, I find I tend to treat them more as loosely coupled capture cards that happen to be in a fancy box more than anything else. The drives within the ReplayTVs themselves? Kind of like a local temporary storage cache. MediaMVPs or modded XBoxes make good front-ends if you want to avoid the HTPC route. With VideoLAN you can stream right from the Replays, through DVArchive, and over the net. Of course, you're going to need a really fat pipe, so I usually convert into XVid and serve up using Media Center - it can do some intelligent bandwidth throttling based on the client's pipe.

they are all out of stock

Hmm. You're right, the 80 hour model is out. Some of the other models seem okay. Then again, maybe DNNA has stopped manufacturing them in advance of their HD/Escient launch.

the way I can use wifi with Tivo and how it handles programming over the web

Replay has built-in ethernet which is trivial to plug in to a wifi bridge, what are the extras that Tivo offers here? I was swayed from buying Tivo because I heard its shared shows come with DRM that's just annoying.

Also, you may or may not have seen DVArchive - it makes the Replay visible as a uPNP device and you can control it from any Java-equipped device. I use it in combination with VideoLAN to transcode and stream some shows to some friends in Europe.

Also, DVArchive on PC/Mac/Linux runs a central web server that lets you control any and all networked Replays and DVArchive boxes. One new thing I really like is that you can also see, stream, and copy with the Replays from a modded XBox running XBox Media Center.

For a media center, try a modified xbox with XBMC. Unfortunately I don't think that XBMC can rip movies yet, so you would still need to do the ripping on a computer. I use AutoGK to do my ripping on my windoze pc, and store the files in numerous places, like the windoze pc, a linux box, or on the xbox itself.

I'm sure there has to be some ripping software for a Mac as well... A friend of mine does his ripping on a Mac, and has mentioned a program called Mac the Ripper.

BBC streams, Comics (comics.com and ctrl+alt+del), , TVTome episode guides, Adult media (movies and images from 5 porn sites), Danish radio and TV (DR news, DR boogie, DR radio), RAI Click TV (italian TV streams), SVT TV open archive (Swedish), YLE24 Mediasaali (Finnish radio and TV), XBMC Forums reader (simple reader), History Channel, Movies @ archive.org (lots of movies in high quality), Online music labels (monotonik/mono211), Dave's trailer page

also google video gives you access to some fox newscasts.

my point is that you don't tivo for this.

ps: because of my xbox, i basically have The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tivo'd through the internet

You may want to look into modding your XBox so you no longer need to use the crappy crappy crappy XBox DVD drive. As long as you can get the drive to read the game disc once then you don't have to worry about dirty disc errors again. The drive in my XBox has almost completely crapped out now so I primarily load games onto it's HD via the network now.... On the down side XBLive will ban you if they catch you with a modded XBox, but you do get to use XBMC which was one of the reasons I originally bought an XBox for.

I must agree with you about the games available for the XBox, it's pretty pathetic. All the games I like are available on all consoles(Burnout3, Worms 3D, Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia, Psychonauts). If it weren't for the fact that the XBox is easily moddable, then the it would have been hands-down the worst console ever.

the xbox has had what... a four year life cycle? MS has stated that they released the first xbox as a simple test of the gaming industry. i think that their significant losses have prompted them to rework their strategy.

supposedly the first xbox supported HD output up to 1080i. http://hardware.gamespot.com/Microsoft-Xbox-9399-O -4-4 thats one of the more highly touted features of their next gen system; its nothing new... i think that they saw the rise of the mod community and the media center capabilities http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ of the xbox being used and realized this was their chance to turn the tides on their debt problems. they are playing their hand. feeding us back what we originally wanted from them in the first place. great marketing!

what this has done is cause the other companies to jump onto the next generation. i wouldnt be surprised if the ps3 and revolution where not originally supposed to be released until 2007-2008 or so. sony and nintendo have to play their next gen card earlier now in order to compete.

i think this is a prime example of how MS entering the industry is diminishing it. sure we get next generation graphics and performance sooner, but we are going to take the hit on our pockets earlier and more often too.

I recall the PS2 being somewhat difficult to put a mod chip into, mostly because you had to solder at over 30 points and most people weren't willing to take the chance of having a "slip of the wrist." I'm not sure exactly what it cost, but I think people usually tended to charge around $30, plus whatever it cost to ship the system to them.

My reasoning behind the N64 lacking quality emulators is because no one really has the desire to spend time doing it. There are better things to do, such as hacking next gen. consoles or making something like XBMC, http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ rather than spending time on an N64 emulator which isn't in high demand.

I think someone else posted that the difficulty in the emulation lies in the fact that insufficient documentation of the Nintendo hardware exists to create an effective emulator. If people had this information, it wouldn't be difficult at all. Just build an interpreter to take the code from and N64 game similar to how a java interpreter works. If you could do that, there's no way that a P4 or anything of equivalent power wouldn't be able to emulate an N64 smoothly.

Man, what an incredible application from the open source community. Plus it turns an evil little box in the living room into the home media center that every electronics company has been chasing for what, 10 years now?

Check it out. I'm not on the team, I've got no vested interest in promoting it, I just think it's one of the coolest OSS things I've seen in ages.

Milkdrop has already been ported to XBMC.

The milkdrop source was added to the XBMC cvs a couple of weeks ago.

It looks purty.

See Here.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/

• XBox Media Center - can decode 480p
• mini iMac - can decode 780p, but no surround sound output
• XBox 360 + XBox Media Center = maybe decode 1080i, with surround sound output, plus it's smaller to boot, and includes WiFi by default

I have to say that an Xbox paired with XBOX Media Center works best as a Jukebox. Even better yet, you can set the dashboard to XBMC, and lock it down so that all they can do is listen to music or even watch Music Videos (or Divx). It supports almost all formats under the sun, except DRMd ones like iTMS AAC, but it even supports normally encrypted AAC. You can use a joystick as the controller, or the infrared remote.

Not only that, in newer versions you can even get weather forecasts, and listen to Internet radio. Xbox Media Center truly does rock. Keep all of your music/media on a central server and just mount it with SMB.