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Xbox Media Player Contest
mliu writes "Xbox Media Player, the GPL application that turns everyone's favorite hackable console (the Xbox) into a set-top-Divx/Xvid-playing-
Shoutcast-radio-streaming-
lean-mean-Mp3/Ogg-music-playing-all-while- sporting-a-pretty-user-interface-machine is holding a contest. They're in desperate need of help in terms of more developers and are holding a giveaway of 25 top of the line X2 Pro modchips for the 25 best patch submissions between now and March 31. If you don't know what Xbox Media Player is and/or feel the need to ask why bother hacking the Xbox, you have definitely gotta check it out. It turns the Xbox from Bill Gates' insidious plot to get into the living room into a set top box that can play practically everything even while sporting a sleek black look that won't stick out in your home theater system, and a user interface that your grandmother could use. And you can even run Linux on it in your spare time. It's no $100,000 but it's for a cause that is both more practical and useful if you ask me." The X-Box has proven itself an entertaining platform for hackers, and the XBMP is really excellent.
When it has visualization plug-ins, I think it'll be a great way to put MP3s in your stereo.
The XBox would be a nice media player, yes, but wouldn't this sort of take sales away from MS Media Center machines?
Conglom-O: We Own You (TM).
given that you need a mod-chip in order to run your own code on an Xbox, wouldn't the Xbox hackers that are interested in the contest have chips already?
Maybe but if it turns out the developers of XBMP are making a product that the public want, without all that DRM crap, then why shouldn't they take sales away from MS?
I use XBMP daily and it absolutely rocks - the only thing missing is MPC audio support but divx/xvid/mp3/jpg playback is nearly flawless and everyone who sees it is amazed (I even have my home videos I took with my DVCAM on there converted to XVid and its so much nicer than whipping out a VHS videotape)
seany
Is it just me who thinks that visualizations are completely unneccessary? When I am listening to music, I don't want some annoying repetitive picture flickering away in the background. They are an interesting toy, but add nothing to the experience.
Its a real shame that there isn't a team developing cool stuff like this for the Playstation 2 Linux.
Because it now comes with a 20gb drive.
Because it has a 10/100 ethernet port and FTP support.
Because it comes with ALL xvid/divx variants unlike that new Kiss xvid/dvd player which doesn't support qpel and gmc from the latest divx builds.
Because it lets you listen to shoutcast stations.
Because it can stream from smb shares on a pc or linux server
Should I go on?
How ironic the the banner I get this morning on the slashdot site is for Microsoft SBS2000 preloaded on an HP. Which technically means the advertising for the XBox contest is funded by M$. Man, they do have their hands in everything.
It seems as if mictosoft made a good move with the xbox. It seems to attract a great deal of the people that don't want to use windows. But for some reason a restricted computer by microsoft sounds good to the same people here. What's the catch here, could someone tell me?
If you want a low-cost system for playing music and videos, get yourself a Mini-ITX system; they start at around $200. For gaming, pay a little bit more and get yourself a real PC with a high-end graphics card.
Does everything have to turn into a religious turf war where MS are concerned?
Listen: XBMP is a damn fine project running on damn fine and CHEAP hardware. It's ideal for running Linux or Win32 ports 'cos its essentially standard x86 hardware and it's officially the coolest way to play *media* (very vague term that) in the living room. You may be an uber-geek but most of us don't want big fat beige PCs from WalMart next to our TVs.
I don't care if MS lose or make money from my purchase - I just want to use the best tools for the job and XBMP on the XBox is this. In my house the Xbox remote control is used as much as the TV remote which says a lot about how useful non-geeks find it.
So is there any chance of quitting this sort of crap? I don't care about kernels, beowulf clusters or Linus I just want to play my media and the Xbox does it magnificently. Credit where credits due eh?
seany
None of the xboxes come with a 20gb hard drive. When they see the LBA size on the hard drive start with a "20" they think that is the disk size, which it is not. The only hard drives shipping are 10gb.
Why bother? The whole reason most people getting in to hacking and fiddling with computers. Because it's FUN.
Getting there is the interesting part.
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
See here for a post in the dicussion. I haven't kept up with more (such as if they have fullfilled the terms of the gpl by releaseing source).
The newer ones do, my friend chips a lot of xboxes and he opened one up on friday fresh from the shop with a 20gb drive. Though to be fair it's irrelevent because you can stream from a PC share anyway making the HD size a non issue.
When it has visualization plug-ins, I think it'll be a great way to put MP3s in your stereo.
I'm working on a dll interface for the viz api. This is one feature that I'm very interested in finding some talented viz programmers, so if you're interested, please feel free to contact me on the xbmp forums.
Thanks
" turns everyone's favorite hackable console (the Xbox) "
Hey! The Dreamcast Scene is just as hot right now, especially now that SDL has been ported!
Last time I looked, I got the impression you could only compile XBMP using a warezed copy of the Xbox SDK. This was going to be the case until the OpenSDK project reached some maturity. This is why the XBMP website only supplies source and I have to scavenge binaries from Usenet or IRC.
Assuming I was right in the first place, is this still the case? Be kind of a bummer if the only way to test your patch for this competition is via an illegally ripped MS SDK.
You win again, gravity!
>It turns the Xbox from Bill Gates' insidious plot to get into the living room into a set top box that can play practically everything even while sporting a sleek black look that won't stick out in your home theater system, and a user interface that your grandmother could use.
How about just making a Linux box like that?
Get one of those tiny MiniATX motherboards/cases, pick and choose other hardware and install Linux.
Much more easier than modding an Xbox.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Although slightly off topic, if you are interested in something like this for your PS2, check out the broadq QCast Tuner for PS2. It too plays MP3s, OGG Vorbis, DiVX/xvid, MPEG-1, etc. It doesn't require a mod chip, which is nice, but it does requre the ~$40 PS2 network adapter. The developers are also extremely active on the forum, making it simple to get help.
And no, I'm not a broadq employee, I'm just a really satisfied customer.
-Steve
Last time I looked, I got the impression you could only compile XBMP using a warezed copy of the Xbox SDK.
At the risk of sounding like an AOLer, I'll chime in with my "me too!".
I agree the XBMP certainly looks neat, and an inexpensive box that can play DivX movies would kick mucho ass, but I don't have the paitence to hunt down a mod chip from a respectable seller, find the proper "warezed" BIOS image I need and then find the binaries so I can burn an XBMP CD.
The mod chips I have seen are also priced a far cry from the original $8 bucks or so I paid for my PS1 modchip back in the day. All costs considered, I could ALMOST buy a PC with TV-out for just about the same price.
Not that this project isn't cool... It's just not really that cost effective.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Why? My Xbox is cheap and plays all my media, it also has more horsepower than the rest of those things put together.
I tell you what, when your palmos based handheld can play DVDs, DIVX, XVID, MP3, DVCAM and any of a dozen other formats on my TV with quality as good as a top-end PC then come back to me?
Or was your post nothing more than a barely-disguised advert for Linux without considering what other people want?
By the way you can run Linux on it too.
Slag off MS whenever it's relevent, which isn't here. If you have a better and cheaper way of viewing media and playing games on the living without a big-ugly ass beige PC humming away next to the TV then feel free to enlighten us.
Nope, it's an NForce based chipset, but with a GeForce3.5 GPU and an Intel P3 based processor (It's not quite a celeron, not quite a P3). No Via guts to be found.
BIOS is custom, and there's no legacy support in the chipset.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Was there some sort of malfunction on Slashdot which caused 1000 words to appear where there should have been a summary?
I think it'll be a great way to put MP3s in your stereo.
Since when has this been a problem? Is the minijack to rca converter plugged into the line in of your stereo that shoddy of a setup? Does the numerous articles on putting a computer in your home entertainment center seem "too hard" or "not as cool" ??? As far as mp3's with a set top box, my DVD player, dreamcast, and laptop (which are all hooked up to the entertainment "glop" in my room) all have the ability to play mp3's I don't need another solution.
I'm not bashing the article I'm all about hacking, but the constant fucking comments about "my home entertainment center needs something to play mp3's" has been solved!! I don't know of any reason why anyone would need another solution??
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I like this solution a whole lot better, philosophically. It's cheap too.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
If you're developing for the Xbox, isn't it pretty much assumed that you HAVE a modchip already? Why would they be giving out modchips to people that are guaranteed to have one? Why not just give out cases of beer or something that the coders really need?
I have been thinking (and I certainly am going to) about building a system out of PC/Linux/Pinnacle DC10 compresor card.
But if I can get a working system for only 300 Euros That'l be cheaper..
My question to anyone who actually has a XBox : Does it make a lot of noise ? A friend lent me his PS2 for a week and it was the loudest piece of hardware in the appartment .. I.e. (IMNSHO) unusable as a movie player.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc