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XBMC Discontinues Xbox Support
Xistic writes with news that the XB in XBMC won't mean Xbox any more. Quoting the project's own website: "The last official release for the XBOX by the XBMC team was Atlantis, over 18 months ago. Since then, one brave soul (Arnova) has been merging code from the main codebase into the XBOX branch in our repository. Because there were many users out there that took advantage of these updates, we had no problem with this. But times have changed. The XBOX has hard limits for what it can handle. Some users are satisfied with these limits, and we encourage them to use XBMC there if they are happy. But it is a popular misconception that official XBOX development is still taking place by the team, so we have decided to set it free. We have enough on our plates already, and worrying about a deprecated platform just increases our workload. A few days ago the XBOX branch was finally removed from our subversion repository."
We have been working on taking over the xbox branch for the last couple of months. http://www.xbmc4xbox.org/ so if you feel you can help head on over. We still have tons of work to do but it's getting really close to being back on track with continued development.
In its day, and for a fair while after, the XBOX was an excellent deal for video applications. ~PIII-733 level performance and(rather more importantly) a decent set of video outs, something that was sort of dodgy with the PC graphics cards of the day. They got quite cheap, especially used, as well.
However, at this point, a PIII-733 with, IIRC, 64MB of RAM, just isn't that exciting. Nor, with the proliferation of nettops, is the price delta between a real computer and a used xbox nearly what it used to be. Then there is the fact that, while XMBC as a project has always been legit, actually building it for the xbox has been legally kind of dodgy.
That huge black box was the best media center I have had, the WD TV Live only comes close since it can play H.264.
It is kind of funny how history made this package evolve. The XBMC, which abreviates "XBOX Media Center", was originally developed for the XBOX. And now, it supports different platforms and operating systems but not the XBOX any longer. If you don't know its history, you'd find it a joke what XBMC stands for.
I think best option is probably an Ion chipset small box, and run XBMC natively booting off USB/SD card. One of the nice things about my Xbox XBMC is that it works like an appliance - it does't need to be booted/shutdown like a conventional OS - you just turn it on and off. Yes, I know it boots, but you know what I mean - my kids can use it, turn it on/off with impunity etc.
It's the little things that count - the Xbox had IR control, a DVD drive, and didn't ever need a keyboard or mouse connected to work. It's going to be difficult to replace with something half as functional and easy to use...
As a XBMC user on the old Xbox platform, I would like to say thank you to all the code monkeys out there who made that old junky hardware viable for nearly ten years even though it was not the purpose design for the hardware.
I see this as a great move for the project to disregard the limitations of the original hardware as they revitalize the project to better compete with some of the other Media Center software that has started looking more attractive in the last 2 years.
Good by Xbox, you had a good run!
The Xbox graphics chipset had only two advantages over PC chipsets of the time: 3D graphics, and SDTV output as a standard feature. The SDTV feature is less important now that virtually all TVs made in the past three years have VGA and HDMI inputs. And unless one writes half the video decoder in a shader (as in some modern H.264 decoders), 3D graphics won't take much load off the CPU for video decoding; perhaps the biggest thing a GeForce 3-class pixel shader can do is help convert YUV to RGB. Remember that the video codec that was popular among pirates and spaceshifters at the time was MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (DivX and Xvid), which is roughly on par with Theora and less computationally complex than H.264.
Configuration failure. I've seen XBMC running flawlessly on various chipsets from vintage 2007 integrated ATI chipsets and old 5xxx series Nvidia cards to 4xxx series ATI cards and newer AMD/ATI integrated chipsets. In fact, I doubt that it is even an XBMC configuration problem - sounds like DirectX or your NVIDIA drivers are out of date. Either way, head over to the XBMC Forums" for support. It's a fantastic community that will almost certainly help you out with your problem. Only, try not to slander XBMC until you figure out how you mis-configured your system.
ASRock ION 330 works like a charm for £260.
I find Apple-TV to be a wicked XBMC platform.
By itself the Apple-TV is pretty junky. You can buy stuff from iTunes store or rent etc, and stream your iTunes stuff over to it for easy playing, but overall not worth the money.
BUT, i threw a Broadcom Crystal HD (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Broadcom_Crystal_HD for some info) in it (replacing the wifi card which I did not need) and put XBMC on there and it is fantastic. Will play 1080p HD no problem, and damn near any format used in online downloading without a hitch.
This way, the features that weren't so compelling on an Apple-TV before are now great perks to my XBMC install. I can instantly rent a movie in HD if my download doesn't complete or the file ends up corrupt. If I can't find a move online, I usually can on iTunes. They are fairly complementary.
All in a tiny little box 7x7x1.
Only real disadvantage I've run into is the limited remote.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Many of us commenting here love(d) our Xbox's - it was a true monster at playing video, it played _everything_ :/ such a huge shame.
Why oh why did Sony block access to the accelerated video features on the PS3 under linux? XBMC would've been PERFECT on the PS3.
Wifi, gigabit, 1080p output, USB ports, internal HDD