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."

Comments

XBMC4XBOX Lives

[TheRealQuestor]

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.

Re:XBMC4XBOX Lives

[malakai]

I feel a bit back stabbed by the XBMC core developers for cutting lose the whole reason for the project in the first place. Granted, it has many limitations, but limitations like these help make software more robust. When you have to worry about something like the FATX file system and it's limitations on characters and character length, the solutions you come up with help you solve other problems later on. Yes it takes more work, but it generally forces you to abstract out another level and really think about what you are building and the flow through the different modules.

I've seen game engines keep around TTY plugins just for this reason.

The XBOX port should be kept around as the bare minimum scalability test for all code. If your particular plugin is too CPU intensive to run even in a redacted state, then meta data should flag that with some sort of required minumum clacs/second threshold. Some people have moded their xbox with faster CPUs, more memory, etc...

I appreciate the work the xbmc4xbox guy is putting into it. I run TECH builds non stop on my xbox's and have them setup to auto update from the tech installer. I really like the tech builds because they seemed to simply 'just work'. If you two can collaborate and make us build toned down for XBOX that'd be great.

To the XBMC developers, I'd say look at ROCKBOX and CrystalSpace and other projects that have had to deal with limited hardware while trying to keep pace with new features and better hardware.

A pity; but not a huge shock...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Re:the irony of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I wouldn't have figured that out myself.

Re:the irony of this

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer eX xBox Media Centre...

Great move by the XBMC team (Still a little sad)

[AZURERAZOR]

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!

Apple-TV

[anethema]

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.

The biggest shame about all this is Sony.

[AbRASiON]

Many of us commenting here love(d) our Xbox's - it was a true monster at playing video, it played _everything_
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 :/ such a huge shame.