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XBMC4XBOX 3.0.1 Stable Released

Posted by timothy on from the say-it-quickly dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After more than a year of development we are pleased to announce stable version 3.0.1 [download via torrent] of the popular media center platform XBMC for the 1st generation XBOX — now called XBMC4XBOX. A huge amount of work has been put into this, and it features numerous additions and improvements over the last release. For those that want a cheap functional media center with some old hardware they might have lying around, this is a superb option."

57 comments

  1. Wow by Hatta · · Score: 2

    I still use XBMC4XBOX every night. I will enjoy this immensely. Thanks!

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    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Wow by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      No one's interested in your means of sexual gratification.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speak for yourself!

    3. Re:Wow by billcopc · · Score: 1

      I've long since moved on to ION based nettops, but curiosity makes me want to plug the old Xbox back in and see what they have accomplished. The big deal breaker for me was spotty and sluggish h.264 decoding, which has become the de-facto standard for 720p TV and movie rips.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    4. Re:Wow by ExoBuZz · · Score: 3, Informative

      it still won't really manage h264 720p video, but mpeg4/xvid at 720p is doable (It can manage 1280x720 @ 5000kbit mpeg4). BBC IPlayer streams at 832x468 @ 1500kbit now play which didn't before. Certainly if you want 1080p video playback it isn't going to do the job, but it makes a great secondary media player for the "spare" telly etc.

    5. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing illegal about ripping your own discs and storing them on a server. Oh that's right...you were trolling, how silly of me.

    6. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahh, I see you've been properly educated.
      I mean, wow, you are scared of OTHER people posting a counter-establishment penchant - you must not get out of your Styrofoam-filled safety box very often.

    7. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whether or not you think our current copyright laws are just is immaterial. The simple fact is that within the current laws, it is illegal. People make fun of those who post videos on Youtube performing illegal activities, or post pictures on Facebook doing the same. Why can't I mock people claiming the same on a registered, traceable Slashdot account? Especially when he could have made the same point having never mentioned aforementioned activity.

    8. Re:Wow by iamhassi · · Score: 2

      XBMC4XBOX works with Hulu and Netflix using PlayON, it's not just for pirated media.

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    9. Re:Wow by hansamurai · · Score: 1

      Yep, I've got two Xbox's myself running XBMC, great piece of software. Might try this out when I get a free weekend... sometime.

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    10. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and PlayOn transcodes down to standard definition MPEG2. The OP specifically stated 720p h264 TV rips.

    11. Re:Wow by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The simple truth is that the Xbox has a coppermine celery at 733 MHz and it's not capable of decoding high resolution H.26whatever. So if you want to watch that kind of media on the Xbox you will need to transcode it on the fly with PS3MediaServer on something capable of the job. The Xbox 360 can handle it but the supported media types are relatively few, of course.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:Wow by scubamage · · Score: 1

      The simple fact is that within the current laws, it is illegal in my country.

      FTFY

    13. Re:Wow by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Yeahhh that's the main reason I switched. And really, an ION these days is pretty cheap, compared to the spare PC and CPU horsepower required to transcode on the fly.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
  2. How long? by MMC+Monster · · Score: 1

    How long do you think it'll be before they stop supporting the XBox?

    Just kidding. I use xbmc on my HTPC (An Acer Revo 3700), and have the utmost respect to these guys.

    Hope they continue to expand the capabilities of the XBox and add new functionality to HTPCs.

    --
    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    1. Re:How long? by the_enigma_1983 · · Score: 1

      XBMC (without 4XBOX in the name) has dropped support for xbox. This group is re-integrating xbox support. So XBMC itself has dropped support, and this project without xbox support is irrelevant, I'd say.

    2. Re:How long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this project without xbox support is irrelevant

      Not in a hell of a lot of other people's minds. XBMC is great for an HTPC. Only thing it's missing is PVR support, which is coming (it's testable right now, but pretty shaky, and the PVR branch is slightly behind the main one).

    3. Re:How long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      XBMC proper actually dropped support for the Xbox years ago. At the time, they deemed the hardware in the Xbox insufficient to continue maintaining, and rightfully so. The original Xbox amounts to a 12yr old PC with a 10yr old graphics card. It has hardly any memory to speak of, a processor too slow to handle any content of worth, and no OpenGL support to run their new flashy UI. It's good enough for DVDs and analog TV recordings, but anything more modern and it chokes. This project is basically the work of two men to stave off obsolescence.

    4. Re:How long? by ExoBuZz · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think the reason we do it is for fun, and that we still enjoy using our xbox's - for xbmc and emulation etc. A few points: the xbmc GUI runs very nicely on the xbox1 and always has, @ 60fps up to 720p (1080p the framerate drops a little) - just as with xbmc for linux, we have the confluence skin, and it looks pretty much the same when you boot. As mentioned before it can do 720p xvid/mpeg4, but I don't think that content has to be 1080p for it to be of worth - I still enjoy watching dvds, and not everyone has a hdtv + £200 htpc in every room :) . It's also very handy to stream tv/on demand video from the net which is often not HD, but most importantly there are still plenty of people who use it, even those who now have a newer htpc.

    5. Re:How long? by TheRealQuestor · · Score: 2

      XBMC (without 4XBOX in the name) has dropped support for xbox. This group is re-integrating xbox support. So XBMC itself has dropped support, and this project without xbox support is irrelevant, I'd say.

      XBMC.org hasn't supported Xbox for like almost 2 years now. It was always just one person [Arnova] who was backporting all the changes from the main branch to XBMC for Xbox. Then we split off and became XBMC4Xbox and it's STILL Arnova doing the work, but now we have awesome talents of Exobuzz doing a lot of the grunt work along with a few others. We could always use more help though.

    6. Re:How long? by ExoBuZz · · Score: 1

      I meant 1080i of course. XBOX1 can't output 1080p.

    7. Re:How long? by iamhassi · · Score: 1

      As a XBMC Xbox owner, I agree.

      But it still works great, Netflix and Hulu work perfectly through PlayON. When prices of modern hardware drop low enough and there is enough HD only content that I can no longer find media then I will replace it, but why fix what isn't broken? Just because it's 10 years old doesn't mean it's trash.

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    8. Re:How long? by EvilAlphonso · · Score: 1

      As mentioned before it can do 720p xvid/mpeg4, but I don't think that content has to be 1080p for it to be of worth - I still enjoy watching dvds, and not everyone has a hdtv + £200 htpc in every room :) .

      Quoted for truth! Thanks for this release, I will try it this weekend

    9. Re:How long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10 years old yes. Let's see how long your current equipment continues being supported. I bet it won't be 10 years. I have over 12 Xboxes with HDDs ranging from 160Gb up to 2Tb. I would say a total investment of $600. My kids can use the Xbox and abuse it, can your kids do the same or is your setup all for you?. The best on the market it is not but neither is yours. 7 seconds to bootup, can yours?. Turn off immediately, can yours?. My mother has an Xbox and uses it daily, how about your mum with your setup or does she have nothing?. I have 2 Win 7 machines each less than 4 months old and why would I tie them up to watch movies with XBMC?. What an absolute waste.

    10. Re:How long? by cyclomedia · · Score: 1

      Can i rip the "XBOX Optimised" Confluence from your build and stuff it into my WinXP XBMC? It' runs like a dog on there :)

      --
      If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
  3. Xbox is for SDTV by tepples · · Score: 1

    I thought the big advantage of using a softmodded[1] original Xbox console over an ION nettop in the first place was standard-definition video output. For this, can't you transcode 720p H.264 videos to 480p MPEG-4 part 2 (e.g. Xvid) video on your media server before playing them?

    [1] That's what we called it before we called it "jailbreaking".

    1. Re:Xbox is for SDTV by Vegeta99 · · Score: 1

      As far as I know, and IANACS (I am not a computer scientist), but I don't think jailbreaking would be the correct term for what's done to an xbox. An executable must be signed to run on the xbox, but as soon as it is, it gets access to everything. It's an all or nothing ordeal.

      I'm a little less clear on how it works for the iPhone. However, I do know that any program you get from the App Store runs in a (chroot?) jail and does not have complete access to the underlying system hardware. So, even if you do get your program signed the official way, you still need to break out of that jail.

    2. Re:Xbox is for SDTV by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      What you do to an Xbox is jailbreaking because you patch the BIOS to accept unsigned executables. Having used the BIOS reflash method on my 1.1 I am sure about this. It's not about chroot jails, you are overthinking this.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Xbox is for SDTV by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Actually, the Xbox's scaler will go up to 1080i, and it is very good at it. Or you can use 720p. This is one of the best reasons to use the Xbox for a media player; the fantastic nVidia scaler. Of course, today it has problems reading commonly-available files and it may no longer be a very good choice.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Xbox is for SDTV by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      What you do to an Xbox is jailbreaking because you patch the BIOS to accept unsigned executables. Having used the BIOS reflash method on my 1.1 I am sure about this. It's not about chroot jails, you are overthinking this.

      Depends on the Xbox. The latest versions of them used ROMs and can't be reflashed. They have to use a traditional jailbreak instead or an LPC boot (modchip).

      Still, "jailbreaking" is meaning less about chroot jails and now refers to "doing stuff they didn't let me do". Though the Android folks like to call it "rooting" instead.

  4. Great stuff by samos69 · · Score: 1

    Cudos to the developers, I used XBMC for years and was continually impressed with their efforts. Great bit of software IMHO.

    I only recently switched to PCH's in the bedrooms due to the inability (hardware limitation) to play HD content and wireless support.

  5. Well Thank You by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    I was starting to wonder if I should consider getting rid of my xbox 1, you just kept it on the shelf a bit longer

    thanks!

  6. Gave mine away... by Balthisar · · Score: 1

    Kudos to the developers. If I hadn't gotten an interest in HD, I'd still have my three Xboxes running XBMC. Alas, they were too slow for H.264 and so three young shoppers at the Salvation Army will get lucky. My I just use my Hackintosh through a matrix switch to the whole house running Plex. The upside is, only one install to maintain. Well, that and HD.

    --
    --Jim (me)
    1. Re:Gave mine away... by lazybeam · · Score: 1

      I'll probably be retiring the XMBC Xbox this weekend after using it almost every day since 2004. I'm finally upgrading the 63cm CRT to a 101cm LED LCD FHD display, so composite will probably look poor. I have a PC that will become a HTPC so now I'll actually be able to watch HD content.

      --
      --
      no sig for you. come back one year.
  7. AWESOME by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I still use me xbox loaded with xbmc almost every day.

  8. Still going strong by TheRealQuestor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As somebody who has been offering nightly XBMC builds for Xbox and all other platforms for the last few years I can say that interest is still there for an ANCIENT platform. http://www.xbmcsvn.com/ still gets thousands of downloads a day and many of them are Xbox. I just added a new section to the site to include the new "Stable" builds that should be coming more often then before. We can always use help over at http://www.xbmc4xbox.org/forum so if you are so inclined head on over. kick off your shoes and stay a while. We are the forum without the attitude :P

    1. Re:Still going strong by srh2o · · Score: 1

      And your work is much appreciated!

    2. Re:Still going strong by TheRealQuestor · · Score: 1

      kinda crazy really. Started doing it on my pc for just xbox and a few years later I have 6 machines doing pretty much just XBMC builds 24/7 lol. I had to go buy a bigger window unit AC last week because it's already REALLY hot down here [deep south. texas] AND 10,000 BTU wasn't doing it [it's only about 144 SQ Feet too :(] [sarcasm >for some reason 12 really hard run computers can heat a space like that up in a matter of minutes /endsarcasm] so I had to up it to 12,000 BTU and it's BARELY doing it :(. I'm working on just building another uber server and running 3/4 of the builds in VMs and selling off about a dozen computers lol.

  9. XBMC for Xbox is great! by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

    Nice to see that people kept working on this. I still use my Xbox for standard def media, and music, all the time. It makes for a great little network connected media device.

    1. Re:XBMC for Xbox is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah xbox rules! Thank you to all those involved in xbmc4xbx!

  10. Woot..? by lexsird · · Score: 2

    Unless they have High Def support somehow, I will probably just serve files over to my PS3. But...

    I have already modded my old xbox and it will be interesting to see WTF they have done to it. The modding of it was lightyears ahead of time as far as a kick ass media center. I put a chip in mine and that was a learning experience. I first started with the piece of shit solder-less adapter for the chip, and it was a train wreck of a product. I ended up soldering it in, and that was my first soldering job. Watching youtube for soldering instructions helped a lot.

    The gist of it is, you put a chip in, then you can take out the 2gig hard drive and drop a big hard drive in it. There you can transfer your MP3s and AVIs and whatnot over to it and it's like a jukebox. I was never much into console games with that platform, so I didn't collect every game they had on it floating around in newsgroups or torrents. They did have some great emulators where you could play every old video game from like the 80s and 90s and such. There are outrageous amounts of old computer games like that lying around in collections of hundreds if not thousands each. Game overload IMHO.

    Leave it to Microsoftbrains to ignore this great feature their customers generated up. Instead of running with that brilliant idea and make it all legal for users and make a shitload of money in process, they let it slip by with a big fat "DERP" collectively floating out of their lips.

    --
    Take the Red Pill.
    1. Re:Woot..? by fyrewulff · · Score: 1

      You don't even need a chip anymore as of at least 4 (5?) years ago. Now you just play a song on the dashboard to unlock the hard drive, then plug the drive into a computer running a custom Linux bootcd, and it installs everything for you. All you need to do is open the console itself.

      Did it this way after I decommissioned my OXbox when I got a 360 just to play around with it.

      --
      "We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
    2. Re:Woot..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Longer ago than that. You could at the time softmod in 2003/4 by flashing the firmware. It was called a softmod than becuase you didn't add anything to the xbox. Shorty after that the true softmods came out(only software). I remember installing these for people in 2004. Also you don't need to open the console either. It is as simple as putting a gamesave on your box that will boot into a modded dash. Than coping over the correct files to the hdd.

      It has been a while since I have updated my xbmc on my xbox it is great to see that people are still working on it. It is telling that the torrent has as many seeders as there are right now for a project that lost official support 2 years ago.

    3. Re:Woot..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't even need a chip anymore as of at least 4 (5?) years ago. Now you just play a song on the dashboard to unlock the hard drive, then plug the drive into a computer running a custom Linux bootcd, and it installs everything for you. All you need to do is open the console itself.

      Did it this way after I decommissioned my OXbox when I got a 360 just to play around with it.

      Alternately, you can play Splinter Cell with a cracked savegame file and you don't even have to open the console. It just installs the new OS on the drive, then you can ftp into it and load XBMC or whatever front end you want onto it.

    4. Re:Woot..? by Combatso · · Score: 1

      Yah, the hot swap is easy as pie.. Playing a song to unlock the drive, good thinking.. I unplugged the DVD Rom and booted it which crashes it in a red-ring, unlocked state.. The process is so easy.... chips are for suckers ;)

    5. Re:Woot..? by networkBoy · · Score: 1

      Until something goes wrong...
      Then you still need a chip (unless you flashed the on-bard TSOP, assuming you didn't have one of these in your system.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    6. Re:Woot..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you need a chip for? Once you have modded it you extract the EEPROM, and copy it somewhere safe so you can lock/unlock the harddrive at will or even upgrade the harddrive and lock the new one with the EEPROM key so it will work on that Xbox.

  11. Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love the old Xbox. I don't have cable/satellite and i don't play games, but i use it almost daily to enjoy my favorite series and movies. XBMC for teh win! :)

  12. Just recently modded an xbox for a mate by tdelaney · · Score: 1

    I just recently modded my mate's old, unused xbox by hotswapping. Took quite a while to find a combination of computers, DVD players and cable combinations that allowed me to successfully hotswap, but eventually managed it.

    Installed xbmc4xbox on it (as the default dashboard) and it plays 480p h.264 very nicely over s-video. I'll be installing the stable release when I can steal the xbox for a day or so.

    Now, it doesn't look as good as 720p, but until they get a TV that does 720p it will do the job just fine for them. It wasn't being used for anything else. I can take anything they want to watch and transcode it to 480p for them.

    The one thing I do find is that the font sizes are a bit small with Confluence - I modded it to increase the smaller font sizes somewhat, and repositioned a few elements.

    BTW 10% fan speed is all you need, and you can set it from within xbmc4xbox.

  13. thanks by nerform · · Score: 1

    Great news. I'm still using xbox on my old tv.

  14. Awesoem stuff by Combatso · · Score: 1

    I still have the xbox in the garage hooked up to an old Radiation King. I was happy with it as it was, but its always nice to breath a breath of fresh air into old hardwar. Kudos to the team... I am glad someone is more motivated with their spare time than me... time for another donation I suppose.

  15. Size matters. by ArundelCastle · · Score: 1

    Old hardware lying around??
    My XBOX is bigger than my cat. It's good at propping up chairs that are missing a leg. I use the controllers as doorstops.
    If I switch it back to being a media center, that means I have to go buy a new crate to hold my old media. :p

    (But I love that these utils are still going strong. Good on ya.)

  16. Indeed, my Xbox360 gathers dust... by imrec · · Score: 1

    ...while the family uses the old black beauty every freaking day for XBMC. Yah, it doesn't handle 720p movies so good... but it has never given me crap about any file format. Ever. Can't wait to try this update. I haven't updated it in years! And it's STILL the best media platform I've ever seen! Glad to see there's still folks as happy with the ancients as I am.

    --
    Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
  17. the reason this is important for xbox users by real_smiff · · Score: 1

    is that since the xbox split, XBMC mainline has changed to a new "Addon" system, meaning all current plugins wouldn't work on the Xbox - that is, if it weren't for this X4X v3 work. the range of plugins available now have made even LAN shares of "aquired" content pretty much obselete.. check out: iPlayer (if in the UK) Icefilms Navi-X and others: http://www.xbmc4xbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1877 prepare to be blown away if you've not used XBMC for a few years.. and the Xbox is still good enough for almost all the plugin content as that's SD Xvid anyway for streaming.

    --

    This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.

  18. Xbox plays 720p XVID files! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm playing a lot of 720p content. You need to search for scene releases in 720p xvid. All new movies are still being released in 720p XVID format.

    A lot of movies also work flawlessly in 1280x688, even 1280x720p XVID. For movies with alot of high intensity scenes and full HD, theres 480p BDRip equivalents that looks very good upscaled, much better than DVD's-

    They typically have: 720.BRRip.xvid - 720p.BDRip.xvid - XvidHD and such tags in them. Theres also a lot of HD rips in 480p. 480p.bdrip.xvid.

    Here's some example release names

    127.Hours.2010.720p.BRRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON
    The.Social.Network.2010.720p.BDRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON
    The Fighter (2010) BRRip XvidHD 720p-NPW

    Prince.of.Persia.The.Sands.of.Time.2010.480p.BDRip.XviD.AC3.D-Z0N3
    Donnie.Darko.2001.DC.720p.BDRip.XviD-SHiRK
    Fight.Club.1999.720p.BRRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON
    The.Way.Back.2010.BRRip.XvidHD.720p-NPW
    The.Departed.2006.480p.BDRip.XviD.AC3.D-Z0N3