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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » The Xbox Media Center Rocks

   
Author Topic: The Xbox Media Center Rocks
Olivet
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It's a hack, or a series of them, done to modify the now outdated original xbox into a media PC. It's really cool-- you get to use your cordless game controller as a remote and everything.

We had visitors recently, and they liked it so much they bought a used xbox to modify so they could have one like it. Anybody else have one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC

The drawback is, naturally, whether Bill Gates will choose to squash users like big, fleshy bugs.

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twinky
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They haven't squashed it in all of the years it's been available, but they don't make the original Xbox anymore. The Xbox 360 is locked down hard -- at least, no one's been able to create anything like XBMC for it.

If it could handle hi-def video and if I didn't think the original Xbox was pretty ugly, I'd seriously consider one myself. A friend of mine has one and I agree that it's extremely nifty. [Smile]

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JumboWumbo
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So this is what you're doing instead of writing?!

[Razz]

I have a 360 thank you very much, and I'm absolutely content wasting my hours sucked into video games. Who wouldn't be when you can walk around looking like this

[ November 02, 2007, 11:05 PM: Message edited by: JumboWumbo ]

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Olivet
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Nope, it's what my Beloved is doing for fun, WHILE I'm writing. *grin*

We loaded all our old video games onto it, so it plays all the NES,SNES,N64 etc. games, stores and plays dvds or whatever.

Yeah, the xbox is ugly, but we put it in a cabinet with an infrared repeater so we don't have to look at it. Truly, the stuff it can do is probably lost on me (and we only just got a 360, so we just converted it in the last month instead of selling it or something). It's just so much easier and more fun than the TVPC we were using watch stuff or surf the internet from our couch. Plus the controller is more ergonomic than the stupid, awful wireless keyboard (which I hated with an unreasonable passion, if you couldn't tell).

The major drawback is that the kids can now navigate our wireless network much better than before, so we have to be on them like white on rice, lest they accidentally get an eyefull of Dexter or something. *wince*

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Troubadour
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Couldn't agree more - I'm absolutely thrilled with my setup:

1) TVShows (OS X RSS torrent reader) allows me to subscribe to torrent feeds of all the shows I want to watch and downloads the torrents.

2) Azureus automatically imports the torrents
2.1) Autocat (Azureus Plugin) lets me set an automatic categorisation of downloaded torrents based on filenames
2.2) AZCatDest (Azureus Plugin) moves torrents to specific folders based on categories
2.3) SpeedScheduler (Azureus Plugin) ensures I don't exceed my monthly peak and offpeak bandwidth Quotas

3) SharePoints (OS X preference pane) sets specific folders to be shared with configurable permissions

4) XBMC can pick up on these shares - the TV share is first in my 'Movies' category in XBMC. Only because the Library function of XBMC seems to name my shows oddly at times, so I prefer to go on filename.

Added to all this is a Logitech Harmony remote that controls the xbox, amp and TV (as well as DVD and VCR) and my setup is just frakkin awesome!

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