The old girl’s still got plenty to give

[whufclee]

I know this is an old post of mine but I've been requested to post it up again. This time there's an added bonus of the xbox promo video I knocked up last year attached to the bottom.

With hardware that’s now 10 years old you’d be forgiven for thinking the xbox classic’s time is up, however the old girl has still got plenty to give. True enough a lot of people now have HTPC’s, standalone media players or the latest games consoles to stream in true HD to their big screens. This however certainly doesn’t mean the demise of our trusty old xbox… Where else could you buy a media center that’s able to stream content from the internet (or locally) in a wide variety of formats, have an amazing library function, double up as an arcade machine and boot up in seconds? And all for the price of a couple of pints of beer! Yes these great warhorse machines can be picked up second hand for amazing prices, I know I’m not the only one to have picked one or two up for as little as 99p from a certain auction site.

So how do you use your xbox these days, are you still using it as your main media center? Obviously not everyone has an HDTV, in which case the xbox is still unbeatable but for those of us that do what happens to your xbox once you’ve upgraded to newer hardware? Personally I have one in every bedroom and also one in the shed (so I can sit in the garden and watch movies/football with a few beers in the summer). With a simple network connection (homeplugs are a great choice if you don’t like wiring) you can have all your media located on one dedicated machine and stream from there. Whether it’s a dedicated server, NAS or simply a PC you can store all media on that one device and then scan it all into your xbox libraries meaning thousands of movies/tv shows but only one large HDD needed. Of course you could just use the xbox to stream directly from the internet – how do you use yours?

XBMC4Xbox Promo Video

[Geeba]

Great work Lee!

[RoyalX]

Thanks whufclee and also for the video.

I use my xbox also as a mediacenter. Thanks to XBMC.

[xanderten50]

Mine is still my main media center - all my TV & movies are on it, all the kids programs are on it and I have CoinOPS installed as well,
Recently thanks to you guys introducing me to the XAI I now have iPlayer, 4OD, Demand 5, ITV Catchup and TV Catchup all installed so it really is hard to beat.
I don't think I'll be 'upgrading' any time soon

[xanderten50]

XBMC4Xbox Promo Video

Out of interest, which skin is used in this video?
I've been looking for a new skin because am a little bored with PM3

[whufclee]

The main skin used in the video is Slik - it's a brilliant skin... really lite but looks nice and is very customisable. Although I keep trying out new skins I generally end up falling back to XTV-SAF for CRT TVs (or for those that want a very basic and easy to use interface such as old folks and kids) and I use Slik for HD TVs. Try a few out - they're all on XAI, there really are some great skins available these days. If you read the info when installing it will tell you whether or not there are any known bugs with the skin. Slik as the name suggests is indeed very slick and there's no bugs that I can think of.

[xanderten50]

Cool, I remember seeing that in the list - I'll have a look tonight! Thanks

[zekepliskin]

Hey nice work! Must have missed that vid the first time around.

No I don't use my Xbox as a main media centre any more; the Apple TV I got a few weeks ago serves as a superior replacement, quieter/smaller/faster etc, and a better picture via 1080p HDMI than the Xbox doing 1080i through Component. Also I can use a web browser on it via LXDE - in fact I'm posting this reply on the Apple TV right now! Which is something I could never have done on the Xbox 1 without a hell of a lot of messing around.

I'm not ready to unhook my Xbox and store it in the loft yet though... it's still got some life in it, especially when it comes to quality emulation of old consoles like the SNES and Mega Drive. And every other TV in the house still has one underneath, ready to WOL the NAS PC and stream SD and music content from it if needed.

The point is, Xbox 1 really got me into doing some basic hardware/software modification to devices in order to make them more useful than when they were new. It's liberating to be able to take something meant to run one way (Xbox as a games console only, Apple TV as a vehicle for iTunes only) and hack the hell out of it so it has a bigger harddrive, proper LAN streaming support and Linux GUI OS if you fancy it! I can never get rid of my old Crystal softmod box, same as I can't get rid of my old Amigas, SNES, Mega Drive and whatever else I have knocking around in the loft. Good tech of it's time deserves to be kept after all the use you got out of it, and to show the little uns when they ask about life before smartphones, the internet and all the rest of the time-sapping junk we have now!

[AZImmortal]

I have an original Xbox, Xbox 360 (JTAG), PS3 (CFW), and Logitech Revue all hooked up to my TV, and which device gets used the most? The answer is easily the original Xbox thanks to XBMC4XBOX (and XBMC before that). I certainly wish that it could play HD h.264 content but it's something that I can overlook considering how long I've been using a modded Xbox as my media player. Being able to run emulators means that it's going to stay in my living room for a long time even if it becomes obsolete as a media player.

[Madmuhfuh]

Still my daily driver, dont see any reason to change yet. Even at 42".

SD TV and movie rips at 720p output look great and work perfectly. Never seen much benefit in 1080 to be honest.

TVcatchup, iplayer, the other on demands all work perfectly. Ive got more TV via my xbox than via my cable.

Noone ever mentions it but music playback and milkdrop on xbox is fantastic.

Still the best audio/vis combo ive seen on any platform. Milkdrop megapack, tweaked .xml and stereo out to 5.1 is spectacular.

And then youve got Coinops...... what can you say there. 18000 odd games in one shell, with videos. Again, spectacular.

Silent (or close to) modding them is easy and cheap.

Beast of a machine with long long legs yet even tho dev is drying up. As long as it runs ill use it, and its given me 10 years or something already.

The legacy is phenomenal. Its the blueprint for what you should be able to do with a backdoored machine.
Just XBMC if nothing else, it is THE mediacenter. The one ring that rules them all.

[bigkidoz]

My 2tb halo xbox easily gets as much use as the tv itself, the sotfmodded wii and RGH 360 are mere ornaments compared to it. The GUI in xbmc is so easy to use that my kids know it backwards to play their favourite movies and albums of mp3's and the old school games that dad used to play (and still does) .

[Nextelhalo]

Since 2006 the old XBOX is the only console that i've used. I did purchase a 360 and did some case mod stuff but it never got used so it got sold. Currently there are only XBOX's and PC's in my house and that's how i plan on keeping it. All hail XBOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!