Fred appears to have a bee in his bonnet today (having been similarly on the receiving end myself)... Nothwithstanding the 'OT' flag, it seems he'd rather you employed an IT professional or went down to Curry's and bought an off-the-shelf solution, rather than trying to d-i-y this.
If you care you look back over any NG you will see thousands of truly OT posts where you and all the other un-elected mods choose to take no notice at all.
It still fascinates me that you have to follow me, hang on my every word and have your little pet names for me (aww, bless). Still not found yourself a woman (or a life) then.
And that's a classic example of Steve Filth (ill)logic. "Both groups'? Wtf are you on you pathetic little man. 'You were here first so can't be following me personally' .
So, put your dick away and please get a life (and ideally in the UK if you want to continue posting here). ;-)
I'll reply here so that others can benefit / comment / improve. Apologies to Fred and Steve F if they feel this is out of place, I personally feel that hacked-up home networks, telcoms, CCTV, AV & home cinema etc does have a place in uk.d-i-y, it's an interesting & growing (or is it converging.. ) field. I enjoy the trad chainsaw jokes and the stuff about digging trenches too, but surely there's room for all? So, with that in mind let's go :
- My first encounter with XBMC was non-DIY (boo, shame on me) - about 3 yrs ago I bought a used, converted xbox off ebay for about £50 inc leads & delivery. You still see them listed sometimes, try search terms like modded, special or custom. It was (is) brilliant - works perfectly with the xbox dvd remote, plays any media file from any shared network folder it can reach. Silent, looks tidy under the TV, still plays Xbox games when you're in a retro mood, can be localised for weather & news feeds etc.
- The xbox hardware will handle full DVD resolution at high bit-rate, with good stereo sound. If you want a hi-def wide-screen surround-sound output then you'll need to look at something newer. XBMC has now been ported to a generic PC version, so you could build a silent little media centre (I have a project in mind to install a mini-ITX board - ebuyer 152176 for example - into the shell of an old stereo or VCR case one day). But let's start from where we are - you have got an Xbox, and you want to play...
- The way I did it was to follow the instructions at
formatting link
- I looked at numerous other how-to's, but that one was the most complete and user-friendly. I bought a new Action Replay usb gadget (£15), and a used copy of Mechassault (£3). You only need these once, so if you can borrow or share that's useful. As I've zombied another 4 units since then, I'm pleased with the value I've had from them so far.
- Like any tech walkthrough, it's nerve-wracking the first time. You double and triple check everything, and you hold your breath when you initiate key steps, but it's actually really simple and would take 15 mins for a confident user. Allow half a day, and go slow & steady. There are back-up and restore options included, to support your peace of mind. As long as you have generic confidence (create folders, save data, allocate IP addresses, transfer FTP files etc) you'll be on solid ground all the way. And what a buzz when you finally power the hacked xbox up! It's like a B&W Frankenstein moment - shaking your fist at the sky and laughing manically... :o)
- As a result of the xbox revolution, our house is now completely digitised. DVD's and CD's are in the loft somewhere - they get ripped and then they're forgotten. We have also accumulated vast amounts of broadcast TV from torrent sites and from our own DVD-R recorder, from itunes and BBC iplayer (we love radio comedy shows & podcasts) so everyone's favourite stuff is playable at the click of a button, in any room with a TV.
- Everything is stored in a simple Windows XP Pro server in the garage, currently 6TB of unprotected diskspace shared as read-only. That's my next project, to somehow borrow enough capacity to copy it all off, RAID5 the disks and copy it all back on again. But to be honest it's not a huge problem - a couple of disks have gone flaky over the years but there's been enough warning to recover the data, and even if it's all lost we can download or convert it again.
But.... BTDTGTTS. (BTW I used the hard drive hot swap method)
The CPU is sadly lacking for replaying more advanced formats than DVD compression, which is the stuff now of downloads from the internet.
It's now poor value for the electricity burnt IMO. The unit's fan is also noisy, and lastly the brilliant XBMC has now forked off to concentrate on more capable platforms.
Fling £25 at ebuyer instead.
Sumvision Cyclone Micro Media Player Divx & ISO HDMI USB/SD Media player HDMI 1080p Upscaling
Part of this 'experiment' was the doing of it. ;-)
That was the hope.
The basic stuff will do me fine atm.
Yup, I've already played with the LiveCD, Windows and the Linux versions.
Nice.
That's me (well, I hope to have two old Xboxes I and already have one
360 that works pretty well as a media centre, other than being a bit fussy about formats.
Ah cheers, not seen that one.
What concerned me with the others was they often had lots of branches to the plot and not knowing much about consoles in general etc.
Ok.
Yup, and like many tools their value can be more than their cost even if you only use them once. ;-)
;-)
That's good to know. Because I haven't had any dealings with consoles for ages since 'playing' with my PS.
Should be ok there then.
Let's hope. ;-) To be honest, I'm not sure my first eBay Xbox is doing what it should. It doesn't seem to have anything like the range of settings / option the 360 has. Like, can see / play with the network settings for example?
Hehe, I know that feeling very well. Driving the kitcar the first time after building it. Or sitting on the river in the boat I'd just finished.
Yup, we have a bit of that too and I'm looking forward to being able to do similar.
I recently built a WHS. Only 1.5TB atm (3 x 500G 2.5" SATA) but the Microsoft Drive Extender technology allows one to add and remove drives very easily so that could change.
Right, solution for you (as I'm not going away), killfile me or simply resist reading anything I post.
The trouble with that is you don't know how to (or presumably you would have done so by now) and you can't resist (as you have proved so often).
No, I'll just have to carry on bitch-slapping you whenever you decide to crawl out from under your stone and harass me again (as you undoubtedly will).
That's the problem when you are obsessed with someone ... you just can't keep away (and you could so easily prove me wrong).
Right, so off you go and determine how many posts of yours I have replied to this year, or the last five years or any of the years that you have posted for.
But of course you'll simply bullshit and bluster as usual.
The fact is that you're an irrelevance to me. I rarely comment about you because there's no point. Others do so, and they seem if anything to be harsher about you than I ever have been.
Or perhaps you're so thich that you think all people named "Steve" are the same person?
You already are kill-filed in UCSM where you can't resist your tedious trolling with your "Windoze ROXKZ, Mac SUKZ posts. You seemed to be behaving yourself here, until the latest incident where you seem determined to drag another newsgroup into the crap.
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