[dobbin]

I got an xbox for chrimble last year. I got into GTA San Andreas and Halo, but really, its been an expensive dvd player most of the time. So, last weekend I chipped it. Now it can still play games but I am also using it as a media center. All the stuff I download onto my computer (music, divx, xvid) I now stream over the network to our room to watch on the xbox - quality.

[squeek]

Hardware or software, chipping?  The media player (it's on sourceforge I think) is really good if you don't know about it already.

[Bubba]

Apparantly the 360 is very well setup for using as a media centre, but I've not really looked into it.

[dobbin]

no me either, I think they intend you to stream content from a media PC, which of course is a thinly veiled excuse to get another XP license out of you.

Squeek, chipped with a hardware mod chip, called an xecuter 3. Soldering your own mod chip is not for the faint hearted and practice on something less valuable is advised! Theres only one really horrible bit.

the media player is dope.

[squeek]

Squeek, chipped with a hardware mod chip, called an xecuter 3. Soldering your own mod chip is not for the faint hearted and practice on something less valuable is advised! Theres only one really horrible bit.

You can also take the hard drive out, plug it into your PC and put a patch on it that will allow it to run copied games, copy the game in the drive to the harddrive, play MAME games, etc.  You can also put a bigger HD in this way which is useful if you want to store more games on the HD instead of run them from the DVD.  This will also let you reboot the xbox without the cracked firmware in the shadow ROM so will let you play on xbox live because I think that checks the CRC of the shadowROM before letting you play so you need the original xbox OS running.

[dobbin]

I read something about that, sounds pretty good and much less dangerous than my method!

From this chip theres an option to boot with it disabled and straight to MS Dash.

[Bubba]

Just set up my 360's media centre gubbins.

Seems ok at first look - I can view pictures and play mp3s that are stored on my PC via the XBOX 360.

Unfortunately, I can't play videos which is a shame, but maybe this will happen in the future. I really hope so, as it'd be nice to stream stuff I've downloaded to the living room...

A nice and easy solution for playing music in the living room from the PC upstairs.

[Bubba]

There's a way round this - I can run VMWare on one of my PCs, then install a copy of Windows XP MCE (Media Center Edition) on the virtual machine.

Now I can stream video to the 360

It's not working perfectly yet - can't see all my network shares on the 360, but it certainly works.

[dobbin]

thats pretty cool - how much was the 360?

[Bubba]

£210 for the basic one, £280 for the one with gubbins like wireless controllers, hard drive, headset, etc.

Should be some more stock coming in soon.

Might convert my old xbox to a dedicated media center now it's obsolete.

Also, Windows Vista will support the 360 better than XP apparantly.