Saturday, June 11th, 2005 at 6:44 PM
After yet another successful Xbox mod, I felt inclined to point interested readers to system-mods.com for their Xbox modchip supplies. I’ve ordered from them at least a half dozen times, and have received quality parts and quick shipping every time. With an Xbox running unsigned code, you’re able to install and use Xbox Media Center, which is my first and only choice for a set-top media solution. It can play almost any video, audio, or image format you can throw at it, and it has built-in network streaming capabilies (so you can watch videos from your Mac or PC hard drive over a LAN). XBMC has been in development for a long time, and gets better all the time.
11/5/05 Update
Well, this sucks. I take back my recommendation. I have *two* Xecuter 2.6 modchips on order from System-Mods, and my order has been in the “packaging” stage for over two weeks now. Team Xecuter writes that they’ve suspended reseller privileges to them due to fraudulent activity…
11/17/05 Update
I ordered from Divineo and received my chips in 2 days flat! I also emailed their sales department beforehand, just to make sure someone’s alive there, and they responded within the hour with helpful information. Looks like I’ve found my new supplier.
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Have you ever run into problems while modding your ‘box?
Now that they are realitivly cheap I’d love to pick one up and try one of the new solderless mod chips, because i dont wanna hurt my first gen ‘box. Do you feel that its THAT much of an upgrade? I’d really like to try this…
-Mike
Considering what you can do with a modified Xbox, I think it outweighs the one thing you’re likely to lose after it’s done — Xbox Live. If you install a modchip, you can’t access Xbox Live very easily. You can install a switch to disable the chip, (some chips, like the Xecuter 2.6 CE, come with switches) but I’m pretty sure Microsoft checks hard drive partition sizes, among other things, when you log in…and they’ll ban your Xbox MAC address and serial number for using a modded Xbox.
So what can you do with a modded Xbox? As I mentioned above, you can run Xbox Media Center, which is a fantastic program. You can also install a myriad of emulators, for every system from MAME arcade machines up through the PlayStation 1 (NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, GB, and GBA to name a few). You can also build your own software with the Microsoft XDK if you can get your hands on it, as it is most certainly *not* public software. Otherwise, you can use OpenXDK to write homebrew apps. An added bonus to modifying your Xbox is being able to run game “backups” (and we all know what that means).
Yeah I’ve also heard you can FTP things to your ‘box too? That’d be sweet.
Live would be a big blow for me, but, I would still have my first gen ‘box to play that. I might conside this, seems like a worthy investment for sure…
Yes, FTP is the standard way to get files to and from your Xbox. As far as I know, all homebrew Xbox dashboards have a built-in FTP server. It’s great — over ethernet, you can push and pull around 11 MB/sec to the Xbox.
I have one Xbox for media, and one for Xbox Live. It can be done with a single one, but it’s more than I want to risk.
Don’t forget… Not only will XBMC play any current format, its Mplayer underpinnings means that any new format will be supported as well. Using an open source project that is not only has a large user base, but a large developer base as well means that future format support is there.
Try getting that from divx supported DVD player, or some other LAN media center.