Overview – The Problem

Believe it or not, I didn’t do this because I wanted to play video games. I recently decided to purchase an Xbox with the primary goal of turning it into a media center to replace the old PC I currently use for streaming content from my server to my television. I have a lot of media on my server — dozens of TV shows, movies, and various video clips, as well as thousands of photos — that we like to be able to watch with large groups of people in the family room. For years, I have been using a home-built PC with a 1.2 GHz Athlon and a TV-out video card (and not much else). However, using such a PC has several drawbacks: it’s noisy in a quiet environment like a home theater (even after my efforts to quiet the fans), it takes a long time to boot (since it’s noisy, we don’t keep it on all the time), and it’s a pain to try to navigate through all the media content with just the standard Windows Explorer interface and a wireless keyboard and mouse. And yes, I have tried or looked into PC-based solutions like Windows Media Center (too restrictive, and too resource intensive for my poor 1.2 GHz Athlon), Linux’s MythTV (I’m a big Linux fan, but getting MythTV to run — and keeping it running — is a major pain in the ass), and other freeware media center interfaces (too buggy, usually). Nothing seemed quite right, so I stuck with my old-tech solution of a regular PC with regular Windows XP and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The solution – an Xbox?
One week I was talking to a friend at work and mentioned something about my long-time dilemma. He started telling me about how he used his “modded” Xbox (meaning an Xbox that has been hacked with a special chip allowing it to run software other than just Xbox games) as a media center to stream content off of his server. He showed me Xbox Media Center (XBMC) and I quickly saw how great it was and how convenient it would be — it runs fast, it boots fast, it works from a remote control (no more big keyboard and mouse on my coffee table). I have a TiVo, and I saw that this was sort of like TiVo for my stored media files. I immediately hopped on eBay and placed a bid, and got a great deal on a perfect-condition Xbox with four controllers, two games, and the DVD kit (an essential for this project).

Learning the ropes
I then headed over to Xbox-Scene and started the arduous task of wading through moutains of material to figure out what mod chip I should get, how it is installed, how I install the software I need — hell, what software do I need? — and how to upgrade the measley stock 8GB hard drive. Let me save you some time on the first question: they won’t tell you which mod chip to get, so I’ll tell you which one I got. I ordered an X-B.I.T. mod chip, because it is (supposedly) easily flashed using a PC with a USB cable. As for the rest of it, there’s a ton of information there (most of it clearly not written by anyone who took English beyond fourth grade, which is part of why I had trouble deciphering it), but you’re just going to have to do some reading. In this worklog, I’ll talk about the products/methods I chose, and usually why I chose them, but I’m not going to spend a lot of time covering the alternatives.