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XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

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Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#71

Post by qingcharles »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #2

XBMC on the original Xbox was so unbelievably far ahead of it's time, it's crazy and that's not just nostalgia talking.

I was contracting for Microsoft/MSN building "official" TV media player interfaces (Windows Media Player Extenders I think the hardware was called) at the time. There was definite inspiration in both directions: the XboxMediaPlayer/XBMC folks were looking at what we were putting out and we were looking for clever things they were doing to steal. All our Xboxen were modded. Obviously they won the battle in the end, though :)

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#72

Post by JeremyNT »

bombcar wrote: post #45
par wrote: post #8

XBMC really takes me back. I used to love using this, and then when it switched to Kodi I got a bit confused but kept using it. Finally I moved over to Plex because I recall having some issues with Kodi i can't remember these days. But while I love Plex, i don't love the proprietary feeling of it, and would still prefer something truly open.

Jellyfin + Infuse on Apple TV has been quite wonderful. Jellyfin alone works fine if you have various other players.

Kodi works great with Jellyfin, too :)

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#73

Post by TapamN »

jsheard wrote: post #17
NegativeLatency wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1080i though

It could output analogue 720p and 1080i for sure, but the CPU had a hard time keeping up with HD video decoding. It was only a 733mhz Pentium 3 after all. Although to go on a tangent, it turned out that you could swap the soldered BGA processor for a socketed 1.4ghz Pentium meant for a desktop PC, using an incredibly cursed interposer setup to redirect the CPU pins to the right BGA pads, and it somehow actually worke…

Wow, you're not kidding saying that it's cursed. I thought it would adapt a socket to the BGA pads, but it looks like the pins of the replacement CPU just sit naked on the interposer.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=95704

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#74

Post by lotsofpulp »

notyourwork wrote: post #27
rootsudo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy this was about 20 years ago...

And now streaming services are becoming “cable networks”. Capitalism at its finest.

Cabled offered far less content, with far less convenience, with far more ad breaks, for far more money.

The current situation is far preferable to being restricted to a specific screen in your home, controlled by a specific box, usable only with long term contracts, where you had to wait on hold on the phone and be home during 4 hour windows for a technician just to get something installed or canceled.

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#75

Post by laweijfmvo »

accrual wrote: post #60
deaddodo wrote: post #55

Gotta love this: > Despite the constraints of the Xbox’s single-threaded 733MHz CPU, XBMC 4.0 includes improvements to task scheduling that allow multiple activities to run concurrently. As if the Pentium 3 wasn’t regularly used to run fully multi-tasking operating systems for years. My old 400mhz P2 was able to play videos, catalog my music collection, download files, and let me edit code simultaneously just fine.

Yeah, the Pentium 2 and 3 CPUs were very capable. Even today I feel they can do a lot of work with the right tools and some shims to access modern stuff (SSH, RDP). Maybe XBMC's kernel wasn't designed for multitasking and they're now adding better support. I could understand wanting to throw the whole CPU at whatever the user was doing, especially in early days.

it’s getting harder and harder to find an easy to install 32-bit linux distro, though

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#76

Post by themafia »

Lacking any expensive or specialty equipment the procedure was intense.

Fully boot up an XBox. Very carefully remove the IDE cable from the internal Hard Drive.

Start booting a PC. Press the "Pause" key on the keyboard right before BIOS starts it's POST. Very carefully connect the IDE cable from the PC to the XBox Hard Drive. Press any key to resume boot.

Now you can boot the XBMC installer and copy it over to the XBox Hard Drive. Shut everything down. Appropriately connect the Hard Drive. Power back up. You now have a modded XBox.

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#77

Post by KyleJune »

echelon_musk wrote: post #35
xeromal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that there were 2 games that you could use to modify your xbox but I only remember 1 game. Mechassault.

Mechassault, 007 Agent Under Fire and Splinter Cell. More recently there are other game exploits, such as THPS4. However, since ENDGAME you don't even need a game to softmod.

I think I used splinter cell. The exploit was also only in a specific version of the game. I remember having to look at a version number on the cd when buying to confirm I was getting the right one.

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#78

Post by rasz »

themafia wrote: post #76

Lacking any expensive or specialty equipment the procedure was intense. Fully boot up an XBox. Very carefully remove the IDE cable from the internal Hard Drive. Start booting a PC. Press the "Pause" key on the keyboard right before BIOS starts it's POST. Very carefully connect the IDE cable from the PC to the XBox Hard Drive. Press any key to resume boot. Now you can boot the XBMC installer and copy it over to the XB…

I also went hardcore hotswap route when uploading my first xbox launcher, followed by eeprom dump and decoding password from that. There are other hardcore methods available:

- sniffing IDE bus with Logic Analyzer https://hackaday.com/2011/04/28/ide-bus-sniffing-and-hard-dr...

- reading password directly from locked drive HPA (service area) using MHDD https://hackaday.com/2011/02/18/hard-drive-password-recovery... yes its stored in plaintext

Nowadays the second method is conveniently build into FATXplorer as a one click action https://fatxplorer.eaton-works.com/2024/05/31/fatxplorer-3-0...

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#79

Post by arjie »

phantasmish wrote: post #24
rightbyte wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ye I used it with Samba network drives to watch movies on the TV. Like, I have yet to encounter such a good interface for a "smart TV" or whatever you could call it. It worked flawlessly.

I’ve never been able to get another family member to successfully use XMBC/Kodi. Most folks have low tolerance for “this thing has wasted a whole-ass minute of my time trying to do something basic”. I tried this several times, for months at a time. Nobody but me ever used it. Even I sometimes used to manage to get lost in some editing-mode or end up with my movie still playing in the background but the whole XMBC UI…

That's probably because of how easy things are to get here in the US. My parents are in their late 60s and I was talking to my dad the other day when he told me about how they watch old movies on the ancient TV they have at home in India: RaspBMC.

I found this astonishing since I set this up perhaps a decade ago on a RaspberryPI with a large external USB drive. I recall setting up something with Samba so that their Windows computer in the house could either make the stuff available or transfer it to the USB drive. Then I used one of those USB flirc setups so that they could use a remote to navigate the interface.

And then I imaged a few SD cards and left them there for them to use.

At some point, my parents figured out how to get torrented content down and how to use the OpenSubtitles.org integration to get subtitles. And that worked for a bit, but something must have changed because they tell me now that they have to download the subtitles on the computer and change the name to match or something.

I suppose you need sufficient motivation. My parents seem to enjoy movies from a century ago which are hard to find in India but easy to find on the Internet. If they could just jump on Amazon Prime and fetch them perhaps they'd have jumped through fewer hoops.

The thing that most amazes me is that this gambit with imaging SD cards worked! South India had a period in there where power would cut out frequently. This dodged that particular problem!

Re: XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox

#80

Post by stuaxo »

rightbyte wrote: post #12
KeplerBoy wrote: post #2

XBMC on the original Xbox was so unbelievably far ahead of it's time, it's crazy and that's not just nostalgia talking.

Ye I used it with Samba network drives to watch movies on the TV. Like, I have yet to encounter such a good interface for a "smart TV" or whatever you could call it. It worked flawlessly.

Same, and I count Kodi in the not good enough interfaces.

Two things make it worse: The Xbox controllers were great for navigation vs a remote control.

SMB1 was much easier to setup and use vs modern samba.

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