Blog :: CharlieO

Instead of buying an expensive PC with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center, buy a $200 modded Xbox with Xbox Media Center (not the Microsoft version): www.xboxmediacenter.de

Would love to look at the details on that -- but it appears the site you reference is offline until March 2.

Doesn't modding an XBox void the warranty? [Not that I guess you are worrying about that if you are going down this path.]

What cost in time and resources does it take to get this up and running?

The main issue with a modded XBox vs an MCE PC is that the XBox doesn't do TV recording, although XBMC does support something called "ReplayTV", but living in Australia I don't think that's available, so effectively it's for viewing only. It's great for viewing movies etc though - I've used XBMC until now, but I'm just about to start trying various Media Center-type options.

Not too sure when February 30th is, is there some kind of "double-leap-day-every-4000-years" rule I don't know about? :)

Charlie: for more info, check http://www.xbox-scene.com/tutorials.php . You can buy the mod chip and do it yourself, or you can purchase a pre-modded xbox (you can also upgrade your hard drive, memory and CPU).

Vmax: You're right - you can't record shows on a modded Xbox. But to record shows you might as well use one of the mainstream PVRs such as Tivo or ReplayTV. The option you see on XBMC is to stream shows from another ReplayTV - something ReplayTVs do natively. You can also stream from a ReplayTV to your PC using http://dvarchive.org/ As for living in Australia, your main problem would be to get the TV Guide information (channels and shows). That said someone wrote an application that allows non-US users to download the TV Guide from some XML source (I can't remember the name but if you Google it you'll find it)

There's one more alternative. Go with the modded Xbox solution and try MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/). There's an xbox port that provides the TV recording capabilities, and everything else that MCE does.