by KeplerBoy
10 subcomments
- XBMC on the original Xbox was so unbelievably far ahead of it's time, it's crazy and that's not just nostalgia talking.
by anonymousab
1 subcomments
- I remember installing XBMC with a 360-style "blades" interface and being blown away by how much smoother and nicer it was then the blades interface on the Xbox 360 at the time.
Obviously the OS wasn't doing as much as an Xbox 360 was, but as an end user, it made me perpetually annoyed at what we "could have had" on the 360.
And then Microsoft changed the 360 UI to their windows 8 uwp Tile-style UI with even more ads and I realized that I underestimated how bad things could get.
- I remember paying $250+ to some company out in CA and shipping my Xbox to them. Recommended by some friends. A week later it came back modded and a new HD installed. Along with a 10 page guide on how to use xbmc. Including mounting a remote windows share using smb. Or transfer the media files to the Xbox via FTP. This was around 2004. At the time, there wasn’t any easy way to play downloaded or ripped content on a TV from over the network. So a modded Xbox was a game changer.
- 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.
by filmgirlcw
5 subcomments
- XMP was the first time I ever picked up a soldering iron -- so I could "hack" my OG Xbox 1.0.
I will always, always love and respect it. I love that they are still committed to the OG device. I want to pull mine out and see if the spinning hard drive still works after all these years, might even try to update it!
- 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.
by unbehagen
1 subcomments
- I loved XBMC and still use Kodi to this day. Back then, I even proposed and POCed what's now a part of their Add-On system, essentially a fuse-like virtual file system forwarded to Python. Before that, each Add-On had to bring its own UI. This was basically my first OSS contribution and the community was really supportive and welcoming.
- 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.
by GaryBluto
1 subcomments
- As much of an achievement as this is, I think much of the charm is sadly lost in later versions of XBMC.
- I fondly remember opening up my Xbox to solder a mini board to the Xbox board. Later, they figured out how to add it without the additional board.
by matthewpick
0 subcomment
- Fantastic timing on this post. I was just chatting with coworkers this week about my childhood modded Xbox and showed them screenshots of the Avalaunch home screen.
https://avalaunch.net/
by thot_experiment
0 subcomment
- Let me just hit up the bot on irc so i can get the one time ftp login to xbins and grab this.
by urbandw311er
0 subcomment
- Wow, there’s a trip down memory lane. I remember writing a whole addon called “Tivox Control Station” that let you watch your TiVo recordings on your XBox. Such happy times to be part of that modding community when everything was open and hackable.
- I remember modding my Xbox and putting XBMC on it.
One of my fondest memories is actually playing games directly off the hard-drive.
One of the great "side-effects" of that was basically cutting loading times almost in half.
I especially remember the loading animation in the game Crash Bandicoot - Wrath of Cortex. Crash Bandicoot himself would keep falling during the loading screen. (note: PS2 version had another looking version).
The game loading screen for Xbox was designed so that the camera movement nicely panned throughout it during the time the loading took, but due to the loading time being shorter the "animation" was cut short.
..just a fun little thing that stuck with me. :)
EDIT: Oh! I found videos on youtube demonstrating the "difference".
Here is the original experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1327&v=jLf9EZWLins
Here is the experience when cut short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1157&v=Vk8AuLhnu58
- That's some impressive dedication to continue homebrew on the OG Xbox in 2025. Much respect for that alone. Very cool to see such an old console get a first class modern media player experience.
by kristofferR
0 subcomment
- I didn't get consoles as a kid, but after moving out I bought my first console - a PS3 I jailbroke.
Showtime/Movian was my TV media player for years, actually worked pretty great until I got a Shield. Cool to see it is still being developed, like XBMC.
by Shelby-Thomas
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by 1970-01-01
0 subcomment
- Should have named it XBMC 360 because it has come full circle and it would continue their barbaric culture of naming it 'X' but building it for the complementary set of X. (i.e. it works on everything but XBOX 360)
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