6 ms·

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 KeplerBoy 11mo ago

pimlottc 11mo ago
XBMP is the main reason I got my Xbox, it was fantastic. And later I even played a few games on it!
bonsai_spool 11mo ago
Yes! So many streaming sources and high performance/responsiveness.
cowboyscott 11mo ago
24 year old hardware that is not only useful but punches above most of the set-top boxes you'll find on Amazon. I also suspect that it could run Silksong or Balatro just fine. Sure, it's unfair to compare gray/black market use cases, but it does make stark the hardware upgrade treadmill we've all been forced on.
- rightbyte 11mo ago
  I don't think Xbox had 1080p support? That would be somewhat annoying to be limited by.
  - NegativeLatency 11mo ago
    1080i though
    - jsheard 11mo ago
      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 worked.
      - TapamN 11mo ago
        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 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=95704
        deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
        jsheard 11mo ago
        I think Pentium 3 sockets were through-hole, so to use one they would have had to fit two different footprints on the bottom side of the interposer without any overlap. It might not have been physically possible.
    - boilerupnc 11mo ago
      this is my goto for xbox gen1 HDMI - Electronxout[0]. Here's a full list of video options[1] [0] https://electron-shepherd.com/products/electronxout https://electron-shepherd.com/products/electronxout [1] https://www.xbox-scene.info/forums/topic/657-list-of-all-og-xbox-video-solutions/ https://www.xbox-scene.info/forums/topic/657-list-of-all-og-...
      - ssl-3 11mo ago
        What problems are these widgets supposed to solve? With such a widget: The video is still at most 720p or 1080i (because scaling, like cake, is a lie), it still originates as an analog signal (that's all the OG Xbox can provide), and the machine is still broadly incapable of playing high-definition video (it's too slow).
- afavour 11mo ago
  You may need to remove your rose tinted glasses. No doubt it was incredible for its time but not even being able to play 1080p video puts it underneath most set top boxes you can get today.
  - cowboyscott 11mo ago
    Spec-wise, sure, but I suspect that if you ran a blind test between an Xbox running XBMC and an Amazon Fire Stick, most folks would prefer the XBMC experience (despite the 720p output).
rightbyte 11mo ago
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.
- robofunk 11mo ago
  If my memory is not faulty it was even able to stream movies from multi volume rar files over SAMBA which felt like magic. IYKYK
  - notyourwork 11mo ago
    Oh yea - and DCC transfers for content from IRC. mmmmm
  - bombcar 11mo ago
    Being able to play VIDEO_TS files directly blew my mind; no need to argue about compression with our massive 250 GB drives ... ;)
  - ElCapitanMarkla 11mo ago
    Yeah that part was amazing. It was 2006, I'd softmoded the Xbox with the Splinter Cell hack. I had 2MBs ADSL capped @ 10GB for international data but unlimited national. I was in a NZ only private tracker to take advantage of that and then the icing on the cake, streaming the multi volume rar files straight to the TV. It really was magic.
- Sanzig 11mo ago
  I managed to get a fully working XBMC+Samba setup back when I was probably 13 or 14 in the mid-2000s. Echoing the sentiment that it really was far ahead of its time. I'd torrent a movie or show, it'd appear on the network share, and then I could watch it immediately in the living room in glorious 480p on a tube TV. This was before Netflix instant watch existed, truly felt like something from the future.
  - rootsudo 11mo ago
madaxe_again 11mo ago
I fondly remember modding my first Xbox to install it, and it just being so much better than anything else available at the time that I immediately retired my… man, I can’t even remember the brand. They did a nice line in network attached media players in the early 2000s. I ended up assembling a few XBMC systems with rack mount NASes stuffed full of hard drives for use on yachts, with easy means to rip or copy new media - clients couldn’t believe what they were seeing compared to the previous world of bootleg DVDs, and one system I know of was in use still 15 years on.
abrookewood 11mo ago
100% Even when I stopped playing Xbox games, we would take that pimped out machine everywhere. Long before there was Netflix, there was an Xbox running XBMC loaded with movies and TV shows of questionable origins. Good times!
AnotherGoodName 11mo ago
I still get comments along the lines of ‘remember when you had Netflix before Netflix? Man that was awesome, you could have made billions right?’ from former housemates and friends. I had XBMC in the living room connecting to my server which auto downloaded all the latest tv and movies. So to them i had something much better then Netflix well before Netflix got into online streaming.
opello 11mo ago
It was also a really nice MythTV frontend at some point which was easier to set up than additional home theater PCs that connected to the central PVR.
qingcharles 11mo ago
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 :)
tclancy 11mo ago
I felt the same about ReplayTV and integration with the PS2. The future is always unevenly distributed.

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

pimlottc 11mo ago

XBMP is the main reason I got my Xbox, it was fantastic. And later I even played a few games on it!

bonsai_spool 11mo ago

Yes! So many streaming sources and high performance/responsiveness.

cowboyscott 11mo ago

24 year old hardware that is not only useful but punches above most of the set-top boxes you'll find on Amazon. I also suspect that it could run Silksong or Balatro just fine. Sure, it's unfair to compare gray/black market use cases, but it does make stark the hardware upgrade treadmill we've all been forced on.

rightbyte 11mo ago
I don't think Xbox had 1080p support? That would be somewhat annoying to be limited by.
- NegativeLatency 11mo ago
  1080i though
  - jsheard 11mo ago
    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 worked.
    - TapamN 11mo ago
      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 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=95704
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - jsheard 11mo ago
        I think Pentium 3 sockets were through-hole, so to use one they would have had to fit two different footprints on the bottom side of the interposer without any overlap. It might not have been physically possible.
  - boilerupnc 11mo ago
    this is my goto for xbox gen1 HDMI - Electronxout[0]. Here's a full list of video options[1] [0] https://electron-shepherd.com/products/electronxout https://electron-shepherd.com/products/electronxout [1] https://www.xbox-scene.info/forums/topic/657-list-of-all-og-xbox-video-solutions/ https://www.xbox-scene.info/forums/topic/657-list-of-all-og-...
    - ssl-3 11mo ago
      What problems are these widgets supposed to solve? With such a widget: The video is still at most 720p or 1080i (because scaling, like cake, is a lie), it still originates as an analog signal (that's all the OG Xbox can provide), and the machine is still broadly incapable of playing high-definition video (it's too slow).
afavour 11mo ago
You may need to remove your rose tinted glasses. No doubt it was incredible for its time but not even being able to play 1080p video puts it underneath most set top boxes you can get today.
- cowboyscott 11mo ago
  Spec-wise, sure, but I suspect that if you ran a blind test between an Xbox running XBMC and an Amazon Fire Stick, most folks would prefer the XBMC experience (despite the 720p output).

rightbyte 11mo ago

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.

robofunk 11mo ago
If my memory is not faulty it was even able to stream movies from multi volume rar files over SAMBA which felt like magic. IYKYK
- notyourwork 11mo ago
  Oh yea - and DCC transfers for content from IRC. mmmmm
- bombcar 11mo ago
  Being able to play VIDEO_TS files directly blew my mind; no need to argue about compression with our massive 250 GB drives ... ;)
- ElCapitanMarkla 11mo ago
  Yeah that part was amazing. It was 2006, I'd softmoded the Xbox with the Splinter Cell hack. I had 2MBs ADSL capped @ 10GB for international data but unlimited national. I was in a NZ only private tracker to take advantage of that and then the icing on the cake, streaming the multi volume rar files straight to the TV. It really was magic.
Sanzig 11mo ago
I managed to get a fully working XBMC+Samba setup back when I was probably 13 or 14 in the mid-2000s. Echoing the sentiment that it really was far ahead of its time. I'd torrent a movie or show, it'd appear on the network share, and then I could watch it immediately in the living room in glorious 480p on a tube TV. This was before Netflix instant watch existed, truly felt like something from the future.
- rootsudo 11mo ago

madaxe_again 11mo ago

I fondly remember modding my first Xbox to install it, and it just being so much better than anything else available at the time that I immediately retired my… man, I can’t even remember the brand. They did a nice line in network attached media players in the early 2000s. I ended up assembling a few XBMC systems with rack mount NASes stuffed full of hard drives for use on yachts, with easy means to rip or copy new media - clients couldn’t believe what they were seeing compared to the previous world of bootleg DVDs, and one system I know of was in use still 15 years on.

abrookewood 11mo ago

100% Even when I stopped playing Xbox games, we would take that pimped out machine everywhere. Long before there was Netflix, there was an Xbox running XBMC loaded with movies and TV shows of questionable origins. Good times!

AnotherGoodName 11mo ago

I still get comments along the lines of ‘remember when you had Netflix before Netflix? Man that was awesome, you could have made billions right?’ from former housemates and friends. I had XBMC in the living room connecting to my server which auto downloaded all the latest tv and movies. So to them i had something much better then Netflix well before Netflix got into online streaming.

opello 11mo ago

It was also a really nice MythTV frontend at some point which was easier to set up than additional home theater PCs that connected to the central PVR.

qingcharles 11mo ago

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 :)

tclancy 11mo ago

I felt the same about ReplayTV and integration with the PS2. The future is always unevenly distributed.