XBox 1 - wasted opportunity
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/XBox 1 - wasted opportunity
OMFG! I just softmodded my original XBox and now I'm watching TV quality movie trailers, streaming divx directly over my network, getting local weather forecasts, listening to shoutcast radio, and even backing my games up onto an 80 gig drive I've shoved into it.
I've even got a menu that looks just like the 360's menu.
MS really did completely underuse the original xbox in order to push features onto the 360.
Seriously, if you've got an xbox sitting around, that you don't want to use on xbox live, mod it now, it's well worth it.
How much did those mods run you?
Any links please?
£4.50 for a usb adaptor on ebay, that's it, all the software was free.
it took me hours to get it to work, so I'll get round to writing a more simple guide myself soon with all the proper files.
I've got get to bed now, but I did just get a plugin for the media centre on it working, so I'm watching full screen you tube videos now, this is so f@#king good!
sorry yeah, type in "xbox soft mod" then look for game freaks tutorial for now.
from what I understand you an use a standard flash drive to load the hacked save file.
My DS can do all that, except streaming DivX over the network :)
(And the TV quality bit is a stretch for that one... Mpeg 1 is horrible).
Unofficial software is awesome; they can get away with so much more than the official stuff because it does not have to be perfect.
I modded (by hardware) my Xbox several years ago. Infact, I caught it just in time because I can still go on Live despite having a larger HD installed.
They are great machines. I recently set it up again (after moving house) and I'm going to load a few emulators on to it and update the menu system (it's still Evolution-X). I've got Mario 64 and Zelda (GBA emulation) working perfectly already, and that's using emulators a couple of years old.
It's finding the time to get it all set up nicely though.
as i understand it, the xbox is a poor quality pc, so why the excitement? lol
xbox softmod takes about 5 mins to do. Had mine for over a year with a 200gb HD in it.
"they can get away with so much more than the official stuff because it does not have to be perfect."
ur, official software's perfect is it?, my windows XP crashes more than the modded xbox while I was doing all that stuff.
Yeah, the xbox is a poor quality PC, but think about this. All the emulators work straight away because you don't need to tell it what hardware you have. There's no windows overhead so everything actually runs a lot quicker than on a windows PC. I can watch u-tube videos on it full screen with no juddery playback.
Pickelsworth: your DS screen's not 32 inch widescreen with surround sound is it? makes a difference. Also, the movie trailers are in quicktime and do honestly look TV quality (I'm not talking HD here).
I can also emulate everything from a NES to N64, and streaming shoutcast radio is pretty cool too.
How does this work? What can you all install on it afterwards?
I plan on, down the road when I've got some money to burn, picking up a 360 both for the gaming experience but to use it as a media center for the living room. If I could just pick up a $30 Xbox and use it to stream MP3's to and such from my PC I'd definitely consider picking one up.
I always wondered that too, I had mine chipped years ago with one of those EVO-X mods. Now i more or less use it as a Divx video, linked to my server where the mp3s and avis are.
MS could have easily profited on the unoficial and questionably legal software that powers it all, if they had done it themselves.
Hehe i also use my Xbox as a snes,genesis,SCUMM player, gameboy... and just about every other pre xbox console using the emulators.
Which is funny cos whenever the lads come round we end up playing mariocart and SF2 etc rather than any Xbox games.
@ sculpture, you need it chipping first, then you need the EVO Tools DVD (from some site somewhere) to install all the cool stuff.
I just can't see the point of this, unless it's one of those "I climb mountains because they're there" kind of things.
Mine's been softmodded for over almost 2 years now and I'd never go back to the M$ Dashboard!
A. You can stream movies from a network source to it. This means any ISO's you have of DVDs out on the network can just be streamed to the Xbox without having to have an actual PC plugged into the TV.
B. You can backup your games. For some of us who were unfortunate to get the early Xbox with the crappy DVD drives that fail early in life, we can now back up the game and play it from the HDD. And then move it off the xbox and onto a network share when we don't intend to use it anymore.
C. Emulators up the wazoo. My kids are pretty addicted to the old NES and SNES titles now. Someone gave me a DVD with 1700 NES titles some time back. Its a fun trip through retro. in 2 years time, I think I have gotten through the N's (there's alot of games packed into 2gb of space).
D. Media Center and more. Picture slideshow from the tv from a network shared drive (samba server usually). Not to mention streaming music from a network server. Plus weather and more all live.
E. A portable NAS (Network attached server). Sort of that is. I have a 120 GB hdd in mine and I can always fill it with goodies and go off to a lan party or friends house. I can leave an open FTP account on it for my wife, or one of my kids.
The xbox was..... ok... But modded it is very valuable to me. It makes it that much more versitile.
It took me about 10 min to softmod mine about 2 years ago. I didn't have to buy anything (I hacked my own usb-xbox cable together with a soldering iron and spare usb cable, there are tutorials out there to do it). You do need one of 3 or 4 special games that have malfunctions in the load save game that allows the hack to work (splintercell was the one I used). So it might cost you a rental fee.
You usually backup your original MS Dashboard right away (so you can always go back to non-modded if you like).
Hmm. I guess that is pretty nifty.
Really though, don't most people modify their consoles because they want to play copied games? It seems to me that this is the main (unspoken) reason behind it.
Perhaps, but not mine. I dont want to dedicate a pc to the tv for movies and what not. I host to company alot of the time, and don't want to gather them around the pc for home movie viewing.
Yeah, I understand that, but don't you have a DVD player connected to your TV to play movies?
yeah, I'm not too fussed about copied games either. It'll be good to be able to backup my own games collection, but I'm mainly interested in the emulation, and streaming media side of it. OH, and the DVD player is better than the one included with the xbox.
I did this a couple of years ago too. I just took an old mouse and the spare extension for a controller and rewired it so I could copy stuff over to the mem cards and install the softmod that way.
The reason I didn't upgrade to 360 was that my Xbox media center was so much better than the 360's as far as codecs etc. Maybe with vista out, I might give the 360 another look, your supposed to be able to stream from your Vista PC to your 360 using your codecs installed in vista.
But I really loved XBMC softmod on the original Xbox. Espceiany once they figured how to control the Disk tray.
Boot with the tray closed and you have a regular bios, boot with it open and you have a XDK bios. and opening the tray no longer reboots the system, so you can swap DVD's at will :)
I love it.
Yeah, I understand that, but don't you have a DVD player connected to your TV to play movies?
Yes, but:
A. I only have a single layer burner
B. It still takes 8 hours or so to convert and burn a DVD
C. I can just by pass all that by streaming!
I'm not pirating movies either if that is what you think ;-) I merely hate having to store disc everywhere. Remember back with VHS, where you had a HUGE shelf dedicated to jsut storing your movie selection? Same goes with DVDs and Games. It gets cluttered, out of order, and hard to search through. I'd rather be able to just stream media than have to store all that clutter next to the TV or in some other inconvienant location.
Bottom line is that I didn't really think about modding much before my DVD player on the XBox took a crap. Before that I thought modding was for pirates. Now that I found out all the benifits of what the xbox does when modded, I'd never go back.
The only downfall is not being able to use xbox live, but then again, xbox live really blew for the first xbox anyhow. I remember playing halo2 and that's about it on it. Besides, I could always go back if I want the xbox live functionality by restoring the M$ dashboard (the mod data stays on the hdd so I just have to re-softmod it and I will be back again).
I used to use xbox live too, but now most people I know on it hve gone over to 360 and to be honest, you kind of get pissed off with the amount of annoying whining american teenages on Halo screaming about how they're going to rip your head off and pwn you. So I pretty much stick to PC gaming now.
I actually only know one friend of mine who has a 360, and he doesn't really go online with it much.
As for annoying whining american teenagers, I think teenagers from any country can get annoying (extremely). It just so happens that you can understand the american ones =P