rubican! Wrote:Hey guys ive been looking at building 2 rigs. One for my Living room that will be all powerfull and crazy and then one for my bedroom where i stash old star treks and stuff like that to help me go to sleep. I have an old xbox and was wondering if its still worth modding it for use with XBMC. WHat i want from it is at least DVD quality and the ability to play my old ripped star treks. I was looking and the price of all the things needed to make a 500gb one is about $160 dollars. The cost for me to build a cheapo HTPC is about $300. SO....
Is it still worth it?
Well, I still have 3 modded xboxes and all are working every day.
They are great for SD content and DVD playback.
I found it far easier (and more cost effective) to run my media from a central server and stream them across my network than try and cram and mod drives into the xboxes themselves. It's far easier to add faster, cooler running drives to a single server computer than stick them in a hot cramped xbox.
Started with an older Power Mac G4 dual 450MHz machine I got for free, upgraded to a Power Mac G4 single 1.25GHz machine I got from a friend in exchange for a case of beer.
Both have worked flawlessly serving 3 xboxes for SD content and two mac mini's and one macbook for HD content.
So, if you already are going to make a fast machine for your livingroom, it seems a simple task to just add a drive it it for all your Star Trek videos and stream them to the xbox. Would be far simpler to mod the box too. You could set that up in 15 minutes. Tried putting in a larger HD in one of my xboxes and it was nothing but frustration.
