With the help of Fatrick I’ve got my old XBox fully modded with the XBox Media Centre and a brand new 320 GB Hard Drive from NCIX. That link shows it as $124.99 (as of now anyway) but when I went in to pick it up it was only $109.99. They do that a lot — I think they just upscale the price on their web site a bit and secretly discount when you pick up.
XBMC is a dream to use. If you can get your hands on an old XBox on the cheap I highly recommend you get it modded to use this. It can stream almost any media type from your PC and play it on your TV. In fact I’ve yet to find a format it wouldn’t play. Even a few video files I’ve got on the PC that have some odd audio codec I haven’t figured out yet are playing just fine on the XBox.
The new hard drive allows me to back up all my game discs directly on the drive so I don’t have to keep swapping the disc on the drive in order to play something. I can also install several emulators including MAME and ScummVM which allow the playing of old arcade games and old LucasArts RPGs respectively. I haven’t done this yet, but probably will. I haven’t played Full Throttle in ages, and never did get Grim Fandango to work (despite buying it on the cheap a few years ago).
I can also keep a full backup of my MP3 files on it, both to play them without streaming as well as for safety in case my computer’s drive(s) decide to go poof.
And all it cost me was my old XBox (you can probably buy a good used one for $100) and a $110 hard drive which was totally optional — you can use the drive that comes with it but you just won’t have the massive storage space. XBMC is free and open source and constantly updated… and wicked awesome.
Hi. A gentleman on LiveJournal sent me here to ask you if I could use the Calvin and Hobbes/Fight Club icon. To be honest, someone sent it to me a while back knowing how much I love both. And without any luck finding out who the original creator was, I went ahead and used it. Today, the mystery was solved.
If it’s okay with you, I’d like to continue using it. I think it’s beyond clever and combines two of my favorite articles of pop culture.
If not, no worries. Just let me know.
Thanks,
Matt
*shrug*. I don’t mind. And while I did create that coloured version, I believe (though I could be wrong, it’s been a while) that it’s my redesign of an older, black-and-white image.
It should be noted that I use it everywhere — here (via Gravatar, on Livejournal (which I only use to comment on friends’ LJs) and on many other forums, including SomethingAwful.com. So it’s not like you’ll be very unique.