Tutorial: Set up your Xbox to be like your AppleTv
This Tutorial will outline the latest way to upgrade your dusty old xbox (1) console with NO modchip, to be in the front line cutting edge of home entertainment (well ok maybe not cutting edge, but its NOT far from it) the original xbox console was a superb console of its day (after the open community got its hands on it) opening up doors to all
sorts of scripting and user-interface design, the xbox console its self, if you dont have one, can be bought form the likes of GAME, GAMESTATION etc for about £20, which is a mega bargin, even with its stock 8GB hard drive (same size as the Apple iPhone) this space will be more than enough for this to get of the ground…
XBMC - Xbox Media Center is the Best (by my Count) Media Player for any platform.
For this Tutorial you will need:
- Original Xbox Console - controller etc.
- Original copy of splinter cell.
- Xbox Memory card.
- Xbox USB Memory card reader.
- PC/Laptop
- Router/switch
- Network cables
- Ftp client software
- All software from this post
- Some time
- PATIENCE
STAGE 1: Network
First of were going to get this Xbox 1 console wired up to your home network, if you have a router which your pc/laptop is connected to either wired or wi-fi, then go a-head and plug in a cable going from the router to your xbox 1 console, turn on your xbox and your ready for stage 2.
STAGE 2: Search & Gather
Software needed and were to get them.
PC SOFTWARE
- flashfxp - download
- Xbox Memory Card read/write
XBOX SOFTWARE
Once you get your self all those bits and pieces, install Flashfxp, load the memory card read/writer software, grab local copy of the latest XBMC build extracted to “c:\xbmc\” latest xTV Skin for XBMC extracted to “c:\skin\xTv\”then we can begin…
STAGE 3: Getting it Copied
grab the splinter cell hack from the Softmoder deluxe folder, read the read me file which is there, make sure you grab the right folders, these will be copied to the memery card after its been formated.
once the files are on there, stick it into your controller and load up the splinter cell game, go to the loading menu and select the linux saved game this should start the installer and copy files to your xbox hard drive.
Congratulations you have just Softmoded youre Xbox Console for homebrew and backup games.
STAGE 4: Grab Your Boot Disk
With your new Boot Disk Created, insert that to your xbox, power off, then power up, the boot disk should kick in and load to a menu system see image below (if this dosnt happen - turn off and try again, or else back to creating a Boot disk) once the menu system has been loaded you should have a System Utils, options menu or settings depending on what version you have, inside the System Utils menu select the network settings and change them to match your home network ie: IP: 192.168.0.5 | Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 | Gateway: 192.168.0.1 this will be your routers IP address, save the settings and exit (way down the bottom).
This is the way the dashboard should load up.
STAGE 5: FTP to Your Box
Start up Flashfxp, on one side(left) youre local pc on the other side(right) you have a blank area, ubove this section click on the lightning bolt for it to say Quick connection, add the xbox IP address and the username and password will be “xbox” (unless you changed this - NOT recomended) click connect and hopefully you should be presented with the Drive structure of the xbox ie: C, D, E, X, Y, Z, this is were all the fun starts,
make a new folder on your pc system were you can store a back of the system files from the xbox just incase things DO go wrong..
DID I MENTION GRAB A BACKUP!!
An outline of the Drive structure for the xbox:
- C: just like windows this is were the operating system for the xbox is
- D: this is the DVD player (any disks in here can be flashfxp’d to your local system)
- E: this is a usable place for data to be stored Memory Saves, temp files- Movies, Music
- X, Y, Z: much like windows swap files, used when the machine is running and emptied when of
STAGE 6: Xbox Media Center
The XBMC dashboard for the xbox has to be the best bit of media software around across any platform.
With your local copy located and extracted to “C:\xbmc\” open flash fxp and navigate to the C: drive on the xbox, highlight all the files and folders in the xbmc folder on your side and transfer them across, when there finished, on the xbox side you can right click the xboxdash.xbe and rename it to msdash.xbe, with this done right click on the xbmc.xbe file and rename it to xboxdash.xbe (see whats happening there) the xbmc.xbe file will load up instead of the original dashboard, when this is done navigate to the skins folder on the xbox and transfer over the local copy you have of xTV,
STAGE 7: The Restart
At this point in the tutorial, things can go wrong “VERY” wrong, now if you have copied over the
backup your half way there to protecting your self against boot errors, if you misspelled the xbe file wrongly or forgot to copy over certain xbmc folders, this will result in a failed booting of the xbox software cause it to crash, this will most prob give you a Service warning and idicate an Error message in big numbers on the screen, if this dose happen, youre not all lost, just find a friend with a modchip enabled xbox and ask him to restore your drive with your backup and youll have to start over..
This is what you dont want!…
Once you do re-start and all is good you should be presented with the default dashboard for XBMC, to get the xTV skin loaded you will have to go to options/settings -> appearence -> and change default skin to xTV, the console will pause and then change skin, once this happens you can just press (B) on the controller and head back to the main dashboard, once youre happy the skins all loaded, just spent a few minutes looking through all the options of your NEW xTV (AppleTV) media center,
This is the default Dashboard for XBMC.
This is what you want to see when it starts up..
once your happy with all your settings you may want to think about adding the xTV intro video, which when you turn on the xbox a little script is run and tells it to play a video, in this case its the intro much the same as the one found on the AppleTV box.
Click here to download the Intro video
This is the intro movie which starts up just
before the xbox dashboard kicks in..
STAGE 8: What now?
With all your settings set up the way you want what can you do now? well for a start you can gain access to all youre Divx movie content stored on your PC system, DVD Data Disks, or streamed from the internet.
theres built in YouTube support for browseing and searching all the videos on there…
You can get access to your massive Music library, set up playlists listen to podcasts, play radio stations around the world, open your TV up to Music Visulisations, Karaoke & Dynamic lyric writing to the screen over your own music…
WIth the xbox community has written thousands of scripts for the xbox, which can extend you media center further by grabing rss feeds, video podcasts, Full length Movies not to mentions massive ammounts of ProN from streaming media to slideshow galleries meaning you never get board (most proberly tired) but certainly enjoying every mintue of it,
Cant forget the Massive array of Skins out there as well, i have to say the most common skin i use as my main dashboard has got to be the X360 skin by the guys over at blackbolt there amazing job of creating a skin based on teh xbox 360 interface, and i must say the guys have got it down to a fine art, it looks and works just out of this world… (thanks guys)
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