[TopMeTom]

here is a daily mod question...

Why do you mod the x-box?
what is the difference between the xenium and xecutor chips....
Sorry to be such a

Phil

[dynamic turtle]

I mod my consoles to make them uneccesarily complicated and unstable

Be warned before proceeding; nursing a modded xbox is a full-time occupation.

DT

[TopMeTom]

Eerrr....right....

maybe I wont then...

[kelvin]

DT - what problems have you had? Sounds like you have an issue somewhere - What Bios/Dash are you running?

Aside from the initial complications of installing a new dash I can't say that I've had any problems running a modified 'box

An interesting question none the less, and here's a few of the reasons that I did mine...

i) I can run a customised dashboard that looks the way I want it to, and does what I want it to do. I can also change the way it looks as and when I get bored

ii) It has allowed me to install a larger hard drive and run my games from that as opposed to disc - means I don't have to get up every 10 mnutes when I decide I want to play a different game Also lets me have a wider selection of music to choose from for the games that allow you to have a custom jukebox

iii) I can play DVD's from any region, and also imported games that may not be available over here

iv) I can stream movies/pictures/audio etc. from my PC to my Xbox over my WLAN enabling me to view stuff from the PC downstairs, on my TV screen upstairs

Plenty more reasons but they're probably the most obvious/applicable for me

K.

[TopMeTom]

I can stream movies/pictures/audio etc. from my PC to my Xbox over my WLAN enabling me to view stuff from the PC downstairs, on my TV screen upstairs

WOW can you? I did not know that.My x-box is downstairs,what type of stuff does it show? I am interested in this

who done the mod?

Phil

[SILVERBACK]

no probs with my modded xbox either,i didnt do it myself though so thats probably why lol.

[TopMeTom]

who done yours mate?
How much?

Phil

[james.miller]

Originally posted by philb
WOW can you? I did not know that.My x-box is downstairs,what type of stuff does it show? I am interested in this

who done the mod?

Phil

almost any type of media tbh - divx, xvid, mp3's, ogg, jpegs.....you name it, and xbmp or xbmc (the software you would use) can do handle it.


As for who did my mod - did it myself

the only real problem i had was flashing the bios for the first time. it took 9 or 10 restarts to get the xbox to boot up to a point at where i could flash the chip with a proper bios (very common). After that though it's plain sailing.

The hardested thing after that is setting up the network so you can transfer files to and from the xbox, which isnt exactly hard tbh.

[SILVERBACK]

Originally posted by philb
who done yours mate?
How much?

Phil

fella round are way lol.

[TopMeTom]

Anyone know the diff between the three chips then?xecutor lite/pro and xenium??

[kelvin]

I also did the mod myself - I've just given some advice to another forum member in this thread here regarding installation which you may want to read.

As for the differences, you're best off reading through the wealth of information over at www.xbox-scene.com because I'll be damned if I could ever explain everything

On a more serious note, the Xecuter series of chips are always highly rated - their after sales support is also second to none IMO. More reading for you over at Team Xecuter

K.

[TopMeTom]

Thanks a lot for your help.Have found the xbox forums,v informative . Now to find someone who can do the job,I don't think I will be able to do it meself

Phil

[BrianC]

I'd recommend LondonConsole.com, they have mod'd all of my consoles (including Xboxes) and have always done a top class job.

An alternate use for a chipped xbox, I have one in each of the kids rooms hooked up to their TV and using Xbox Media Center I connect to my HTPC downstairs so they can access their movies (rips of their DVDs) and music in their rooms without worrying about wrecking their disks. I also have one set up in the lounge for this purpose as well, with the xbox connected to a different share for my movies/music as well as their share for their stuff.

Its much more convient that way

Now I've just got to get another Xbox for my bedroom so I can watch movies from my bedroom and finally I need to get a suitable TV card for my HTPC so I can record freeview onto it and then stream those recordings around the house as well.

[dynamic turtle]

I wish my xbox (xecuter 2.2) mod was more like my ps2 mod (magic 5). i.e. totally invisible. The PS2 runs 100% perfectly with the chip added, whereas the xbox gives me all sorts of hassle with video switching, power cut-outs & rgb scart problems etc. It is also (much) more choosy than the PS2 about which software it will run. This might be down the the installation/bios of course.

It will, however, open up more "avenues" for you to explore than a "passive" mod - file transfer, dvd flexibility, more customisation options, hard drive upgrades etc. The choice is yours.

Personally, I'd prefer it to behave more like the PS2 though.

DT

BTW BrianC, that's a pretty good set-up you going there.

[Miyazaki]

Originally posted by kelvin


iv) I can stream movies/pictures/audio etc. from my PC to my Xbox over my WLAN enabling me to view stuff from the PC downstairs, on my TV screen upstairs

K.

How do you stream then? Is that the whole wireless router thing? Could you explain what i'd need to stream from my pc to my xbox downstairs and the cost? Cheers.

[BrianC]

I have both a wired and wireless networks within my house, each of the main rooms (living room, convertory, office, bedrooms) has a single ethernet cable run to it. Where the room requirements dictate it I have a simple ethernet switch to give me the extra ports I need. In my office I have a 20 port switch hooked up to my ADSL router/firewall - this also provides my IP settings.

I also have a 802.11g wireless network, but this tends to only get used for my laptops, I found that it dropped frames during movie playback, despite getting at least a medium strength signal anywhere in the house/garden. *this could be due to the large amount of wireless devices in my house or my choice of wireless gear - all netgear*

I have a Linux File Server (Athlon 2400+, 256 MB RAM, 750 GB Disk) that acts as a file server for my Desktops/Laptops and as my streaming server to my Xboxes.

I use the XBMS protocol (requires the ccxstreaming server) to push video/pictures/music to each of the Xboxes, it acts much like a simple, unsecured, fileshare (you can put a password on the share but its sent plain text so its not really secure). Its biggest benefit over using a windows style share is that it uses much less bandwidth - which is important when you are streaming 3 * DVDs at 6 mbit per second (as is the transfer rate of your IDE bus).

I only run on Linux as its free - I won't pay for or pirate Windows (I'd get the sack for sure if I did that) - you can run this on a windows PC, its actually easier as there is a nice little GUI program to configure everything for you:

http://dott.lir.dk/ccxgui/

The Xboxes run Xbox Media Center (make sure you are running the may release, it fixes so many bugs), and have been configured (in mediacenter.xml - I think) to point to the XBMS share. On the Xboxes upstairs Xbox Media Center is the default dash - basicly to stop the kids messing, downstairs I use avalaunch, then manually load media center when I want to.

As previously mentioned, Media Center can point to a Windows file share, but you must set the Windows share to support plain text passwords (this is not the default in XP) or allow anoymous access to your share.

Once you have your share setup and accessible to Media Center, you then need to browse to it, and then run the scan task against it. This should find all of your media for each type - video, pictures, music. You can scan multiple shares and Media Center will list them all as a single list - this is useful if you need to load balance your movies across multiple PCs/shares.

NOTE: This could take some time, about 20 minutes for all my MP3s (about 120 GBs worth)

And thats about it. If you have any spesfic questions I'll try to answer them, I'm also going to try (can't promise) to do a proper FAQ complete with screenshots for this if there is enough demand.

[Miyazaki]

TBH, i didn't really understand most of that. At home I have my pc, about 12GB of mp3s an xbox and my telewest cable modem running at 750kbps down/128kbps up.

What else would I need here to stream my mp3's, divx's, etc to my xbox?

A FAQ would be most welcome, and thanks a lot for your patience and help!

[BrianC]

Is your Xbox hooked into the cable modem or PC at all for XBox Live?

If not, you are going to have to hook up your PC and Xbox with a home network, idealy using:

2 ethernet cables (cat 5)
1 ethernet card for your PC (100/10 MB) - you may already have one in your PC)
1 ethernet unmanaged switch (100 MB)

Cost: ~£50

You could also use wireless if you aren't happy about running wires around your house but as I said earlier, I wasn't happy with the performance of my wireless network (802.11g - suposed to be 54 Mbit) when streaming full resolution DVD rips - it was fine for Divx.

For wireless you would need:

1 wireless access point (make sure its 802.11g or better)
1 ethernet card for your pc
1 wireless bridge (for hooking your xbox to)

NOTE: The access point and bridge should come with ethernet cables

Cost: about £120

for this one, you'd put the ethernet card into your pc, then plug the access point to the pc using the ethernet card, configure the access point, then plug the bridge into the PC (using the ethernet card on the PC to configure it to point to the access point. Then plug the bridge into the xbox - job done.

You can also do it this way:
http://xbox-scene.com/articles/network.php

if you like, but its limited in its ability to expand.

I'll post the info on configuring ccxstream later as I want to do some screen shots for that.

[Miyazaki]

Thanks for the help.

I have an ethernet card in my pc, the cat5 cable runs from my cable bb box into my pc. To play xbox, i unplug the cat5 from my modem, and plug the other cat5 i have running from my xbox into the modem.

Could I just plug my xbox straight into my ethernet card on my pc and stream that way, or not?

[BrianC]

You'd need a cross over ethernet cable to do that, it would be better if you brought a cheap ethernet switch and two additional ethernet cables.

Plug the ethernet cable from the cable router into the switch, then plug the xbox and pc into the switch using the additional ethernet cables.

One thing I'm not sure on - if your cable router will function as a DHCP server to both the xbox and the PC, I guess you'll have to google to be sure.