Great How-To: Turn an Old Xbox into a Media Center

Way cheaper than building or buying new

Published on September 17, 2007 By Zoomba In WinCustomize News

Media Center devices have been all the rage the last few years. Tivo, home-built DVRs, Windows Media Center Edition, the list goes on. However, if you don't already have a device to do your TV and movie management, you're looking at a pretty hefty cash investment. Even if you have a spare PC sitting around, chances are you're looking at $300 or more in additional hardware to bring it up to snuff for media center usage.

But what if you have an old Xbox sitting around? You know the thing is really just a mini-PC right? Well, with just a little bit of elbow grease and a few bucks you can turn that aging video game system into a kick-butt media center. The folks over at Lifehacker (a fantastic site for ways to tweak both your gadgets and your everyday life) have a great and extremely detailed how-to on turning that old black box into the hub of your home digital entertainment empire.

Comments

I.R. Brainiac

on Sep 17, 2007

Thats neat...got a friend with one that stopped working,wonder what it would take to get back working?hmmmmmmmmm...

Amerasu

on Sep 17, 2007

They truly do make great media centers. I have one and both my best friends have one. If you can pick one up on the super cheap and put a big hard drive into them and get XBMC running its truly the cat's meow.

Dark-Star

on Sep 18, 2007

thats pretty awesome. I'd love to see this in action.

Jeff Gamble

on Sep 18, 2007

Looks Great!!!! But can you still play games on it???

MarvinMar

on Sep 18, 2007

Sure you can still play games on it.
After you mod or softmod it, you can also play "Backup" games.
And if you go the route of adding a large hard drive, you can rip your games onto the drive and not have to get the disks out anymore.
Many games are actualy 1 gig or less.

Also, be sure to grab the MC 360 skin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGgXOPPWLW8
Search youtube for MC360 for more info.

MC360 is included in most builds of XBMC now

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