[mythtv-users] MythTV on XBox

[Joe Votour]

Wouter,

See my responses inline.

-- Joe

--- Wouter Lagerweij <wouterla at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 10:33 -0800, Joe Votour wrote:
<snip>
> 
> > Also, depending on the hardware revision of the
> XBox
> > that you get, you might get a noisy fan...  I've
> found
> > a way to fix that, I'm just no so sure I want to
> get
> > that drastic with the hardware mods yet.  ;)
> 
> Hmmm... I'm interested... My crystal x-box is too
> noisy. I'm planning on
> slowing down the fan a bit, but if anyone knows a
> better way.
> 
If you flash a modified BIOS, you can change the fan
speed of the rear fan (although I've read that the
regular XBox BIOS already sets it to 20% of normal
speed).  However, I found that the GPU fan in the 1.0
XBox (which I have) is the noisy one by far, I just
didn't realize how noisy until I tried yet another
hardware mod this afternoon.  I followed the
instructions here:
http://www.jacobmp.dk/guides/silence/silence.php
(Basically, you replace the GPU fan/heatsink with a
slightly larger heatsink that dissipates the heat
better.)

You take your own risks when following these
instructions.  :)  But thus far, my temperatures
aren't really spiking up any, and it is much, much
quieter!  I won't really know until I do a marathon of
gaming and MythTV usage how well it holds up.

> > If you just want a portable media player and don't
> > care about the PVR functionality (which is really
> > MythTV's bread and butter), then check out XBox
> Media
> > Center.  From the screenshots and text I've seen
> about
> > it, it's supposedly very good at being a media
> player.
> >  It will, however, be somewhat difficult to find a
> > binary download, although the source code is
> freely
> > available (XBMC uses the Microsoft XBox SDK, which
> is
> > not legal to possess, unless you are a licensed
> > Microsoft XBox developer, due to copyright).
> 
> Actually, that's not all that hard (using edonkey or
> the likes, or
> reading the faq at xbins.org).
> 
True, there are ways, after all, I was able to get
"alternate" software.  I'd rather leave it to the
reader as an exercise to find the stuff, rather than
put links to potentially copyright infringing software
within the MythTV mailing lists.  After all, we have
an image to uphold here.  :)

> I've used xbmc for a while, and it works very well. 
> There's even work going on in the xbmx forums for a
> python script that
> can be used as a (limited) MythTV front-end.
> It allows one to schedule recordings, browse
> existing recordings, and
> even view them, as long as their in myth's mpeg2
> format. (no mplayer
> support for the mpeg1 and mpeg4 myth formats,
> unfortunately.)
> And lately, people have even been working on getting
> live tv working!
> (with the same mpeg2 caveat, so I haven't seen
> this...)
> 
This would be absolutely awesome.  Perhaps a stripped
down MythTV GUI that offers options that only really
apply to the XBox, such as watching TV/recordings,
DVD/VCD playback (if VCDs even work in your XBox,
CD-Rs won't in mine, for instance).  I use dual
PVR-250's, so I don't have a problem with the MPEG-2
restriction (although not everybody is equally
blessed).

One of these days I plan on making a stripped down
theme that still looks good, but helps out with memory
usage on the XBox for MythTV...  Well, I keep telling
myself that, maybe I'll get to it one of these days. 
;)  In the case of the XBox, MythTV without Linux
would really be good, if nothing else, but to save
some RAM and maybe eliminate the hard drive swapping
activity.  But, unfortunately, a huge task.

> have fun,
> 
> Wouter
> 
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>
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> 



		
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