Oh my god is all i can say… The legacy of the xbox is true. I’m currently watching a divx film on the xbox which actually exists on a shared folder on my workstation. It plays flawlessly, allowing me to skip around the content with no noticable jumping or slow down using xbox mediaplayer. I updated from mediaplayer 2.0 to 2.3 which is the current realease mainly for better support of smb aka windows shares. But theres lots of other things which this mediaplayer does..
It links to imdb for extra information using the nfo files you usually get with downloads. More on this though, because I was trying to work out why some worked and some didnt. Finally worked out that the nfo file needs to contain the link of course but it has to be formated in special way.http://us.imdb.com/Title?0234215 is a correct url, http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0234215 and http://www.imdb.com/Title?0234215 is not. http://uk.imdb.com/Details?0234215 – also throws an error when parsed by the mediaplayer.I now create my own nfo files using the correct url and found you also need to add a character return after the url otherwise it doesnt work as expected, your’ll be left with no details just the link and no errors.It doesnt have to be anything special just a text file named something *.nfo with a correct url string and a character return – easy.
Also it has a built in tv guide now, thanks to some really clever programming by someone. Its actually part of another sourceforge project called xmltv which basicly grabs the tv listings for differenet channels from multiple sources and combine them into one xml file
17/04/2003 1100 – How quick things change
Check me out, less than a week I was thinking of getting a chipped xbox and moving or buying a new wireless access point. Now I’ve got a chipped xbox for a the same price as a new one. By the way Microsoft dropped the price of xboxes to take out the gamecube. So 130 pounds will now get you a new xbox with no games and one controller, good business move on microsoft’s part – cant believe they sold for 300 pounds when first launched, and i sweared not to buy one because it was the same as my pc. Now thats the reason why I’m getting one.
Anyway, basicly the xbox has already been chipped / modded and has evolution dash board, media player and some other stuff on there already. So it should be a simple case of plug it in and away I go. Already plugged the optical cable into the digital processor and got the ethernet connection ready. It looks like I may have to switch scart sockets with the playstation everytime I want to use it because my television only has one scart socket that can produce a rgb signal. Luckly I got a two scart switcher box, but its a little crap and already has svideo input from the computer in the other socket. Seeing how the xbox will become the main movie player, I will disconnect the svideo for now. More details and maybe another log when I actually get the xbox today.
On the wireless side of things. I moved the access point to a much better location in terms of spread of the signal, the middle of the house. I was outside in the garden getting a pretty good wireless connection the other day (its nice and sunny at this moment in the uk) and I’ve taken to the garden alot more for just checking email and the like, instant messager on the ipaq outside in the garden is also a favourate of mine. Still thinking of getting the 802.11g access point on the next pay cheque to really cover the whole house and garden with a nice even spread of wireless. Should speak to neighbours about using my bandwidth.
