Robert Heron and Roger Chan are back with Team Blackbolt's 360 Blad Skin on top of XBMC on a modded Xbox.
They show off some of the new python scripts including the youtube one and revision3 one.
Since What's Up With Xbox Media Center has not had an update for quite some time, I thought it would be a good time to talk about some of the new developments. Some of Xbmc has been ported to the PC to make it easier to build skins and python scripts. People have been asking if a full port will be next but the creators have denied this for now.
- It's not a full port, nor is it planned to be a full port. We are not planning on abandoning the xbox anytime soon.
- With that said, most stuff works – at least stuff useful for the target audience.
- It's designed primarily for skinners and python developers who can test out their skins and scripts without having to transfer everything to the xbox.
Basically, it's a simple port of the majority of XBMC. This includes the entire gui system, file listing, some of the filesystem code (eg local, database files, zip + rar etc.), very simple audio playback, slideshows, python scripts and so on. Video playback is not supported, nor are screensavers or visualisations (basically anything that was relying on the xbox version of directx).
And last up there was a interesting interview with a series of xbox mediacentre coders.
I'm still of the mind that Xbmc should be ported to the PC and Apple operating systems. I'm hoping with the new XNA game studio express kit it might be possible to build XBMC for the Xbox 360. But actually with the PS3's somewhat openness for Linux it looks much more likely that Xbmc 3.0 will make a home there. Microsoft are not keen on Sony's new move.
When asked about Sony's efforts to create a homebrew culture by allowing Linux to be installed freely on the PlayStation 3 (albeit without access to the RSX graphics chipset, among other restrictions), Mitchell commented: “On the one hand I've got to commend them for moving up their platform there, but we really don't view what Sony and PlayStation 3 and particularly the Linux solution that they are making available – we don't really view that as a competitive offering or trying to do something in the same vein.”
