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Reasoning why I just installed Windows Home Server

 

Following on from the last post I decided to chill this weekend by sorting out my media server. I've been holding off on installing Microsoft Windows Home Server because I've been thinking I could install something like FreeNas or build a Ubuntu box with the same elements of Windows Home Server.

Well so first up, FreeNas is cool but its for NAS type setups not a Home Sever! Home server at the moment doesn't do much more than FreeNas but this will change soon. I then looked around for someone who had put together a NAS type system and added a backup system like Bacula into a simple distro. As usual I was asking far too much and instead I found others looking for the same. It started with George Ou's review of Windows Home Server on ZD net,

Last year whenever people asked me what to use when building a home server, I’d tell them to use Linux or FreeBSD because there was absolutely nothing from Microsoft under a few hundred dollars.  There was no way anyone would spend a few hundred dollars on Windows Small Business Server so Linux or FreeBSD was their only choice.  With Windows Home Server on the horizon, Microsoft might just steal a piece of the home server appliance market from Linux.

The typical consumer isn’t ready to become a Windows or Linux server administrator but many consumers find themselves in the position of being the de facto home IT administrator.  Windows Home Server is Microsoft’s server entry in to the home network and it tries to solve two key problems in the modern multi-PC home – storage sprawl and PC backup.  It has the potential to radically change the mid- to high-end home NAS market because it offers some key features such as:

  • Fast cluster-level incremental backups equivalent to full backups
  • Bare-metal client recovery (restore a PC with a bare hard drive)
  • Single instance storage (duplicate files don’t waste space)
  • Previous versions (file journaling with Volume Shadow Copy Services)
  • Remote Desktop gateway (multiple PC support)
  • Media streaming with Windows Media Connect
  • Print server with auto-driver loading

So for myself effortless backup, media storage and print server are the most important right now. And today I pulled down my old dell box (a dual Xeon Pentium 3 box. I was shocked when it started to actually install because the requirements are a 1ghz chip.

But Back to Linux again, a guy (Xwindowjunkie) after reading George Ou's review spits blood and challenges the Linux world to create a distro to rival home sever.

A recent posting by George Ou about Windows Home Server brought out a lot of responses from the Linux community. I think that Microsoft deserves to get some competition.

Here's the challenge:

There are a lot of Linux experts on this site. I challenge them to come up with a list of applications that work the best for each of the given functions found in Windows Home Server. Show me a list of something that you guys think will beat or meet Windows Home Server, that will work for a lot of people and that you think can be easily reproduced. I will build it and give you an honest appraisal of my experiences while doing it. I will document it well enough that others less skilled will be able to do it. I'd like to be

able to release it as a DIY compilation distro if possible.

Now the kicker, on the EXACT same hardware I will install the WHS Beta or release RC1, assuming I can get it, and test it in comparison on the basis of a USER, not a technician or a systems engineer.

There are a few restrictions I place on this challenge:
1) Do not expect me to compile Gentoo or Debian. I want to get this all done within a few weeks, OK?
2) The install packages must be applications that can be downloaded from the distro's website or mirror. I will not start with somebody's forked code.
3) The applications need to be compatible with the Linux distro and the desktop. I am partial to Gnome but I'm willing to use KDE.
4) If you expect me to script something or run a script, show me an example or give me the script. (This runs counter to item 2 above but I realize Linux runs on scripts). It would be nice if the script has enough commentary to let me know what was going on in it. I reserve the right to dump something I'm suspicious of.
5) If the application mix doesn't work, be prepared to get bad Linux PR from the blog. I will not attack or flame anybody personally as a part of this challenge but the distributions and/or applications are fair game. If they're bad they need to be flamed.

I will take a complete list of Linux applications from an individual or a committee of no more than 3 people and a suggested Linux distro to put it on. I will build it on a 2.6 Ghz Celeron system with 512 MB Ram on a stock DELL with a CDRW or a DVD +/- RW drive. Since this system will NOT be playing the DVD or video, we'll live with the on-board SVGA chip and the optical drive is there for software install only. (Its a server remember?) I have my choice of hard drives.

Then I will report back blog style what it took me to do it. I'll keep track of the hours and what and where I had to find my manuals/documentation to make it work. The idea is to develop a “distro” that can duplicate the published capabilities of the WHS minus the bare metal recovery. I can use Ghost as well as anybody.

Wow now thats a challenge and a half. But he right there should already be a distro which does this but there certainly isn't. Even I can name a couple of single application servers which you could pull together to make up a lot of the features for home server. Isn't a home server almost the perfect territory for ubuntu, redhat and suse linux? Hey maybe Microsoft actually out innovated everyone and created a product which is actually ground breaking?

Going back to my install, currently its up and running took ages to install but it did do a internet update to the latest rc from my beta 2 disc. But now half a day later, its working perfectly.

I have 2 IDE hard drives and 1 SCSI hard drive in it currently, and as you'd expect it made them all into one large hard drive of roughly 280gig. I still have room for one more 3.5 hard drive on the IDE bus or a few on the SCSI bus. I also spent about 6 hours copying all the stuff from multiple machines to the home server. The shares are all working and even XBMC find the home server as a Universial Plug and Play device which I can streaming media from. I've not tried this with the Nokia N80 yet, but it should work the same way once its on the local network.

The only thing which I need to do now is get backups working, but there some kind of software I need to install on each machine which is backed up. This is isn't like Bacula but I'm sure Microsoft made it

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would they let fonejacker on national tv in america?

There is something about fonejacker which is pretty cool. I was thinking would they ever let such a show go out on national tv (non subscription cable or sat) in america? Are we teaching our children how to fonejack? Maybe but better that robbing top boxes off scooters.

If you have no idea what i'm talking about check out these youtube videos ripped from the show.

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Playstation 3 price cut

So Sony finally start to officially cut the price of the Playstation 3. I've seen so many deals around the web of playstation 3 for about 70 dollars off when you buy at least 3 games but this is much better news. Its still outside of my price range but its put the debate between the Xbox 360 and PS3 back into focus.

I'm hoping Sony take their cuts seriously and drop the European PS3 down by 125 pounds in the next few weeks.

I was asking George today if he knew anyone who had put linux on their PS3. He seemed to have heard about someone who also put MythTV on top of that. He mentioned MythTV front end and back end, which I'm going to check out to see if the front end is anywhere close to xbmc. Who knows maybe I might connect a basic PC to my TV and then later on upgrade that to a PS3? Who knows…

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Apple TV hacks are making the box more attractive

Apple Store

Since Apple talked about the Apple TV or iTV I've been listening, but was deeply disappointed with the final product. When I was over in San Francisco I did pop into the Apple store to check out the Apple TV which I heard just launched recently. But at 299 dollars or 165 pounds I decided it was too much for essentially a iTunes extender.

That was before I came back to the UK, I started reading about the hacking which has been going on already. AppleTV hacks seems to be leading the way right now, and there certainly making the machine much more attractive to someone like me.

You can now play non-itunes videos via VLC, SSH, Apache, Asterisk and other services on the box. Joost is working on it (which even the Xbox couldn't do) and yeah a last a RSS reader.

The backdoor claim is a little worrying but actually think this is a repair script or something. Theres also lots of talk that the Apple TV isn't that powerful and can't play back 720p H.264 content let alone 1080p content. Now this may not sound like the end of the world, but actually for future proofing and remember Apple are selling this as a HD device. This could be bad news. I already own a couple of 1080p Xvids which simply won't play on my xbox right now but would play on a Xbox 360 and Playstation3.

So yeah, I'm considering the Apple TV for my replacement to the Xbox Media Centre if it can do most of the things XBMC can do. Such as stream straight from YouTube, connect to shoutcast, play all media, read from SMB and other file systems. Someone elses been thinking the same thing.

While in Columbus, we happened to pass through the Apple store, and I got my first look at the AppleTV. A slick piece of kit, to be sure, and one you'll be able to read all about at Ars Technica shortly, but not quite suited to my needs.  I want to be able to watch DivX files on my TV; it's the only way to keep up with TV from back home, and legally, too (thanks, Auntie Beeb!). Apple's beautiful little box can't help me out, but give my wife a used XBox, and 20 minutes later an XBMC media center is the solution to my needs.  Plus, it can stream BBC Radio 4 to boot! Sure, you can always open up and hack an AppleTV, but you do so at the cost of your warranty.  With secondhand hardware that's cheap, that's not a concern.

The arrival of our XBox 360 meant that our first XBox could be repurposed as the living-room media server. Now I don't need to keep plugging my PowerBook into the bedroom TV set, and Elle can pipe her music collection from her PC to her heart's content. It's not the sort of thing I'd suggest for my parents or anyone else of a technophobic nature, but if the AppleTV won't do what you want or if you prefer rolling your own, pop down to your local used video game emporium and see what's lurking in their stockroom. Apple TV certainly has its uses, but the original Xbox is easier to hack, cheaper, and has much more support from the hacking community right now than Apple TV. If you've not looked into XBMC, it's absolutely worth it. Depending on your needs, it may be a far superior option to Apple TV, or any of the other PC-to-TV devices out there today. 

Some people are looking at it slightly differently. Apple TV on Xbox anyone? And more here. Oh and theres a nice discussion about maybe porting XBMC to the mac.

 

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Removing iTunes and going back to Winamp

I'm so done with iTunes. The restrictions and lack of interoperability with anything else non Apple was simply driving me nuts. The last straw for me was when I upgraded to iTunes7, Xbox media centre and iTunes 6 wouldn't talk to it any longer. I'm sorry but this is so wrong. And lets be honest, the only major difference in iTunes7 (if your not buying into their drm) is the cover art view. I couldn't give a crap about the ability to play downloaded films from the iTunes store.

Anyway, the reasons I moved to iTunes boil down to 2 things.

  • Zeroconf (bonjour) sharing
  • Advanced playlist management

Well both SongBird and Winamp support advanced playlist management. Actually the Winamp's media library has a custom query language where you can write queries well beyond the iTunes smart playlist feature. We're not quite talking SQL or Xpath but good enough for any purpose you care to throw at it. On the sharing front, Winamp just got winamp remote which I've not played with yet, but looks like you can control and stream winamp to any other winamp or browser window. This seems to work anywhere in the world
and although it doesn't use Zeroconf, sounds like a replacement for iTunes sharing.

Some other thoughts behind switching. Although AOL now own Winamp, they haven't restricted the plugins, skins etc which have been built. There are thousands of plugins which control every aspect of Winamp. The same is certainly not true of iTunes. I found myself a very nice plugin to map my global laptop multimedia keys to winamp's controls (who ever thought z to b would be a good idea, needs serious help), a bluetooth plugin which allows me to control winamp from my phone and in the lastest version of winamp
the ability to manage portable devices.

This feature alone is amazing, for example try managing a Creative Zen with iTunes. It just doesn't work because Apple wants you to buy a iPod not a Zen. My reply is, fine, then i'll stop using your software, Apple. Winamp now supports out of the box (latest version 5.3.2) The iPod, Creative devices, Playsforsure devices, USB devices and Activesync. The last two are the most exciting for myself. Now I can copy the lastest downloaded podcasts straight on to my SD card using Autofill or/and sync media with my mobile
phone. This is what I've been dying to do for a long time. Can I also point out iTunes miniplayer uses almost the same on screen real-estate as Winamp. And has more ability to connect to online services like Shoutcast and Pandora.

The point of all this is, Apple's innovation for iTunes has been mainly good for those who use the iTunes music store and a iPod device. I don't fit and will be deinstalling iTunes from all my computers from now on. Now if I can just get Winamp talking to the Xbox directly, i'll be completely set.

Oh you might have seen I mentioned Songbird. I love songbird but its not mature enough for general use. At some points while using it last week, it was using over 300meg of physical memory plus the smart playlist feature is incomplete. On the plus side the miniplayer is super slick using only the space of a toolbar (I found a winamp skin which is the same). I'll certainly keep an eye on it in the future but for now Winamp beats iTunes, Songbird and Windows Media Player.

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The TV watching generations finally catergorised

TV on loose stones and bricks

I've been thinking about this for quite some time but never really put it down anywhere till I wrote this email on the backstage mailing list. Yes I also hate catergorisations like this because they group people in too tight a category but this is only a thought.

  • 1st generation – Mainstream

    Tend to be stuck to the Broadcast Schedule, will get home to watch a certain thing, will see lots of adverts etc. Will tend to have Cable, Sky (satellite) or Freeview (over the air broadcast). Uses a video recorder to catch up on stuff missed but prefer to watch stuff live
  • 2nd generation – Tape it for later

    They tend to watch live events, browse TV and tape/vivo/record everything they watch a lot (such as shows). They skip adverts but still see them. Still aware of the Broadcast Schedule and subscribes to Sky or Cable. Uses the internet a bit for web 1.0 type applications (email, browsing). May buy shows legally from the itunes store.
  • 3rd generation – On Demand

    Completely off the schedule, no idea which channel things come from or what time there on. Rely on friends recommendations or social networks to tell what's on. Owns a laptop or has a computer device (such as xbox) setup with there TV. Tends not to browse TV and does not subscribe to Sky or Cable but watches a lot of TV content, sometimes more that previous generations. Keeps up with a lot of American shows. Watches shorter TV clips and amateur and pro-amateur media online.
  • 4th generation – There is no spoon

    Same as 3rd generation but sees all content as remixable and shareable. Can't understand why mixing content is a bad thing. Uploads content to online sites and shares a lot for social capital. May not even own a TV but has access to a large connection (broadband). Uses Torrent sites including private trackers. May watch a equal amount of pro-amateur/amateur content with pro TV content and may have a podcast/videocast of their own. Owns at least 2 computers, a mobile device which can play video, maybe a console
    and has a home network of somekind. May still buy content legally but is frustrated by

    drm

    and the lack of content.

These are my own views and should not be taken as the views of the BBC or factually correct.

Notes

Obviously there's stages between the generations (nothing is black and white like that), like someone who watches everything on demand but also tunes in for Torchwood every week (what day was it on again?).

I expect people will slowly climb through the generations and this will take some time. For example their are a lot people who can be categorised in the 1st Generation but there are also a growing 2nd generation which at some point will make up the mainstream. I also suspect the changes will happen faster as time moves on. So you won't get the 100 years of 1st generation TV watching with 2nd generation tivoing. Also 3rd and 4th generation watching are much closely aligned. Someone once asked me what happens after
the 4th, I usually laugh and say We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there… – Alan Turing.

The comments/feedback section is open, let me know what you think of it all.

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Linux and homebrew on Xbox 360 and PS3?

So while I was looking around the 23C3 conference notes I found some links to videos about a possible Xbox 360 hacking. The video which can only be viewed on Youtube now seems odd and underwelming. But if its true means you can now using some exploit in the game King Kong run unsigned code on a Xbox
360. Engadget also had a piece about the whole thing.

One of the best things about the original Microsoft Xbox console wasn't the fact that it ran games. Oh no, for many, the best part was the ease at which that low-cost / high-powered device could be hacked to run all kinds of Homebrew applications including a damn fine media center. Now, in a tantalizing bit of showmanship put on by a cloaked hacker at the 23C3 Hacker Congress in Germany, a modified Xbox 360 (note attached circuit board) is shown loading Ubisoft's King Kong game just before displaying a trio of
dancing 360, Tux, and (old) MacOS logos with the words “coming soon.” Could this be a true exploit of King Kong's unchecked and unsigned vector shaders? We don't know, but the ability to execute any kind of code is certainly progress.

This is all fitting because Sony have just released a Yellow Dog linux build for PS3. Engadget once again has the right idea.

We're still holding out until Ubuntu gives us the love we crave. Well, that or until the OSS community get started on making an XBMC-like PS3 interface, since Sony believes all of your home's media should live on the PS3, and not on a media server.

Hey and no better time, XBMC is long from dead. Its been partly ported over to x86 for skinners and developers and this new skin from PDM called clearly shows the pure maturity of the XBMC platform.

And in related news I read Microsoft are releasing another version of the Xbox 360 code named Zephyr (1st one was called Xenon), this time with cooler processor, 120gig HD, HDMI and 1080p support out of the box. Sounds interesting but not as important as the previous news.

If the hack is true, it looks like I'll have to decide between the PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime this year. Maybe it will be a race to see who gets XBMC on it first.

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Whats up with the Xbox Mediacentre 2.1?


Click To Play

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.

  1. 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.

  2. With that said, most stuff works – at least stuff useful for the target audience.

  3. 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.”

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Digital Music is not a loaf of bread which can be stolen

In a long series of things which I've been meaning to blog for a while. I saw this on Torrent Freak.

Singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy is part of the growing group of artists that understands that there’s more to music than selling pieces of plastic, and suing your fans.

In an interview with Wired Magazine (from a while ago), Tweedy said:

A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that’s it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it’s just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.

Jeff Tweedy is the leadsinger of the popular band Wilco, that won two Grammy’s back in 2005. He doesn’t consider copying and remixing as evil, but as a way to facilitate creativity.

On the official website of the band from Chicago we even see a link to the BitTorrent tracker where Wilco fans actively share high quality recordings.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator. People who look at music as commerce don’t understand that. They are talking about pieces of plastic they want to sell, packages of intellectual property. I’m not interested in selling pieces of plastic.

For those who are interested in the copyright debate, here’s a presentation by Larry Lessig titled “Who owns Culture“. The presentation served as an intro to conversation about p2p and free culture by Jeff Tweedy and Larry Lessig (audio link).

This all comes at a time when EMI music CEO and Chairman Alain Levy tells an audience at the London Business School that the CD as we know it is dead. And to top that, the IPPR released a study on why copying of CDs and DVDs for personal use should be legalised.

IPPR Deputy Director Ian Kearns said:

Millions of Britons copy CDs onto their home computers breaking copyright laws everyday. British copyright law is out of date with consumer practices and technological progress.

A recent survey among 2135 British adult consumers shows that most people don’t even know that they are breaking the law. Of all the people that participated in the survey, 55% said that they have ever copied CDs onto other equipment. However, only 19% actually knows that this behavior is illegal.

Well what more can you say? Three interesting stories in the downfall or change of the music industry.

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The current state of Tape it off the internet.com

So TechCrunch UK did a post covering Tape it off the internet. The review was interesting but I have problems with Tape it off the internet in its current state.

So first up adding a new show is simply a nightmare. I wanted to add the new BBC conspirancy Drama, The state within. But I couldn't find where you do this. Sheila also had this problem but she actual found it once. Now it seems the option is gone for now. My next problem is the RSS Bit Torrent support. It does work but I don't want to see the wrong episodes. Yes if you use your brain you can work out the correct one, but ideally tioti would automaticlly work out whats correct and whats not. My Bit torrent client does this with a simple Regular Expression, it would be great if tioti would also do this.

My other concerns are centred around the user interface. Its using so much ajax calls it actually becomes very ignoying. Unlike Flickr, it seems you have to do one thing then wait for the little red staus box to change before doing anything else. I'm sorry but if your going to use Ajax, use it so I can change many things at once. You might as well use page reloads if your not going to allow multiples changes at once. The user experience of Tioti is also really weird. It doesn't seem to make sense. For example on the episode guide why can't I also change the rating for the show here and maybe start a discussion? I think the episode guide should also be the centre of the experience. From there you should be able to download, discuss and rate a show. Then click on a season and get simlar behaviors. How cool would it be to click one button and get a rss feed for all the previous shows? It would certainly help people catch up.

I've posted up some screenshots with comments to cover the rest of my complaints regarding the UI

The social side of things is also bizarre. You can do the usual things like share a show with a friend and get into groups and discuss the show (like your going to do that in the closed walls of tioti instead of the real fan bases like lostcast). But you can't share episodes with friends, which should be fine because your only sharing the torrent file or link to the torrent file. Which is also where things fall down. See Tioti will recommend torrents but what I'm actually interested in is torrents which my friends have downloaded or are currently downloading.

So my recommedation for Tioti is a plugin for Azureus like how last.fm works now. I mean if you can get a plugin for most of the top torrent programmes then you'll be away. I mean imagine if Sheila started seeding episode 7 of Heroes and I'm on her friends and heroes list. Then Tioti could alert me to that fact and link me to the same torrent file. This fits in with the whole Azureus 2.5 share with a friend option and Tribler social p2p system.

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What is going on at YouTube?

I got two of these today…

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Comedy Central Property claiming that this material is infringing:

Future Shock with Samantha Bee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJrTlUv6EaA
Lewis Black on Advertising: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSQxPH-YxM

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, to be effective it must be a written communication provided to our designated agent that includes substantially the following (please consult your legal counsel or see 17 U.S.C. Section 512(g)(3) to confirm these requirements):

A) A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber.

B) Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.

C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

D) The subscriber's name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriberis address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

Such written notice should be sent to our designated agent as follows:

DMCA Complaints
YouTube, Inc.
1000 Cherry Ave.
Second Floor
San Bruno, CA 94066
Email: copyright@youtube.com

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 YouTube, Inc.

Yes YouTube got told to take down all the Daily Show, South Park and Colbert Report by Viacom representing Comedy Central. But now I'm hearing Viacom have changed there minds and has allowed the material to go back up. Crazy!

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Vib Ribbon, one of the weirdest games you’ve never played

Vib Ribbon case cover

Trust me this game is nuts. On Monday I went to the games you should have played event at zero one in soho. I filmed most of it and it came up with very interesting games including Vib Ribbon which I've never ever heard of till that day. Remind me to look for a decent PSX emulator for my PC or Xbox one day soon. I'm glad these emulators exist and there mature enough to run these games. Otherwise such games would sink into the sands of time forever. What I find amazing about Vib Ribbon is the load into ram feature, hence the cut back on graphics I guess

Vib-Ribbon is a rhythm video game in the style of PaRappa the Rapper and Amplitude. The game was unique in that the software loaded into RAM, letting the player use any music CD to play against — the game could generate a unique level from any track. The graphics for Vib-Ribbon are simple, consisting of straight, white vector lines forming crude, angular drawings of the level and the character, a female rabbit named Vibri

Other games worth mentioning include my favorate IQ or as I prefer Kuruchi. Then Rez for having one of the best levels in gaming history. Oh and this moroccas game which needs no real introduction.

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Xbox mediacenter hits 2.0

Almost excited about XBMC 2.0

I just upgraded my xboxes to the latest version. Xbmc keeps growing from strength to strength.

Team-XBMC and The XBMC Project is proud to announce the release of XboxMediaCenter 2.0.0. XBox Media Center (XBMC) is an award winning, free and open source media player for the Xbox™ game-console. The XboxMediaCenter 2.0.0 point-release source code has now been set in our CVS. We consider that the current code in the XBMC CVS is as stable as a point-release should be. All XBMC users are highly encouraged to upgrade to this stable Xbox Media Center 2.0.0 point-release. Remember, the XBMC source code needs to be compiled with the XDK, and requires a modded Xbox to run. Our thanks goes out to everyone who has tested, reported bugs, and helped fix them in order to make this release possible.

There are many new features and functions that have been introduced since the 1.1.0 point-release, that we cannot list them all here. A few that are especially worth mentioning are; the enhanced GUI/skin-engine, the Project Mayhem III skin, DVD-Video menu/navigation support (with ISO/IMG image parsing), RAR/ZIP archive parsing, a new audio/music-player (PAPlayer) with crossfade, gapless playback and ReplayGain support, Karaoke CDG-file display, Xored Trainer Engine (gaming-cheats), XLink Kai (online-gaming) front-end, iTunes 6.x DAAP and UPnP-clients, and two surprise features; read-only support for FAT12/16/32 formatted USB Mass Storage Devices up to 4GB in size, and a brand new “skinnable” 3D visualizer.

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