> It's 2004 and I still haven't a DVD player. Since the XBox is now priced 150
> euro, I thought I could buy one, add a modchip, install some software and make
> it a media player (with the bonus that I could play emulators and some game on
> the TV).

I also wanted a dvd player for my tv and decided to buy an xbox, good decision. I only had my pc with tv-out to play those, I wanted something that didn't involved my pc.


> - Are the latest hardware revisions moddable? Should I look for an older
> revision?

Yes they are moddable. Although, you can't use a solderless solution with the latest rev - 1.6. The earlier ones are pretty easy with the solderless solution.

> - What modchip should I buy? I'd like to be region-free, both game- and
> dvd-wise. I can mod it myself, as far as basic soldering is involved.

Ah the big question. It really depends, almost all, if not all, the latest chips have all these options. I'd really recommend you to get a 4th generation chip. I personnaly have a Xenium Ice, I can put 4 different bios in it, can upload them easily via the new web interface in the latest xenium os, it has nice leds (woohoo), and there's kits that comes with a usb plug for your xbox. Oh and I love the instant boot feature, I press power and voilą, no loading the xenium os. And of course, it's compatible with xbox live . It has a nice cheap price too.


> - Is it possible to have *smooth* DVD playback on the XBox?

Yes, there's a few players out there with smooth playback that use hardware decoding. The dvd player that microsoft is trying to sell you doesn't even support progressive scan, however, the ones the scene made do support progressive scan, sometimes with a few changes to an ini file.


> - If so, is there some kind of remote to control playback?

The microsoft player is simply a remote you buy, just like a tv remote control. You have to rely on your xbox controller for home made players, although I think I've seen a new one that supports the ms remote control, but I'm not sure.


> - What about *smooth* DivX / XviD playback? What about compatibility? Will all
> the movies play? Just some?

That's the thing I prefer about the xbox, it's as smooth as on your pc. Compatibility? divx, xvid, 3ivx, name it! They all play without a problem. You can even access the files on your pc and play them via your network, gotta love file sharing in windows.


> - Which are the available media decoders for the XBox?

xbox media center, the only one I'd recommend, hell I don't know if anyone tried to do better than this one, it's perfect, except for dvd movies, it seems to play them via software decoding, you'll get glitches from time to time. So use it for everything else than dvd movies. It even supports shoutcast radio stations, and you can save the stream on your xbox hd (way cool). You can also check xbox and movie trailers via the xbox media center!


> - Where can I get emulators? Was MAMEX abandoned?

The last time I checked mameox, mame .84 b3 just got released a few days before, and I saw mameox .84 b3, so eh, I don't think it's abandoned. As for where to get them, that's another thing, see next question.

> - Where can I get all the needed software? For free of course.

See, there's a great deal of home made software that were made using the xbox xdk, making those illegal, so you won't see any serious websites having these. However, you know the other places to find these, I won't list them here of course, they're pretty easy to find, when you know where the community hangs.

So there you have it, hope it helps.


Moon the world