Everyone usually assumes I’m a huge gamer because I’m a Web-guy. The truth is, I never got into console gaming when I was a kid (mostly because my parents had some problem with it and would only get it for my bro and I if we were home sick). When I was just-finished university and job hunting — hell, when I was in university — I got really into Quake 3 (pretty much had to: we were on a wicked-fast LAN) and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (it was free and we could shoot Nazis) but after that, I never really got into it again.
So when I traded Mike for an original Xbox, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Would I descend into the gaming scene, develop bleeched white skin, and survive on slimjims and coke?
Turns out, no, no I did not. In my modern-living, smallish-condo phase, I packed up the Xbox within a day and stored it under my sink. However, having been a long-time admirer of the DIY media center projects (Mythtv in particular — that I have tried to install dozens of times unsuccessfully), I knew that one day I would have to try installing Xbox Media Center (the free, opensource media center for the original Xbox).
Six months later (which happens to have been last Wednesday), with WhyYouShould far enough along that I could ignore it for a while, I decided to check out what was involved with converting my unmodded Xbox to an Xbox Media Center. Everyone seems to link to this walk-through for “How to Go from Xbox to Xbox Media Center in 30 minutes”. The instructions seemed simple enough, and for once, I had all the components I needed except a copy of MechAssault that I found in a store’s discount bin for $4.99. I decided to give it a shot.
The walk-through covers all the details of what I did, but amazingly, within 3 hours I went from an unmodded Xbox to an Xbox Media Center. That includes downloading all the software images over Bittorrent and about 45 minutes of messing around with my Action Replay mounted in Parallels. Not bad at all!
With some glee, I booted up my Xbox Media Center for the first time…