xbox as sage client?

[ravenray]

I'm just wondering has anybody done this yet? I would love the idea of having my xbox as a htpc client.

[AJ Bertelson]

you would have to mod and then you wouldn't be able to play Hl2

[ravenray]

AJ, I know I'll have to mod it. That's not a problem for me as I done it couple times for my friends. I will still be able to play Halo2, just as long I can switch over to the original bios versus the modchip bios. I'm just wondering if anybody has modded there's to run as a client for sage. Why buy another system when I can just use my xbox to interact with sage.

[lovingHDTV]

I would love to have this as a solution. I too would not mind modding the XBOX to get it. Just slide the switch and viola SageClient, or Halo 2. I could then get rid of my client box

[mikejaner]

First of all you would have to run a windows OS. As far as I know, you might be able to get Win98 running with BOCHS, but no 2k or XP. Since the Xbox only has 64 megs of ram you would be hard pressed to get winows 98 running with Sage on top. In short not really.

[salsbst]

Can't you add ram to the Xbox?

[lovingHDTV]

I guess another question would be: Can Frey Technologies release a client sign as an XBox app? Probably not, as I believe MS wants a cut of everything run on the XBox.

Too bad to have all that AV capable hardware sitting and not being used as much as it could be.

[ErsatzTom]

Instead of trying to get the client to run natively on the xbox, someone could tackle it the same way that the MVP client was written, through a plugin. Just a thought.

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[lovingHDTV]

Thats a good idea. Even if the plugin was written to support linux, you can easily run linux on the Xbox. It would also work for all those users out there that use Linux.

Now if only I knew more about Java and C then how to spell them I'd help out

[meekell]

Instead of trying to get the client to run natively on the xbox, someone could tackle it the same way that the MVP client was written, through a plugin. Just a thought.

Great idea! I would love to see this. I've modded a couple boxes already and with the declining price, small size, and easy connectivity this would be a great solution.
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Children Prilosec

[mikejaner]

The problem with that is in the Linux support. The only current way to get Linux with any GUI running is via XWindows which eats much ram and cpu. They have the MythTV client running, but not very well. I wouldn't put too much hope into this and just let the xbox do games. XBMC is really nice though, you could use it to playback anything on sage. I would see if you could get those guys to maybe write a plugin for Sage. I am not sure what that runs on, but it uses only a few megs of ram.

[ravenray]

Boy, I didn't think this many people was interested in this thought also. I thought about running xbmc and wonder if there was a plugin to run sage. So I take it there isn't a plugin then. Hopefully someone has some more thoughts on this. I really would love this idea to come to life.

[AirJunky]

I've suggested this in a few different forums in the past & the best I've come up with is that if you install XBMC on a modded Xbox, you can play the mpeg2 files that Sage creates. But you wouldn't be able to delete them or schedule recordings.

I've called around in my home town & it would be about $75 to have it done so that it could accept another hard drive, have XBMC loaded & be able to run Halo2 on Xbox Live. Pretty damn tempting. But I've never talked to anyone who has actually done it. I've considered taking an mpeg2 file over to see if it plays OK but have yet to do it.

It's too bad MS has to be such hard-asses with their propriatary files & systems.

[falchulk]

You dont have to pay anything. There are software only hacks that require no mod chip and do the same thing.

[rsagetv99]

I would be willing to beta test any software that is written for a modded Xbox. I have a friend who has one, and he would loan it to me for this purpose.

I think the way to approach it is exactly like the MVP, I mean the hardware in the XBOX has to be more robust than that of the MVP...

[ravenray]

rsagetv99, That's what I was thinking also. Doesn't the xbox also already have a mpeg2 decoder chip built-in also?

[AirJunky]

Yes it does, Ravenray. There is nothing hardware-wise that is preventing the Xbox from being a client. It's Microsoft that requires developers jump thru infinite hoops to be an authorized developer. MS has a client for their own MCE called the Xbox Media Center Extender, but it will only read MCE files (some kind of mpeg2 with a propratary wrapper). If someone were able to create a similar Xbox client that had the appropriate "hooks" to Sage or BTV, it would have to be very underground as I'm sure Frey (or most other devs) are not interested in fraternizing with MS on an app that would have such a small distribution.

[ravenray]

AirJunky, so with the Xbox Media Center Extender, that is with ms bios right? So what happens when you have a modded xbox? I'm not sure how those dashboards really work, but I'm assuming that with a plug-in or app, this would be a different story right?

[AirJunky]

You got it, Ravenray. I would assume that a modded Xbox could run unsigned software, opening the door for developers who are not interested in doing that.
But if someone had the clout & resources to write a signed application, it would work on a regular Xbox & could be sold thru normal channels. No idea what that involves though...... my guess is MS doesn't make it easy.

[freakzilla]

XBMC understands the python programming language. There is a front-end for the DVR software MythTV that can run natively on the xbox as an add-on for XBMC that will allow you to set and watch recordings and basically do everything that the normal front-end client can do *except* watch live TV. Could the Sage client be ported to python?
MythTV on XBMC