xbox as sage client?

[Naylia]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

If your talking about a silent, diskless system which boots directly to a SageTV screen, all that can be accomplished with a NanoITX based EPIA system with a CF for a hard drive. You just have to be willing to fork out $500 and a little time setting it up.

Definitly a good way to go right now! I think the wireless MediaMVP will do good things for the market, certaintly make my life easier as I'm renting and can't run Cat5 at will.

If XBox hits a homerun, it will certaintly be a tempting alternative a year from now, hopefully Sage can keep pace.

[roofus]

First thank you Naylia you hit the nail on the head.

Originally Posted by mikejaner

I see what your saying, but it's still "illegal" to boot into linux, since it has to rely on code, which either was written by the SDK, or is bypassing the TSOP. You can't just throw a Linux cd in an Xbox and boot it. You have to bypass the security mechanisms designed into system, with either an exploit (illegal), or a Modchip and Bootloader combo (illegal)
I think what is agreed here is, if SageTV were to release a Linux client, then, us hackers could install it on any machine running Linux. Without support of course for those boxes which aren't running a supported flavor.

Actually, the linux bios is cromwell based, it is in no way illegal, in fact you can download it off of many many websites directly, unlike the illegal bioses which microsoft keeps a close eye on. If you were to leave an illegal bios up for download on your site Microsofts lawyers would come knocking.

All modchips, which are legal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are shipped with legal cromwell based OSes and Bioses. Linux and Open XDK are perfectly legal on the xbox, it just pisses of MS that they lose money on a peice of hardware they want you to play their games on and you use it for other things.

Chief Xbox Officer Bach talks Xbox 360 and Modding...

* IDGNS: You've been very tough in prosecuting modders. Aren't you falling into the same trap as the music industry has found itself in and not responding to expressions of consumer demand?
* Bach: The tricky question is why people are modding. There are people who don't want to pay for games so that's not good for our business model. There's a form of modding by people who want to hijack our hardware to do other things. Given that we lose money on the hardware that's not a customer we're excited about. There are some people who have done modding because they want to do some related things like play music. We have an Xbox 360 built with a lot of that functionality. Those type of customers will be excited about today's product.

Notice how it mentions nowhere that "hi-jacking" the hardware as they put it, is illegal.

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/...VyMDPGsKQg.php

P.S. Naylia, Speak Like A Child.

[roofus]

I was so close to getting the sage client running on my xbox today I could taste it. Unfortunatly it has a bitter aftertaste, as it did not work. Unknown errors I will be trying to muddle through.

For those of you wondering I'm using GentooX the Gentoo linux distro for the xbox, with a program called WineX (well, it's very advanced brother anyways). I had a couple directshow filters fail to register during the install, but they weren't vital to it running the UI, I get a black window and then it closes, and that's as far as I get.

I'll be working on it for a while, and posting results. I'll be trying this until they can at least tell us when they're selling the Linux Version of SageTV.

[mikejaner]

Actually, the linux bios is cromwell based, it is in no way illegal, in fact you can download it off of many many websites directly, unlike the illegal bioses which microsoft keeps a close eye on. If you were to leave an illegal bios up for download on your site Microsofts lawyers would come knocking.

All modchips, which are legal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are shipped with legal cromwell based OSes and Bioses. Linux and Open XDK are perfectly legal on the xbox, it just pisses of MS that they lose money on a peice of hardware they want you to play their games on and you use it for other things.

I don't disagree that the Cromwel Bios is "Legal" But the method to which you get it to run on a box which has an encrypted copywrite protection scheme, is arguably Illegal. Point is, you have to use a Modchip to use this Linux Bios. That Modchip, circumvents the protection schemes of the Xbox designed to protect Microsoft's investment in the Xbox. The DCMA is what defines that. The question is whether or not it will reach the Supreme Court, and for it to actually get specific enough for the Modchip makers to be shut down.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not mention modchips in particular, but some may interpret the meaning of the law as stating that modchips are illegal because many are made specifically to circumvent the copy-protection features of their host systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod_chip

I don't see this happening in a sense that SageTV make's an Xbox port of SageTV. I see this as being patched together by somebody like you, Roofus, who get it running from using SageTV Linux software with a Distro made for the Xbox. I highly doubt it will be supported though.

[mikejaner]

This still all comes down to if it would run decently, which I doubt. The only apparent way to run it is by booting Linux, then loading Java, then loading SageTV.
Linux is gonna eat up a lot of that 64 Megs, to get the proper environment up and running for SageTV to run in. I believe that is what MythTV people are having a hard time with , or were. Also, I don't think DVD playback works with MythTV.
Anyways, I am Linux wannabe and love tinkering with it, and try every once in a while to get this stuff running, like MythTV frontend with Xebian or GentooX. I find it too difficult for the average person (Me), who can just buy and MVP and follow 5 steps in the Wiki to get SageTV up and running as a front end.
Bigger and better like an extender with DVD playback and HighDef for us lucky ones is the most desireable, but MVP works great, where my SDTV is.

I love playing Devils Advocate for some reason

[aperry]

So, now that we have an API to access, has anyone looked into whether XBMC would work with Sage now? I know that was one of the main things stopping it from working before...

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by aperry

So, now that we have an API to access, has anyone looked into whether XBMC would work with Sage now? I know that was one of the main things stopping it from working before...

This is the only viable approach I can see. Running the actual Sage code on the Xbox is going to be an exercise in frustration. Maybe an approach like is used for the MediaMVP client would work, but just trying to port stuff is doomed to failure. Java isn't the most memory efficient langauge to start with, and Gentoo on the Xbox has several issues with how it manages state that cause reboots to be unusually nasty.

The best way would be to mod a skin that looks like SageMC ("BlueTwo"), and then write a python script that runs as part of the XBMC enviroment to talk to the Sage server. This way you have all the multimedia capabilities of basic XBMC environment available to you. It also gets you out of the business trying to build some form of runtime environment on Xbox that could get you into legal trouble.

There are different views of the the legality of hacking Xbox's, but I can tell you XBMC is a VERY capable media player, far more advanced than the default Sage 4 implementation, and tieing into it via a networked API and modding a skin to create a consistent GUI would be very powerful.

I say this an experienced XBMC user. It's a great implementation.

Thanks,
mike

[roofus]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

This still all comes down to if it would run decently, which I doubt. The only apparent way to run it is by booting Linux, then loading Java, then loading SageTV.
Linux is gonna eat up a lot of that 64 Megs, to get the proper environment up and running for SageTV to run in. I believe that is what MythTV people are having a hard time with , or were. Also, I don't think DVD playback works with MythTV.
Anyways, I am Linux wannabe and love tinkering with it, and try every once in a while to get this stuff running, like MythTV frontend with Xebian or GentooX. I find it too difficult for the average person (Me), who can just buy and MVP and follow 5 steps in the Wiki to get SageTV up and running as a front end.
Bigger and better like an extender with DVD playback and HighDef for us lucky ones is the most desireable, but MVP works great, where my SDTV is.

I love playing Devils Advocate for some reason

First I promise you the Xbox will be able to handle everything you want as long as the Sage TV Linux version supports it. HDTV is well within its bounds. As far as the 64mb of memory... This is a small amount for something like this, but distros like Gentoox have been compiled with this in mind, and Linux is no memory hog like windows.

Loading Linux takes next to nothing in memory, it has no native GUI. Then you'd load X so that a program like sage would work. Also java, both of these would take next to nothing. The only thing in need of memory would be Sage TV which would be you're only GUI.

Also, if that is too much for 64mb, the upgrade to 128 would be 20 bucks for those who can solder and 60 for those who can't. It's still a very affordable stable solution, especially if you have an Xbox lying around. (Memory prices are dropping rapidly as the advent of the 360 approaches.)

As far as the average person not getting Linux... I'd be happy to setup an install script for users who want to try Sage TV Linux.

What it boils down to is for those of us adventurous users who own an Xbox and desire an HD capable extender (not to mention the millions of other things you can do with an Xbox); the Xbox is a likely candidate and hopefully a fulfilling experiment.

I really hope you'll see the light on this one.

I nearly had SageTV running on an Xbox using a loopback partition (extremely processor intensive) and a windows emulator (again extremely processor intesive) that requires KDE to run (it eats resources as badly as windows). The only thing that stopped it from working was the capabilities of the emulator.

Linux is the future of set top and the Xbox is the most cost effective settop box that i've ever seen. ReplayTV boxes can stream liveTV to a program written in native Xbox code (an extremely limited language). That same program can stream shows that SageTV is currently recording.

Trust me, the marrige of xbox and a linux SageTV will be the perfect extender.

Man i'm long winded, but i hope you get the point.

[roofus]

Originally Posted by mikesm

There are different views of the the legality of hacking Xbox's, but I can tell you XBMC is a VERY capable media player, far more advanced than the default Sage 4 implementation, and tieing into it via a networked API and modding a skin to create a consistent GUI would be very powerful.

Very very very great idea, I'd love to help, but I don't speak python.

P.S. When it comes to XBMC there is no question of legality, it is illegal any way you slice it.

[IKK]

Well Linux client is out. Who will be the first to try to add it to XBMC.

[Alfiegerner]

GentooX runs pretty sweet ... any one with a linux iso and know-how tried to run sageTv on it?

[roofus]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

GentooX runs pretty sweet ... any one with a linux iso and know-how tried to run sageTv on it?

Provided I get the answers I I’m looking for from the sage team, I might be trying it.

I want to make sure I have a good shot at it before I buy a Linux OEM copy, although it wouldn't go to waste, it would just be so disappointing.

Even if I can't make SageTV work with gentooX, I might be able to modify the Linux kernel on their version of Gentoo to work with the Xbox. It's not that complicated, but I love the way Gentoox works already, so I’m shooting for adding SageTV to Gentoox, instead of Sages gentoo to the Xbox.

Thank god they built it in java ey, porting it to Linux was a huge plus for sage TV.

[AboveUnrefined]

I think if a client is ever developed for linux that it would run fine on the xbox... I'm sure that the OEM that's out now would work like a charm with some tweaking; I just don't want to spend another $80 since I don't really need another server, especially on an XBOX that can't have a tuner plopped into it...

I wonder if you can take the ISO for the OEM modify that a little bit so it'll run on a modified xbox... all you'd need to do is include support for the controllers and remote -- man I wish I had some more time and resources to get rolling on this!

[roofus]

Originally Posted by AboveUnrefined

I think if a client is ever developed for linux that it would run fine on the xbox... I'm sure that the OEM that's out now would work like a charm with some tweaking; I just don't want to spend another $80 since I don't really need another server, especially on an XBOX that can't have a tuner plopped into it...

I wonder if you can take the ISO for the OEM modify that a little bit so it'll run on a modified xbox... all you'd need to do is include support for the controllers and remote -- man I wish I had some more time and resources to get rolling on this!

Takes a little more than just addings support for the controllers and remote, but it doesn't take much.

You need to fix the PCI enumeration

Fix the Timer Frequency

Fix the reboot and poweroff functions

Fix reset on eject

Fix bugs some DVD drives have

And build or "borrow" a video driver to acheive HD video

The kernel has support for the XBOX gamepad and the remote is supported through an addon... other than those things (PCI enumeration and Timer frequency being the most vital) it's ready to go...

If you'd like to read more visit...

http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Porti...the_Xbox_HOWTO

They'll tell you all about it, very helpfull, taught me all I know and more than I needed to.

[Alfiegerner]

There is also another xbox-linux implementation that might be worth looking at -xDSL. Boots in less than 30 secs too . Originally it was designed with a read only file system but it's gone beyond that remit now and has full read-write access. Its derived from debian sources so if configured correctly you can apt-get the packages you need. Just a heads up ...

[mikejaner]

HDTV is well within its bounds.

And build or "borrow" a video driver to acheive HD video

I would love for you to prove me wrong, but this is not possible on hardware that is a 733Mhz Celery, with an Nvidia Chipset that is from the GeforceMX 2 and 3 era, in Linux.
Windows machines with the most efficient MPEG2 decoder (Nvidia) and a hardware accellerated video card like a Geforce 6600GT couldn't do it with that type of processor, and linux is nowhere near as efficient with decoding MPEG2 in HD.

[KJake]

I just got an xbox last night, I'd love for this to work

[HairBear]

I have just purchased the Linux OEM version to find that it does not work very well for me. I too have been trying to port it over to xbox and getting dependancy errors. I have read that fatx is not supported under kernel 2.6 but is in 2.4 which all the x-distros use. I have also noticed that the the installer script can be edited to fit your install as long as u know what partitions and what not to use. Here is what it looks like...

#!/bin/sh
if [ ! -n "$1" ]
then
echo "Usage: install.sh device"
exit 0
fi

cat /mnt/cdrom/packages/EULA.txt | more

while [ "1" -ge 1 ];
do
echo Do you accept the license agreement? [YES/NO]
read agree
case $agree in
"YES" ) break;;
"NO" ) exit;;
*) continue;;
esac
done


valid=1

while [ "$valid" -ge 1 ];
do
echo Please enter your activation key.
read activkey
outkey=`/mnt/cdrom/validatekey $activkey`
valid=$?
done

while [ "1" -ge 1 ];
do
echo Please select the type of installation
echo 0\) Console mode server \(No user interface\)
echo 1\) Server with basic user interface \(without media\)
echo 2\) Server with complete user interface \(including media\)
read installmode
case $installmode in
"0" ) break;;
"1" ) break;;
"2" ) break;;
*) continue;;
esac
done

echo "Copying base files"


tar -xjpf /mnt/cdrom/packages/stage4-i686-stv4linuxbase.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/part1
echo "Copying SageTV files"
tar -xzpf /mnt/cdrom/packages/approotlinux.tar.gz -C /mnt/part1

mkdir /mnt/part1/var/media

cp /mnt/cdrom/packages/kernel-2.6.15 /mnt/part1/boot
chroot /mnt/part1 tar -xzpf /mnt/cdrom/packages/modules.tar.gz -C /
chroot /mnt/part1 cp /mnt/cdrom/packages/ivtv.ko /lib/modules/2.6.15-rc5/
chroot /mnt/part1 ldconfig
echo Extracting portage snapshot
chroot /mnt/part1 tar -xjpf /mnt/cdrom/packages/portage-20050812.tar.bz2 -C /usr
chroot /mnt/part1 cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT /etc/localtime
echo Installing drivers
export PKGDIR=/mnt/cdrom/packages
chroot /mnt/part1 emerge -q -K =ati-drivers-8.19.10
chroot /mnt/part1 emerge -q -K =nvidia-kernel-1.0.8174
chroot /mnt/part1 emerge -q -K =nvidia-glx-1.0.8174
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/part1/proc
chroot /mnt/part1 eselect opengl set nvidia
chroot /mnt/part1 opengl-update nvidia
chroot /mnt/part1 rc-update add net.eth0 default
chroot /mnt/part1 ln -s /opt/sun-jre-bin-1.5.0.05 /opt/sun-jre-bin
# We don't want extra devices when using udev...
rm -rf /mnt/part1/dev/*
mknod -m 660 /mnt/part1/dev/console c 5 1
mknod -m 660 /mnt/part1/dev/null c 1 3
umount /mnt/part1/proc
umount /mnt/part1/mnt/cdrom
echo -n $outkey > /mnt/part1/opt/sagetv/usr/activkey
echo -n $installmode > /mnt/part1/opt/sagetv/usr/installmode
cat /mnt/part1/etc/conf.d/rc | sed -e s/RC_DEVICE_TARBALL=\"yes\"/RC_DEVICE_TARBALL=\"no\"/ > /mnt/part1/etc/conf.d/rc.tmp
rm /mnt/part1/etc/conf.d/rc
mv /mnt/part1/etc/conf.d/rc.tmp /mnt/part1/etc/conf.d/rc
# Generate a random host name
rndpart=$[ ( $RANDOM % 899 ) + 100 ]
echo HOSTNAME=\"STVMC-$rndpart\" > /mnt/part1/etc/conf.d/hostname
chmod +644 /mnt/part1/etc/conf.d/rc
umount /mnt/part1

[roofus]

Originally Posted by HairBear

I have just purchased the Linux OEM version to find that it does not work very well for me. I too have been trying to port it over to xbox and getting dependancy errors.

Hey, you might wanna get with some people in the xbox-linux team, they're very helpful. Especially shallaX, he ported gentoo to the xbox and might be able to help you modify the sage linux distro.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_for_Xbox

http://gentoox.shallax.com/

Also, the easiest way might be to, if possible, make the SageTV component of the distro into it's own package and try and install it in an already ported version of linux. That would be way easier. My guess is it was a straight port, as they built it in java, I don't see them going through the trouble to integrate it into the OS.

Another thing to try, if you have a spare hardrive lying around with a bigger than stock (bigger than what came in the xbox) drive (you wouldn't be able to do this with a soft mod), you can format an F drive as a linux partition and boot it from there, it would leave your drive in tact and working for games but would allow a 2.6 kernel to work. (2.6.11 has a fatX driver, but it's not safe to use yet).

If you need elaboration on these suggestions just lemmie know.

P.S. Please shower us with updates, there are people who've been wanting to do this forever.

[roofus]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

I would love for you to prove me wrong, but this is not possible on hardware that is a 733Mhz Celery, with an Nvidia Chipset that is from the GeforceMX 2 and 3 era, in Linux.
Windows machines with the most efficient MPEG2 decoder (Nvidia) and a hardware accellerated video card like a Geforce 6600GT couldn't do it with that type of processor, and linux is nowhere near as efficient with decoding MPEG2 in HD.

I play HD content on my xbox all the time, using a native xbox language program that is based off of Mplayer. Linux would work even better as it's much more powerful and agile.