I've never had a media centre, as such, before modding my Xbox. I've had setups like having my PC connected to my hi-fi with a 10m phono cable, but that was never handy for controlling the thing.
The modded Xbox changes this by the fact that it sits comfortably under my surround amp (connected by a short optical wire) and next to my TV, and is controllable using the Xbox DVD remote control. The DVD remote came with my second hand Xbox when I bought it, and while the Xbox is completely useless as a DVD player when unmodded – at least compared with my multiregion Pioneer – the remote comes into its own once you can use it with XBMC.
XBMC is the Holy Grail of open source software – it's a piece of open source software that actually seems to have been written with people keeping an eye on the user interface, something which many other such projects fail at miserably (GIMP, anyone?). Thus it has an efficient and self-consistent UI by default – the Project Mayhem III skin – which is endlessly customisabe if you really want to do so. It plays back MP3s, DVDs, DivXes and Xvids effortlessly, and with full IMDB, freedb and Allmusic integration. It is, truly, fantastic.
A setup guide follows after the break.
Setting it up for me was really quite simple – I shared my audio directory (currently 123GB) and videos directory (90GB) through standard Windows file sharing, something that Mac and *nix people through samba (which ISTR is actually part of the standard Mac UI nowadays) can also do fairly simply. I then booted to the mod dashboard – I use Avalaunch, simply because it's quick to start, but they're all the same in this respect – and ftp'ed to the Xbox using username xbox, password xbox. (I used FlashFXP, but you can use SmartFTP or any other decent FTP client).
Like all grey-area Xbox stuff, XBMC isn't officially distributed as binaries, but like all grey-area Xbox stuff you can find compiled copies on practically every known torrent site in the universe (mininova is good for this kind of thing). Go for the T3CH or "Pimped" releases; these come as a .rar file, which you unzip on your PC. Most people generally don't need to edit the XboxMediaCenter.xml file – it's possible to change all your bookmarks on the box itself – but I'm going to go through what it looks like anyway.
Basically, it's just a set of fairly normal looking XML:
<!-- My Videos shares !-->
<video>
<default />
<bookmark>
<name>DVD-ROM drive</name>
<path>D:\</path>
</bookmark>
<bookmark>
<name>Movies</name>
<path>smb://MAGRATHEA/Video/Movies/</path>
</bookmark>
<bookmark>
<name>Music Videos</name>
<path>smb://MAGRATHEA/Video/Music/</path>
</bookmark>
<bookmark>
<name>Trailers</name>
<path>smb://MAGRATHEA/Video/Trailers/</path>
</bookmark>
<bookmark>
<name>TV</name>
<path>smb://MAGRATHEA/Video/TV/</path>
</bookmark>
<bookmark>
<name>Other</name>
<path>smb://MAGRATHEA/Video/Other/</path>
</bookmark>
<bookmark>
<name>Unsorted</name>
<path>smb://MAGRATHEA/Video/Unsorted/</path>
</bookmark>
<bookmark>
<name>(SMB) Network</name>
<path>smb://192.168.0.29/</path>
</bookmark>
</video>
This simply pulls each of the shares from my desktop, making up a list that appears when you click on "My Videos" on the XBMC main screen. There's similar data for music and other areas, too, but for music you can use a library and that's what I'd recommend, so you just set up a share that points directly to your full-albums directory and another which points at individual tracks.
On a standard Xbox, all the applications and so on are stored on a 5GB or thereabouts "E:" partition – this is more than enough for XBMC, a bunch of emulators and a few premium ROMs. Since I don't run xbmc as a dashboard – I boot avalaunch first and then run XBMC – I won't go into setting it up as one, there are enough guides on how to do that elsewhere.
Log onto the Xbox by FTP and go to the directory "E:", then "Apps". Copy the XBMC directory you've unzipped over, so that the "default.xbe", the XMLs and all the subdirectories go in "E:\Apps\XBMC". This will take a while to FTP over, a few minutes on a 100Base-T connection. Once it's done, you can then boot XBMC by going to Applications, then Xbox Media Center in your mod dashboard.
I'll be back with part two on making it Your Way later. In the meantime, you can explore, calibrate, do anything you particularly want with it. XBMC is the reason for having a modded Xbox now legit games are so cheap; it perhaps always was.
F L I C K E R I N G / F R A M E 
how did you get XBMC working with AID from the unleashx dashboard?
i did the 1-click install and it gets an error 0 while unzipping to E://, completes and hangs after the press A to complete..with a red LED and black screen..help!
I only ever used the aid xbmc install once, and it worked for me, so I’m afraid I can’t really help you there.
Getting a xbmc package off the net and uploading it to the box through ftp is actually fairly simple, and it’s what I’d recommend now – the default.xbe and the associated folders simply need to be in E:\Apps\XBMC, and if you want it to autostart you can use the autostart evoxdash.xbe that comes with most torrents of XBMC nowadays (in an
_extras directory). Simply boot your dashboard of choice and then you can install through ftp, xbox/xbox.
got it working by using sid instead of knave edition…thanks for the help anyway..
great couple of blogs on the xbox!