I finally got around to softmodding my old xbox last night in order to run XBMC on it.  It is something I’ve been wanting to do for at least a year now, but had procrastinated on because I thought it would be more complicated than it actually was.

I initially made the attempt last week, but because I didn’t have an Action Replay kit (the reader or memory card) – I followed another tutorial that outlined how to use a USB flash drive with a homemade xbox-to-usb cord for transferring the Linux os & game  save exploit needed to perform the softmod.

I spent several, frustrating hours on the project before realizing the xbox and Action Replay software wouldn’t read from my USB flash drive because none of the sticks I had were compatible.  In the end, I gave up and just ordered a $20 action replay kit on ebay, which arrived yesterday.

So after unpacking everything and following a very clear set of instructions, I had my xbox modded and running XBMC within 20 minutes. I chuckled to myself after seeing that whomever I bought the kit from on ebay must have used it for the same purpose – as they had left part of the softmod data on the memory card.

In short, I am ridiculously impressed with XBMC.  I had been recently focusing on setting up Boxee (which is actually based on XBMC) because the UI seemed so much more attractive than the default one for XBMC.  However, I hadn’t done my research properly, as there are tons of really attractive skins available for XBMC that completely transform the interface.  I tried out several last night, but the one which worked best on the small, 20″ tube TV in our bedroom was the xTV skin.

Especially cool is the fact that I can now just FTP directly into the xbox from my office for whenever I want to load up new skins, plugins or scripts.  There is also an HTTP interface I enabled that allows me to access the XBMC interface from any of my computers in the house and control it remotely.  I’m not sure how useful that would really be – but it’s still cool.

I was also surprised at how easily I was able to set up my media sources.  Because of the Linux OS, I had expected there to be issues with accessing the Video, Music and Photo shares on my Windows Home Server.  Not so.  It was simply a matter of browsing to each network share, which showed up right away.

Truthfully, I like XBMC so much that I’m seriously considering switching over the other two HTPCs in the house.  Although I have been happy with both Window 7 Media center (same as Vista’s) and the old Windows XP MCE 2005 – neither of them are as flexible or easy to use as XBMC.  The only downside is that I would lose the extender capabilities my xbox 360 now has with the Windows 7 HTPC.  I don’t believe there is any way to softmod an xbox 360 with XBMC – and I’m not sure that I’d want to even if there was.  I also wouldn’t have the TV tuner capabilities I now have with our main HTPC, though I could use another program such as MediaPortal or MythTV.

Anyways, at the very least, I think I am going to buy a 2nd xbox so I can use it on another TV in the house.  You can get them used on ebay for less than $50, which makes it a far cheaper media center solution than buying an Windows media extender or building another HTPC.