[mythtv-users] MythTV on XBox

Joe Votour joevph at yahoo.com
Sun Jan 9 13:33:22 EST 2005


You could probably run the backend and the frontend on
the Xbox, but for most purposes, it's just not
practical.

Here are the problems with the XBox as an all-in-one
solution:
1. CPU speed.  It's only a 733MHz machine, it'll never
handle both full frontend and backend duties. 
Watching LiveTV had the CPU going up to 75% used.
2. RAM - only 64MB (although you can, on some boards,
put in another 64MB - I'm considering this myself). 
During regular MythTV usage (i.e. watching a
recording, or LiveTV, or maybe even a DVD) you'll
definitely hit swap.  Just watching LiveTV, I checked
my numbers, and RAM was full, and I was using about
another 50MB of swap (at least).
3. The XBox is USB 1.1 only, plus there would have to
be a Linux driver for the USB capture device that
works under Xebian or GentooX (I'm not saying that
there isn't, I just haven't looked because I figure
it's crazy to try and do everything in the XBox).
4. Lack of HD space for recordings - this can be
fixed, as I have a 100GB hard drive in my XBox, but I
still store recordings over the network.

Also, depending on the hardware revision of the XBox
that you get, you might get a noisy fan...  I've found
a way to fix that, I'm just no so sure I want to get
that drastic with the hardware mods yet.  ;)

If you just want a portable media player and don't
care about the PVR functionality (which is really
MythTV's bread and butter), then check out XBox Media
Center.  From the screenshots and text I've seen about
it, it's supposedly very good at being a media player.
 It will, however, be somewhat difficult to find a
binary download, although the source code is freely
available (XBMC uses the Microsoft XBox SDK, which is
not legal to possess, unless you are a licensed
Microsoft XBox developer, due to copyright).

-- Joe

--- nowhere <nowhere at cox.net> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
> [mailto:mythtv-users-
> > bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Joe Votour
> > Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 10:29 PM
> > To: ama-list at mltp.com; Discussion about mythtv
> > Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] MythTV on XBox
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > 
> > No video card needs to be added to the XBox (one
> > couldn't be anyway), but you'll definitely need
> > another PC as a backend.  
> 
> Will the Xbox support installing a non-capture
> backend on the system? I
> am considering using it as a standalone video player
> for my conversion
> van...
> 
> Thanks,
> Eric
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> 



		
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