XBMC and the modded Xbox

I had forgotten just how good this is – if you dont know XBMC, it is a full media centre that runs on a (modded) Microsoft Xbox console. It plays videos, music, runs applications and generally presents a slick interface into your media….

Tonight I finally got round to chucking a 160gb USB drive on the back of my home server – which is a mini Compaq 733 box (low power consumption). With my whole music library on it, it now means XBMC can have access to all my music without needing my real (noisy, big) PC to be on… XBMC will compile a library of all the music allowing you to browse by artist etc, comes with some cool visualisations and I have the remote control. And if you need pimp remotes, its possible to control it using a inbuilt webserver via a PSP or similar wireless device. Not many full colour wireless remotes out there!

The plan is to expand the amount of Network Attached Storage (NAS) on my network as soon as money appears. There might be some old Compaq SCSI 6 drive backplanes and caddies spare in work as old kit gets retired – I reckon these can be made into SATA without too much destruction, which would give me 6TB of hot swap (with appropiate controller card).

All I need now is another Xbox for downstairs. eBay here we come…