RE: xBox Media Centre - Remote control

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Stuart Grimshaw [mailto:stuart@xxxxxxx]
>
>How does xbmc play DVD's?

Badly. It sometimes works, sometimes crashes, sometimes lasts fine till
about an hour in, then does the MPEG breakdown. In terms of an
appliance-style experience.. it's not exactly great.

In practice, out of about thirty or so movies we have tried to watch on
Xbox, about two have played all the way through without *something*
going wrong.

>Do you still have to use a seperate program?

It's better to...

The best combo I have encountered is to use EvoX as the desktop launcher
- it only crashes the xbox about one time out of five, so it's the best
of the bunch - it also doesn't have the ability to accidentally fry your
modchip, unlike avalaunch.

With Evox as the desktop, you can reliably (well, sortof) ftp stuff to
the xbox, and fix XBMC when it screws up.

Use XBMC for Divx, playing MP3s from the network etc, and use the
original DVD player that ships with the Xbox for actual proper DVDs.
It's the most reliable bit of software I have seen on an xbox, and
actually a well featured DVD player!

>I know you can play ISO images etc,

Well, "sortof" ;)

>but what about good old fashioned DVD's?

In the main, not too bad. The xbox generally has an issue with anything
not original, reading some DVD-Rs, a small number of CDRWs, and
absolutely no CDRs whatsoever. Unless you have the right drive, in which
case, you can play *some* CDRs.

>If it does play them natively, does it make use of the xbox remote?

It's supposed to. Really, it is.

In practice, it works "sortof" - it sometimes works flawlessly
for a few
hours, only to suddenly stop and not work again until a hard reset -
sometimes it works, but the range is about 3 cm.

The Xbox remote receiver *really* doesn't like ambient sunlight.
Ironically, it doesn't seem to like projectors either - the light
reflecting back from our screen (4 metres away, 1200W projector) is
often enough to make the Xbox IR blind - similarly, it doesn't seem to
like halogens - if ours are on, IR range is appalling.

Ian.

Ps> Sorry if I keep coming across as the Xbox Hater here - it's not the
case. I keep plugging away at mine in the hope that one day I might
think it doesn't stink at everything it does.

I'll concede though that my Xbox hell is probably not that
representative, but as a warning to what can go wrong with the infernal
things, it's fairly potent.




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