Acer Revo 3600 and XBMC

Acer Revo 3600
Having tried a couple of different media centres, none of them gave the same wonderful experience of the original Xbox paired with XBMC.

The last media streamer I used, to replace the Xbox, was the WDTV Live, this was very good at playing anything I asked it to including 1080p.

Although it was good I still missed the fantastic interface of the XBMC software with its skinnable interface and its rich feature list.

One of the main reasons I think XBMC is so good is that it's open source and written by people who use it, therefore it has all the features that you'd think of yourself. This is where, in my opinion, other media streamers fall down, their interfaces are more 'Corporate' written to a budget and a timescale.

After getting the Revo 3600 from Ebuyer, (Linux, 1GB RAM, 160GB HD) the first job was to install XBMC for this I used the XBMC Live version, which contains its own small footprint version of Ubuntu and once installed it boots up in around 20 seconds straight into XBMC.

The Revo comes with a lite version of a Linux operating system, which opens up into a simple menu allowing browsing, music and chat.

Other options are to install Windows or Ubuntu as the main operating system and install XBMC as a programme, this is a good option if you want to other things with the PC like browsing the net or reading email etc.

I installed XBMC live using an external USB CD drive and chose the install option from the startup menu, using the whole drive.

There are a couple of issues you need to sort out with the Revo to get a good media centre, the remote control and surround sound.

• The remote control can be a standard Windows media centre remote control, mine worked straight away or you can get the original xbox DVD remote working if you have some knowledge of Linux and can configure Lirc.
• The surrond sound was a bit more tricky, the Revo 3600 doesn't come with a TOSLINK SPDIF output like its big brother, the 3610, but you can get Dolby Digital by using a USB to SPDIF converter.

Finding a USB to SPDIF converter took some time, the most popular one was a 'Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro' but this was difficult to buy in the UK due to it not meeting some EU requirements so I had to take a gamble on a converter I found on Ebay, although the description

of this item was very vague and looked like it might only support stereo PCM from the optical output I decided to take a gamble and ordered it.  The gamble paid off as it outputs multi-channel audio from the Toslink output.

To find this converter, google

'USB2.0 6 Channel 7.1 External Audio Sound Card S/PDIF'

One tip though, if you can find it from a UK seller check their feedback first because some sellers say they ship from the UK but actually ship it from Hong Kong.

Things still to do

I'm using the Ethernet connection on the back of the Revo for my network connection but I would like to get the Wireless function working in XBMC Live but it's proving a bit difficult....... oh well you can't have everything.

Recycling an old Xbox

Over Christmas I bought an original Xbox from a friend for a tenner, I'd heard you could use some software called XBMC to convert it into a media streamer for under the TV and I thought I'd give it a go........ Well it wasn't going to be as easy as I thought as getting hold of a mod chip was a non starter because of the age of the xbox no one sold them anymore. So it was the "soft mod" route then....
Apparantely there are three games out there for the Xbox that will allow a software exploit on the Xbox to unlock it; the games are: -

• Splinter cell
• Mechassault
• 007 - Agent Under Fire

How it's done
After tracking down one of the above games on Ebay you need to get two files on to the hard disk of the xbox, this is usually done using the "Action Replay" unit, which allows game saves to be saved and read from a memory card, these can be transferred from the PC to the xbox.

The Action Replay units were about £20 but I came across another way to do it without buying the Action Replay kit.

The game ports on the Xbox are apparantley USB ports with one extra cable, for a light pen, so it's possible to attach a USB socket to the Xbox, plug in a USB memorystick and use this to transfer the files from the PC to the Xbox.

Once the files are on the Xbox you just use the game to load the gamesave and this will run the exploit to unlock the Xbox, then you can connect the Xbox to your PC via the ethernet connection and ftp the files for XBMC to the Xbox and Bob just might be your uncle!

My Bit
Most of the information is in tutorials already done and I will put the links on the blog for these as I don't really want to write them again, my contribution is how to set up your Xbox with a USB port.
More Later .......