My wife finally understands my affair with my xbox
My wife's never been a huge game junkie (of the electronic kinda) and generally sees my obsession with such things as a pointless waste of time. She also never before saw the really difference of wasting time playing a game on my xbox or hacking around with it. That all changed last month.
I modded my xbox about 6 months ago with justification to her that I can drop $250 on modding it but never needing to buy a game again (yes piracy piss off). However that then was not my main reason for doing it - it was just justification to calm her frugal ways. I knew what was coming up however they never quite finally got it right until this week.
I'm talking about XBMC for those that know you are probably already shaking your head in agreement for those that don't I'll continue. XBMC is an alternate dashboard for xbox (think OS) you can play your games, music, dvd's whatever through it - that function has always been there. Even streaming the stuff I dl'd onto my computer through the xbox to the TV didn't even fully impress her. But for the past several months they've been working on refining the video player so it worked with all sorts of internet streams but there were always glitches be it quicktime or some weird avi codec whatever. It would hang if the data wasn't coming quick enough just generally it had issues.
They fixed it the XBMC 3-13 420 Custom version weighing in at 91mb's has it all working and I was in geek heaven last night. Hell my wife I think had her first geek driven orgasm as she ewwwed and awwed at what this -as she previously called it - hunk of plastic was doing.
First went onto apple.com's movie trailler sight and just watching traillers. Now nothing new there you can do this on your computer. But well on your computer even when running the trailer at what they say 'full size' is still a small picture on the screen with usually a crapy resolution and hick-ups and pauses along the way even if you have your buffer set to 50%. XBMC - no issues first you pick full screen and you are watching a full screen on the TV and with tv resolutions it looks like it should. XBMC also test the streams first to see if it's getting a good connection before playing it and once it does in 20 or 30 triallers we watched last night not a single one snagged along the way.
So that was fun. Then ifilm yes I'm watching ifilm on my damn TV same deal perfect feeds full screen it was awesome.
Next music videos via launch.com. This is what I think finally tipped the wife over the edge she (and me) is a huge music nut but frankly MTV and Much music blow the chunks unless you like Top 40 and rap. Even Much's own metal station Loud sucks most of the time. However problem solved just going throuch launch.com and playing the videos we want to play hell they have videos that we didn't even know existed for our favorite bands. Again you could do this all on your computer but suffer studders and small shity resolution most of the time.
Then with internet radio and tv streams from around the world she finally grasped it. The reason why I modded my xbox -not for games but because of all this extra functionality.
Ok I'm done now.
I modded my xbox about 6 months ago with justification to her that I can drop $250 on modding it but never needing to buy a game again (yes piracy piss off). However that then was not my main reason for doing it - it was just justification to calm her frugal ways. I knew what was coming up however they never quite finally got it right until this week.
I'm talking about XBMC for those that know you are probably already shaking your head in agreement for those that don't I'll continue. XBMC is an alternate dashboard for xbox (think OS) you can play your games, music, dvd's whatever through it - that function has always been there. Even streaming the stuff I dl'd onto my computer through the xbox to the TV didn't even fully impress her. But for the past several months they've been working on refining the video player so it worked with all sorts of internet streams but there were always glitches be it quicktime or some weird avi codec whatever. It would hang if the data wasn't coming quick enough just generally it had issues.
They fixed it the XBMC 3-13 420 Custom version weighing in at 91mb's has it all working and I was in geek heaven last night. Hell my wife I think had her first geek driven orgasm as she ewwwed and awwed at what this -as she previously called it - hunk of plastic was doing.
First went onto apple.com's movie trailler sight and just watching traillers. Now nothing new there you can do this on your computer. But well on your computer even when running the trailer at what they say 'full size' is still a small picture on the screen with usually a crapy resolution and hick-ups and pauses along the way even if you have your buffer set to 50%. XBMC - no issues first you pick full screen and you are watching a full screen on the TV and with tv resolutions it looks like it should. XBMC also test the streams first to see if it's getting a good connection before playing it and once it does in 20 or 30 triallers we watched last night not a single one snagged along the way.
So that was fun. Then ifilm yes I'm watching ifilm on my damn TV same deal perfect feeds full screen it was awesome.
Next music videos via launch.com. This is what I think finally tipped the wife over the edge she (and me) is a huge music nut but frankly MTV and Much music blow the chunks unless you like Top 40 and rap. Even Much's own metal station Loud sucks most of the time. However problem solved just going throuch launch.com and playing the videos we want to play hell they have videos that we didn't even know existed for our favorite bands. Again you could do this all on your computer but suffer studders and small shity resolution most of the time.
Then with internet radio and tv streams from around the world she finally grasped it. The reason why I modded my xbox -not for games but because of all this extra functionality.
Ok I'm done now.
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