New SMB Share Control

New CVS updates have allowed users to adjust SMB share settings from within Xbox Media Center

SMB Share control within the GUI!
This will make it easy to set the SMB share, instead of XboxMediaCenter.xml editing to set the settings.
It will set the shares automatic to the desired groups like video, vusik [also choose able].
You can define the IP, Workgroup, Username, Password, WINS-Server, Share Name!
Also you can define the Settings mode for Advanced or Normal user, to hold it Simple for the beginners
SMB Share Setting is located --> Settings - Network - SMB Share!

I'm not too sure i'm a fan of this. Of course it will allow a new ease of use for normal users, but I just don't want to have to type in all my share information everytime i upgrade to a new version of Xbmc. The on screen keyboard is a bit tedious.

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WWW in Xbmc On The Horizon?

It looks like someone has started a nice little project to allow Xbmc to browse the web. Its not a python script, its part of Xbmc itself. Its been checked into the CVS, but hasn't been merged into the official Xbmc codebase. Theres a big discussion over on the developer forums about it.

The question arises in the discussion about bloatware. Is this a necessary feature for Xbmc? Will browsing the web on a tiny Tv screen even work? I'm a huge fan of ease of use and the restriction of bloatware. When I was on a PC i never wanted to switch to Mozilla, even though it had its advantages, because of its bloat. It simply did more than I needed it to. This is where the python plugins for Xbmc come in, just like Firefox's extensions. Each user is then able to regulate his or her own bloat/features.

What do you think? Do we need web browsing in Xbox Media Center?

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Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility

Well, Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 Event is over and the biggest announcemnent to come out of it is backwards compatibility!! But what does this mean? Hopefully it means that Xbox Media Center's codebase will be able to travel along to the 360 as soon as homebrew code is able to be executed on it. And development will be able to be moved to the new platform with little or no effort. But there seems to be more to the story after reading this comment from Engadget:

Two words: backwards compatability! That’s right, everyone. It’ll play Xbox games! (Well, some of them, anyway)

So what does this mean? To me it sounds like there WILL be a compatibility layer added in order to allow legacy games and code to be executed on the new architecture. Remember, Xbox is x86 and Xbox 360 is PowerPC. Two totally different architectures. Since the 360 has around triple to quadruple the power of the Xbox, emulation shouldn't be much of a problem. But this could also mean that any hooks or tricks in the Xbox that the Xbmc team was able to utilize have been closed up or simply don't exist anymore. All of this of course remains to be seen, and there is still plenty to do with Xbmc on our current console. The Xbmc team is great, I'm sure all the code is completely modularized anyways and ready for some porting at any time :)

So for now everyone.. just be excited. Xbox's should be going for about $50 used in a few weeks to months. And what a powerful box that is for $50. Media centers for EVERYONE! I know what everyone's getting next year for christmas.

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Xbox 360 Specs

I know this is a little out of scope, but I had to post these anyways. The specs are just out of this world. My computer isn't even close to these speeds. Check it out:

2 types of Xbox Live:
Xbox Live Silver (no subscription required)
Xbox Live Gold (subscription benefits)

Features for Gold service
* Also for Silver
# Also for Offline

• Seamless transition to Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360


• Access to MMOs (additional fees may apply) *


• Free Xbox Live weekends *


• Multiplayer online gameplay


• Avatar for gamer profile * #


• Motto for gamer profile * #


• Personalized look for Xbox System Guide * #


• Offline achievments * #


• Online achievements *


• Access to other players' Gamer cards via Live *


• Cumulative gamer score * #


• Location/language profile * #


• Reputation *


• Enahnced matchmaking using above


• Skill level matchmaking


• Gameplay style profile (casual, competitive, etc.)


• Recent players list *


• Free and premium download game content *


• Free and premium downloadable movies, music, tv *


• Downloadable demos/trailers *


• Microtransactions *


• Custom playlist in every game * #


• Play music from portable devices * #


• View images from digital camera * #


• Strem media from Windows XP * #


• Interactive screen savers * #


• Track info for CDs * #


• Communication with voice, video or text *

360 Hardware:
1. Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA
CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD
2. All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
3. Customizable face plates to change appearance
4. 3 USB 2.0 ports
5. Support for 4 wireless controllers
6. Detachable 20GB drive
7. Wi-Fi ready

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU

• 3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each


• 2 hardware threads per core


• 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core


• 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance

• 9 billion dots per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor

• 500 MNz


• 10 MB embedded DRAM


• 48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines


• unified shader architecture

Memory

• 512 MB GDDR3 RAM


• 700 MNz DDR

Memory Bandwidth

• 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth


• 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM


• 21.6 GB/s frontside bus

Audio

• Mulitchannel surround sond output


• Supports 48khz 16-bit audio


• 320 independent decompression channels


• 32 bit processing


• 256+ audio channels

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New CVS Build (5-02-05)

A new Xbox Media Center CVS compile has been compiled and is available at the usual places. This is one of the biggest updates since the project's development cycle slowed over the last few months. If you haven't upgraded in a while, I suggest getting it.

I reported a few of the updates recently, so I'll repost them here.

• changed: Project Mayhem III is new default skin
• added: navigation sounds
• added: audioscrobbler support
• added: option to disable music visualisation
• added: Proxy support for shoutcast thanks to soepy
• added: Music is muted 9dB on ffwd/rewd with mp3 player
• added: Python bindings for built in XBMC functions
• fixed: Double tap remote bug

Project Mayhem III is a great skin and the addition of navigation sounds is right on target to create a feeling of completeness for the project. Xbmc in whole is a solid media center, and any other application should be shaking in its boots.

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