can it control modded xbox running xbox media player

[vsmile]

Hi,

I am new to Netremote. I am looking at a modded xbox hooked into LAN running "xbox media player" to serv audio and video over the home network. Major draw back for this solution currently seems to be the lack of good remote control interface.

I am wondering can Netremote (and girder) be used to control this setup? Appreciate your insights.

thanks
vsmile :)

[jeroen020]

You'd need some sort of way to control the Xbox Media Player from the outside. Netremote supports IR (through a PC) and TCP/IP (with an appopriatie plugin/server on the device to be controlled with, e.g. Girder on a PC).

If you can control Media Player through the IR dongle you get with the DVD kit, that should work by using Netremote to pass through IR signals to the Xbox, using an IR emitter/transceiver like USB-UIRT or Slinke.

An alternative would be to run Girder on the Xbox and activate the plugin that supports internet events like Netremote supports. You could then train the Media Player commands to Girder and relate them to Netremote actions. Or create a custom plugin for Media Player that know how to handle the TCP/IP requests that Netremote uses.

I like the idea of having an Xbox as a fully featured, relatively compact and entirely standardized network PC that's real easy to use... If you could run Girder and/or Media Center on it, using a few as a plug-and-play media terminal should be a snap! Just hook it up to your amp and display and control everything from your PDA/Tablet/PC... It could support progressive scan, digital 5.1 audio etc while avoiding the bandwidth and processing limitation that PDA's, Tablets and WiFi imply - although they would still be the hardware used to control the Xbox...

It would make for a great way to achieve a budget, multi-room A/V system with enough muscle to do proper video/audio decoding etc locally - and you can play great games with it too!

Mmm, now we just have to find a hacker to port MC and Girder to Xbox!

[vsmile]

Hi Jerone020

Exactly, for the same reasons you mentioned, I am seriously considering Xbox as my low cost media center (at least until HTPC becomes much more affordable and/or technologies matures further).

I have done my research and I looked at commercial A/V network streamer solutions and nothing seem to beat "Xbox HW + Xbox Media Player (XBMP)" based solution currently. Though many commercial vendors popped up on the scene recently with networked audio, video, photo streaming solutions to family room, none has the stable robust offering or have a limited features only (for example lacks the abiltiy to play Divx etc.,).

On the other hand, running on modded xbox hardware, open source "Xbox Media Player (XBMP) http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/newweb/info_project.htm" beats all the commercial offerings hands-down in terms of features and performance. It has cool user interface too. It can play any A/V format you can think of and supports HDTV output too. It can stream files from remote hosts and local drive as well. It is being improved further with the new "Xbox media center (XBMC)" project by adding Tivo like functionality.


So we may not need the MC (traditional media player bundled with netremote) port on xbox. I am not familiar with MC, however XBMP on Xbox is just great and I seriously doubt any other media player can be as slick and feature rich (No offense).

On the other hand currently what i consider as the draw back to the Xbox solution is it's weak remote control...... XBMP can be remotely controlled using either "Microsoft's Original DVD remote only (other remotes are not supported) or a Xbox Game controller (keys mapped to the media player control actions)".

I did not like both. Imagine controlling this powerhouse slick program from a game controller! Yuck!!

one of my requirements for my family room digital media streamer is the ability to control it from a PocketPC. That is where my research led to Netremote and I am a total newbie when it comes to Netremote and girder.

I too thought that Girder needs to run some how on the xbox to be able to control the XBMP. But don't you need NetRemote also running on the xbox too?

If only there is a way to control "XBMP" (http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/newweb/info_project.htm) running on a Xbox from a PocketPC, boy what a sweet solution that would be 8)

I know NetRemote and Girder together can accomplish this....we need someone knowledgeable to guide us...

Any volunteers!!!

thanks
VSmile :P