echoxbox
Alright. It turns out that this is actually somewhat boring. BUT! I was determined to fix it, capture it, and put it on the internet. So I'm going to, goddammit. Behold, the custom XBMC theme I put together for the company Xbox:
A combination of stupidly quick scrolling on my part and camera refresh frequency problems makes it a bit tough to see the logos I put over the default skin — you'll just have to take my word for the fact that they're there (and mind-blowingly awesome, of course).
More important is the fundamental softmod functionality, which allows emulators, homebrew games and the excellent XBMC media player to be installed. And installing it is considerably easier than putting in a modchip. You have to resolve yourself to never using Xbox Live, but you don't have to open the Xbox or do any difficult soldering.
The method, in a nutshell:
- Obtain an original copy of MechAssault, 007: Agent Under Fire or Splinter Cell.
- Download Softmod Installer Deluxe. While you're at it, download Auto-Installer Deluxe from the same site and burn it to a DVD or CDRW.
- Find the appropriate save file. Make a USB-to-Xbox cable (it's pretty easy). Find somebody with a modded xbox, and use it to load the appropriate SID savefile onto a USB thumbdrive.
- Connect the thumbdrive to the Xbox-to-be-modded. Boot into the Xbox dashboard and copy the SID savefile onto the Xbox hard drive.
- Load up the appropriate game, then load the savefile (see the SID readme). The Softmod Installer will launch. Use it to make a backup of the MS Dashboard, then install the Softmod.
- Boot up with the Auto-Installer Deluxe disc and install whatever software you'd like. Obtain an up-to-date copy copy of Xbox Media Center (XBMC — search for XBMC on any given torrent site) and install it to E:\Apps\XBMC.
- Install at least one of the dashboards contained in AID, and configure its network settings so that you can FTP into it. Do so, then use one of these methods to make the console boot straight into XBMC. You should name the file evoxdash.xbe in order to get it to boot. And you should upload it from a Windows PC. I don't know what kind of mojo Macs do to these XBEs before FTPing them up, but it prevents them from working. Took me a while to figure that one out.
- Assuming you want to make a custom theme for XBMC, get the Textures.xpr file out of the XBMC Skins directory (you'll probably want the one for Project Mayhem III, the slickest theme currently available). Then download this tool and use it to open the XPR.
- Unfortunately, Project Mayhem III is copy-protected, preventing you from extracting the files. But that's not much of a problem — just browse through the XPR, finding the graphics you want to replace. Take screenshots of those assets, then recreate the files in Photoshop and make whatever changes you'd like. Save them in a directory structure that matches the one in the XPR.
- Use this tool to compile the new assets into another XPR. Using FTP, upload the resulting XPR into the same directory as where the skin XPR lives (you'll want to name your new XPR something different from Textures.XPR so as to avoid overwriting the existing one — you still need that).
- Reboot XBMC. Select your new theme in the XBMC Settings|Appearance dialog.
That's it! You should be all set. If you'd like to settle for another dashboard (or an unthemable version of XBMC), you can stop after using AID to install whatever software you have in mind for your machine.
I swear it didn't seem that complicated at the time.
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