I embarked on a massive procrastination project yesterday, and I’m pleased to announce it has all worked out for the best. It all started because I’ve always been fighting with the computer that I have hooked up to the TV to play movies. The picture quality has always been somewhat questionable, the sound has been unpredictable, and it has, in general, always sucked. I’m always looking for new drivers and fighting to make it work properly. It was functional, but just barely.
First of all, I realized that I have an Xbox. I don’t really use it, but it’s there, and it’s hooked up to the TV. I wondered if an Xbox could be used to play video. Some research led me to some software called Xbox Media Center (XBMC). I installed it, and found out it’s incredibly awesome. It plays movies, music files (with crazy visualizations), Shoutcast streams, shows weather reports, searches the IMDB database for movie info, outputs progressive scan video and Dolby Digital audio, and can stream content off of a network share. Not only this, but it has a severely hot and sexy interface.
XBMC on the Xbox does all of this much better and much easier than the computer that was hooked up to the TV. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that this is what I should do.
Step two was to make better use of the computer assets on hand. I now had this TV computer that was redundant. So, I converted it into a Linux server to hold movies and music. I’ve been wanting to have a small server around, but didn’t have appropriate hardware handy for it. I like the TV computer for this purpose because it’s small, quiet, and doesn’t use a lot of electricity. I used Linux because it doesn’t take up a lot of space on the hard drive, so most of it can be used for storage. Also, I can run an Apache web server and MySQL database so I can test websites before putting them on the Internet.
Previously, I was storing my music and movie collection in three different locations: the TV computer, my desktop computer, and my laptop. Now that I’ve moved everything to the new server, it’s freed up lots of space on my desktop computer for photos. I’ve got at least 30GB more space than I had yesterday, which means I can hold off buying more storage for a while. Not only that, but I can get to the same multimedia files from my laptop and my desktop. I don’t have to worry about hunting all over the place to find things. They’re all where they’re supposed to be. Anyway, today it is good to be a geek. 😀
Now you better take care of that data, buddy!
And yes you have a nice setup. Whole buncha stuff. Why did you get an Xbox in the first place if you dont use it though 😛
oh yeah i’m very data paranoid. i keep copies of everything on a removable hard drive that i take out of my house in case the house burns down. and i’m not sure why i have an xbox… i bought it one day last year because i was bored and haven’t played it much since then 😀
Hah i have a similar thing now. With my cousins visiting, i got them a ps2……because i melted their Dreamcast by plugging it directly into a wall outlet. Normally thats not a problem……but it is a problem in Argentina, where teh voltage is 220 =P
So now they play it and they rented this one game (Shadow of the Colossus, in case someone is wondering), and thats so good and fun that im considering getting a ps2 just for that. Pity that it looks like SHIT when i plug it to this 20inch LCD, and the game isnt out for the PSP. Maybe its temporary lust for that game, or maybe not, hehe. But i cant remember the last time i wanted a console or an upgrade for just one game.
Come to think of it, it’s nothing similar to your Xbox thing. What a fiend. Must be wasteeeed!
haha it was a good story anyway 😛 ahh i waaasted the adapter for my VOIP box when i plugged it into the wall in finland. damn finnish walls! damn cheap single voltage AC adapters! fortunately all i had to do is replace it with the one from my scanner. damn powerless scanner!
While we’re on geek talk, did you manage to get rid of the recycle bin in your desktop?
I got this program called TweakUI, and it……well……..lets you Tweak the UI =P
It’s quite cool and it’s not even a service, so if you’re paranoid with system resources, not a proble.
Oh and its free, too 😀
oh yeah… i’ve been using tweakUI for a long time, as well as some of the other MS powertoys. you should check out the powertoy that lets you view RAW files as thumbnails in explorer, btw. it works great. anyway, yeah i used tweakUI to remove everything on the desktop EXCEPT the recycle bin, because the recycle bin is useful!
my dear brother…now you know I switched to Apple!!!….hehehehehe..I never knew the xbox could bring so much pleasure 😉