XBMC versus XBOX 360 and MCE

by Christopher Grant { Jan 24th 2006 at 5:00AM }

XboxSpace has an interesting, if cursory, comparison of the open-source media player for the original Xbox, the Xbox Media Center (XBMC), and the Xbox 360's Media Center extender functionality. The feature list on XBMC is monstrous, supporting many of the most popular codecs, streaming from SMB volumes, iTunes streaming, and more. The major shortcomings are that it requires a modded Xbox to run and additional storage capacities are strongly recommended.

The Xbox 360's functionality on the other hand is notably sparse in comparison, featuring limited codec support, video streaming only from MCE, and a similarly small 13GB hard drive. They conclude, "In sheer terms of Media Center functionality, XMBC is superior to the 360 in every respect. It is an application that you have to use to understand just how good it is."

What is upsetting is that this functionality far surpasses Microsoft's own, but they refuse to allow even trivial concessions like DivX support. Let's hope future Dashboard updates, and maybe even Vista, expand the feature set.

Tags: Media Center, MediaCenter, XBMC

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jmz28 @ Jan 24th 2006 8:18AM

When will MS "get it"?

Article after article, forum post after forum post... If they miss the bus with the whole "media" hub, its their own damn fault. How much more could they ask for, the xbmc devs GAVE AWAY the product as open source... pretty pathetic that the 360 is what it is for media. I love the console for gaming but what a joke for media.

pr0cs @ Jan 24th 2006 11:34AM

Not entirely sure how fair it is to compare an "illegal" product versus a legitimate product. I will say that Microsoft does have a lot to do in regards to making the media center integration better, Divx codec support would be a good first step.

brad77 @ Jan 24th 2006 12:27PM

I'm probably going to get dogpiled here, but they neglected to mention support for streaming live/recorded TV from a Media Center. Last I heard, XBMC doesn't support the DVR-MS files used for recorded TV. It's not a big deal if you don't own an MCE machine but a pretty glaring omission if you do.

I've got a 360, so I use my old Xbox to watch recorded TV in my bedroom via the Xbox MCE Extender. The software sucks for just about anything else, but I bought it for the TV support.

DA360 @ Jan 24th 2006 1:06PM

Well, what vast majority of people don't realise is that for the Media Center extender in the Xbox 360 to support codecs such as DivX, Microsoft would need to buy a licence to use the DivX codec on the Xbox 360, and I doubt Microsoft will support a competing codec.

Also, XBMC is a nice piece of open source software, but you NEED to compile it with the Xbox Development Kit, which is illegal for anyone who is not a licenced developer to have, or you need to illegally obtain it from a internet source. You also need a modified Xbox, which modifying an Xbox can be pain to do for allot of people. The Xbox 360 has support for playing MP3s and WMAs (and supports iPod unencrypted MP4 AAC if you download the support for it from the Live Marketplace) and viewing photos, and support for being a Media Center extender right out of the box (which the Media Extender was a $100 investment with the original Xbox and I hear its Media Extender support is not near as good as the 360s).

Also, getting XBMC to stream from your PC required setting up a share using Windows File Sharing (or software with one of its compatible protocols) and setting up a configuration file, which not everyone may not knows how to set up properly. Though obviously if the person could modify the Xbox, they could set up the configuration.

Jason @ Jan 24th 2006 3:07PM

Gee, they kinda missed a big feature, y'know? MCE (and therefore 360 + MCE, since it's just a MCE Extender) lets you RECORD TV. Like a Tivo, yknow? You can't do that with XMBC.

Then there's all the media center web apps, like Comedy Central Motherload and whatnot. There are tons of those in the Online Spotlight of MCE, and XBMC doesn't offer anything like that.

It would be great if Microsoft offered video streaming from a regular WinXP box, sure. And stuff like DivX/Xvid support and other popular codecs. But selling a product with those codecs costs money - you have to license divx, after all. There's a certain "idiot proofing" to using the 360 as a media center extender, while supporting a directory full of AVIs and MPGs and stuff on your WinXP hard drive is a little trickier. What if a file doesn't work - will the average person know why? Does the average person even know what codec that AVI is in (and what version of it)?

Maestro @ Jan 24th 2006 3:22PM

Umm. Yeah. I can't believe you guys of all people really think XBMC can match even half the features of the 360 extender. What does hard drive space have to do with anything? My PC has 300 gigs of space, since that's what's available to my 360 extender why do you even need to mention the 13GB hard drive built in? Media Center doeasn't even use it!

Also, does your XBMC stream live TV? What about live HDTV? Yeah, didn't think so.

This is an extremely one sided "feature comparison". Yes, 360 extenders lack divx, but the good news is that there are great workarounds in place.

It's sad to see xbox360fanboy of all places fall victom to uneducated xbox 360 journalism.

digitarius @ Jan 25th 2006 2:17PM

Above noted "great workarounds" for streaming DivX and xVid onto the 360. ...Where? I've seen one workaround involving a complicated setup that basically caused on-the-fly video transcoding and streaming from a MCE.... but there is no pause/ff/rewind capability in that feature, and it's a major resource hog on the MCPC. My roomie can play Age Of Empires 3 while I stream (wmv) videos to my 360, no problem. Doubt he could do that if the files had to be transcoded.
A lot of this media stuff is found in an early adopter, geekier market. Sure, not everybody even has xVid and Divx files laying around- but I bet a lot of 360 owners right now do. If you're shelling out for a new console, you're either rich or nerdy or both, and the odds are you have some unlicensed anime or DVD rips sitting on your HDD just itching to be played on your 36" HDTV (in my case)
Microsoft will fail, and hard, if they don't start catering to the geek market that's attached itself to the 360. Geeks are the only ones that CARE about all this media center crap, everybody else just gets a Tivo and doesn't bother with anything else.
What burns me is that there is no good way to transcode from DivX/Xvid into WMV. I was perfectly willing to transcode chunks of my video collection (while keeping the respectably encoded original files on backup DVD-Rs), but there simply is no good, efficient, automated tool to do this. The one option I found takes almost three hours to transcode a 24 minute anime xvid, and offers absolutely no Queueing functionality. It doesn't even take me that long to rip a DVD into a great quality file in the first place. And it took me half a dozen attempts at these transcodes to find a combination of settings that worked on the freakin' 360.
The facts, as I see them, are this: In the near future, nobody is going to care about Tivo or live TV or anything like that. We're all just going to download our shows from BitTorrent, probably illegally. And we'll stream to the HDTV, somehow! Microsoft needs to position themselves to take advantage of this. And they need to do it right. Now.

C. Grant @ Jan 25th 2006 3:34PM

Maestro: I'd like more 360-side functionality since I don't use MCE. I use TiVo and Mac OS X. I understand that it's good business to bundle the functionality together, but there's no way I'm going back to Windows, especially when the functionality isn't something that's unique to Windows, it's just closed off.

Re: licensing DivX, how about supporting an open source mpeg-4 codec, like XviD? It plays back a lot of DivX content, and is free to use. That's what all of my DVDs are ripped in.

Mike @ Jan 25th 2006 6:58PM

Uhhh what does the 13gb hard drive have to do with anything? I have Microsoft Media Center 2005 streaming over a terabyte of shows to my xbox 360. Get a clue whoever wrote this article! Its full of misinfo I could go on.

Phil @ Jan 26th 2006 1:59AM

Microsoft it just begging people to mod their 360s, and I can't understand why. Our only hope is that PS3 ships as a very open, accessible piece of hardware, like a PC - then Microsoft will be forced to change. But I doubt Sony would do such a thing.

C. Grant @ Jan 26th 2006 12:46PM

You can be sure Sony won't. They are also content owners. See the botch job they're doing with the PSP. Awesome hardware, crappy software. Now, Microsoft is a huge software company that doesnt own content, why should they lock us out.

To everyone complaining that your MCE works great, I will remind you that not only does not everyone have one, but they might not want one. Many Xbox 360 users will want alternative methods of delivering content to their box. The point of the story is that the hardware can do it, MS won't let it. See PSP above.