Xbmc Original Xbox

[Chadwick Bosse]

Seethe development page for links to the source code and the SVN repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page. For those that want to build from source, 3.5.3 is tagged here: :8443/xbmc4xbox/tags/3.5.3/.

See the development page for links to the source code and the SVN repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page. For those that want to build from source, 3.5.1 is tagged here: :8443/xbmc4xbox/tags/3.5.1/.

Python support in XBMC4Xbox has been overhauled, with the out of date Python 2.4 replaced with Python 2.7. This update, along with the addition of some missing API functions brings much better compatibility with Kodi (Formerly XBMC) plugins. The Addons4Xbox installer has also been updated, allowing many plugins written for Kodi to work right out of the box. The Python 2.7 update also brings performance improvements, and comes with fully working libraries for sqlite3, and SSL amongst others.

DVDPlayer (The main video player in XBMC4Xbox) has received numerous changes, including having the FFMpeg core libraries updated to v1.2.8 which brings a variety of new codecs, bug-fixes, and optimisations from the previous 0.10.x version. The libraries used for DVD navigation have also been updated which should bring better compatibility with problematic DVD menus.

We had a lot of broken and unmaintained scrapers with the previously version of XBMC4Xbox. With the 3.5 release only a few are included, but they are all maintained and working. We have scrapers for themoviedb.org, thetvdb.com as well as theaudiodb.com for music. Please do support and contribute to these open database projects, as the content and results are only as good as the information people have contributed.

Thanks to Kodi and their useful tools for handling translations, we are now using the on-line service Transifex to manage translations for the project. This means anyone who wants to help improve translations can now go and sign up over at and start translating the software to their favourite language via the easy to use web interface. The updated translations can then be merged back into the XBMC4Xbox code base by us.

There have been many bug fixes around the software with around 44 issues on the bugtracker resolved/fixed as well as more reported via the forum. Thanks to all those that have reported bugs, provided fixes & patches, and helped with testing.

As well as the key features above, many other changes have been made with a lot of backported features and fixes from Kodi. Thanks to Team Kodi for creating our favourite media center software ? Thanks also to all those who help and contribute to our project and forum.

See the development page for links to the source code and the SVN repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page. For those that want to build from source, 3.5 is tagged here: :8443/xbmc4xbox/tags/3.5/.

More changes have been included than we expected after the initial release candidate. This is due to some updates that were planned before, but got overlooked, as well as some fixes for problems reported by users. Thanks to everyone who tested 3.5 RC1 and reported back to us. In addition our PolarSSL was rather out of date, so it made sense to rebuild librtmp and libcurl against a newer version (and update them in the process) . Thanks to Sean for reminding me to pull in the Transifex translation updates.

After a few more months of development, we are very pleased to announce the release of XBMC4Xbox Beta 3. We are getting very close to a final release of 3.5 now, and hopefully if there are no major issues, 3.5 could be out in a matter of a week or two.

Thanks to XBMC and their useful tools for handling translations, we are now using the online service to manage translations for the project. This means anyone who wants to help improve translations can now go and sign up over at and start translating the software to their favourite language via the easy to use web interface. The updated translation can then be merged back into the XBMC4Xbox code base by us.

XBMC4Xbox is a free and open source media player software made solely for the first-generation Xbox video-game console. The software was forked from the XBMC project (now known as Kodi and formerly known as Xbox Media Player) after XBMC removed support for the Xbox console.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Other than the audio / video playback and media center functionality, XBMC4Xbox also has the ability to catalog and launch original Xbox games, and homebrew applications such as console emulators from the Xbox's built-in harddrive.

Since the XBMC4Xbox is homebrew software that is not endorsed or supported by Microsoft in any way, it means XBMC4Xbox requires a modchip or softmod exploit installed to run on the Xbox game-console. Binary builds of XBMC can also not be legally distributed by the XBMC4Xbox project members, so all releases of binary-builds are made by independent third-parties who compile and distribute unofficial versions of the application.[13][14][15][16]

XBMC4XBox's 10-foot user interface is designed for the living-room TV, and the large icons and text in the graphical user interface allows the user to easily manage most common digital music, video, image, podcasts, and playlists formats from a computer, optical disk, local network, and the internet using an Xbox's game-controller or the Xbox DVD-Kit remote control. It also has a skinnable and user-configurable interface and plugin support.[17][18] XBMC4Xbox does also just like XBMC feature; audio visualizations, slideshows, weather forecasts reporting, and a Python-based API for third-party plugins. Add-ons such as skins and plugins for XBMC are not out-of-the-box compatible with XBMC4Xbox due to differences in their API's which means that all XBMC addons have to be ported in order to specifically work with XBMC4Xbox.[12][16][18][19][20][21][22]

The software is not an authorized/signed Microsoft product, therefore a modification of the Xbox is required in order to run XBMC4Xbox on an Xbox game-console. On a modded Xbox, XBMC4Xbox can be run as an application (like any Xbox game), or as a dashboard that appears directly when the Xbox is turned on.[13][14][15][16] Since XBMC4Xbox is an open source software program, its development source code is stored on a publicly accessible subversion repository. Accordingly, unofficial executable builds from the subversion repository are often released by third parties on sites unaffiliated with the XBMC4Xbox project.[14][15]

XBMC4Xbox source code is distributed as open source under GPL (GNU General Public License),[16] and is community developed by a group of volunteering people from different parts of the world working on XBMC4Xbox for free in their spare time. The source code for XBMC4Xbox is mostly updated on a daily basis by developers in a public subversion repository.[23]

XBMC4Xbox has a "My Programs" section which functions as a replacement dashboard to launch Xbox games (retail and homebrew) and applications/emulator directly off the Xbox built-in harddrive, all from a GUI with thumbnail and list options. This replaces the original Xbox Dashboard from Microsoft, and with the exception of flashing new BIOS to an Xbox modchip it also features many extra functions that other homebrew dashboards have.[15]

XBMC4Xbox also has the ability to use and apply Xbox Trainer Files. Trainers are small files that allow for in game value modification (such as cheat code) through altering retail functions in game values by way of using terminate-and-stay-resident keys. There are many things that can be modified including ammunition, extra-lives, or even how high a character can jump. Trainer support in XBMC4Xbox was achieved through collaboration with Team Xored. This collaboration began in December 2005 and came to fruition in January 2006 by successfully integrating the Team Xored Trainer Engine into XBMC4Xbox. XBMC4Xbox can run trainers with the following file extensions: *.ETM and *.XBTF[15]

XBMC4Xbox can be used to play/view all common multimedia formats. However, it cannot playback most native 720p and 1080p video files due to Xbox hardware limitations. XBMC4Xbox can upscale the resolution of many standard definition videos.

XBMC4Xbox uses two different multimedia video player 'cores' for video-playback. The first core, dubbed "DVDPlayer", is XBMC's in-house developed video-playback core with support for DVD-Video movies and is based on libmpeg2 and libmad for MPEG decoding yet FFmpeg for media-container demuxing, splitting, as well as decoding other audio formats. Respective audio decoding is handled by liba52 for ac3 audio decoding and libdts / libdca for DTS audio. Also included is support for DVD-menus through libdvdnav and dvdread.[19] One relatively unusual feature of this DVD-player core is the capability to on-the-fly pause and play DVD-Video movies that are stored in ISO and IMG DVD-images or DVD-Video (IFO/VOB/BUP) images (even directly from uncompressed RAR and ZIP archives), from either local harddrive storage or network-share storage.

The second video-player 'core' for video-playback is a ported version of the open-source cross-platform player, MPlayer, which today is only used as a backup player in XBMC4Xbox. MPlayer which is known for playing practically all common media-formats and XBMC4Xbox handles all codecs and containers normally supported by MPlayer, (which is all FFmpeg supported codecs and also several external ones with the help of proprietary DLL-files.[14][19]

The third 'core', PAPlayer (abbreviated from Psycho-acoustic Audio Player), only supports audio playback. PAPlayer was also developed by the XBMC team, before the projects split, in 2005. The PAPlayer supports more codecs than MPlayer, and is therefore the default audio playback 'core'. Some file formats that don't work with MPlayer play with PAPlayer and there are less bugs (e.g. the visualisation bug in MPlayer, where visualisations 'break' after a file has been played). After the previous XBMC4Xbox site went down, the wiki was lost, so there is no record for supported filetypes for PAPlayer in XBMC4Xbox. However, XBMC.org has a page on PAPlayer supported formats.

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