Finished tweaking XBMC on the Xbox the other day, and here is the finished result.

If you have huge library of movies and TV shows stored on a computer somewhere, you can set up a network share and XBMC will automatically gather thumbnails and other meta data from the internet.

XBMC can also give you access to BBC iPlayer, ITV Catchup, YouTube and various other online video sources.

For people living in areas of the UK where FreeView is unavailable and you don’t want to or can’t get a satellite dish installed, XBMC can also let you watch FreeView through your internet connection. If you plan on doing this, an unlimited internet connection is recommended. Obviously at this point I’m going to suggest Be Unlimited.

It took me a while to fully get my head around how Xbox soft mods work but now that I’ve managed, It’d be a shame to let all that information go to waste. So let us begin.

Xbox soft modding is basically a method which allows your original Xbox to run 3rd party software like Xbox media Centre without having to physically mod your Xbox using a mod chip. It works by using specially crafted game save files which you load onto a memory unit. Loading these special save files in 1 of 3 Xbox titles bypasses the Xbox’s security and installs alternate software onto the HDD. I won’t go over the details here but there are literally hundreds of tutorials online and they all accomplish the same thing. My particular favourite is this tutorial from Lifehacker.

Once the alternate software is loaded on the HDD, it hijacks the official Xbox dashboard when you power up and presents you with an alternate dashboard that lets you do pretty much anything you want. The most useful thing being to set up an FTP server which then allows you to access the file system, backup game saves, install new software like emulators or media players. The possibilities are effectively limitless and there are a multitude of tutorials available online if you search for them.

It’s important to note that soft modding doesn’t modify your Xbox’s BIOS or EEPROM in any way and hence ALL soft modded Xboxes can be restored to factory condition. No matter what you do to your soft modded Xbox, you can ALWAYS restore it to factory condition using the hot swap method, and that is what I’m going to cover in the next few paragraphs.

So we moved into our new flat just over a year ago and we needed to get a new internet provider. Virgin Media’s ridiculous download limits, anti-net neutrality stance and shockingly bad 128kbps upload speed ruled them out imediately. BT, Sky, Orange and PlusNet all had packages which looked promising but still had similarly ridiculous download caps. In fact pretty much every provider around has ridiculous download caps, even if they claim to be ‘unlimited’. So, that left us with Be Unlimited. (bethere.co.uk)