Warning: Nothing but pipe dreams lay beyond these words
For most of us, the original modded Xbox was one of the best pieces of equipment we ever had attached to our TV. We had a game machine, a media player, and a homebrewer's dream. Unfortunately the original Xbox is coming up on 10 years of age, the hardware inside of it well beyond. That is an eternity in terms of computers. Technology is always expanding, growing, evolving. What has the original Xbox evolved into? Well, Microsoft's Xbox evolved into the 360. Our Xbox evolved into nothing. We now have a giant gap where our modded Xboxes once lay, with nothing prepared to take its place. I, for one, would like that to change. So, I propose:
XBMC+
Essentially nothing more than XBMC Live, with a strict set of guidelines and requirements, which I like to refer to as a "target platform". What I would like to see, is something like the
Pandora Platform, but for the living room. An open source console if you will, but oh, so much more. Where others have failed, we can succeed
The XBMC+ Target Platform:
Obviously, in selecting the hardware for the project, we want to make it accusable to most. I think we should follow 3 simple guidelines
ize, power, price. Obviously you can't have the best of all 3 in one device, so we try to find the perfect middle ground
Size: I believe Mini-ITX is a perfect solution. Compared to ATX, and even Micro-ATX, it is miniscule in comparison. Plus, with many board makers building boards with stuff like Wifi already included, there is less need for an expansion slot, which brings me to
Power: A single slot GPU should provide more than enough omph to run anything. An AMD 5670 can run Crysis, still one of the most demanding games, 1080p at about 40FPS. Console games like Halo Reach only run at 30FPS, but that doesn't really matter, as we wont be using it for stuff like that. The point is, a single slot full size card is more than enough. A half height card could be good too, but I believe the airflow provided by a taller case more than outweighs the pros of a tiny case. A great Micro-ITX case like the Rosewill RS-MI-01 is only 5.1" tall, 1.3" taller than the PS3, but not nearly as wide. It has more depth, but I don't think (m)any of us are putting stuff BEHIND our PS3s in our entertainment center. Now, as for...
Price: But what about a CPU you say? Well, that's exactly why we're here. Clearly Intel is beating AMD in just about every CPU shootout there is, except in one category: Price. AMD is most always the winner here, which is precisely why it should be used. It pains me, and probably many of you, to say that. Personally, I have an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU in each of my computers, which I have a lot of. But I think a project like this would benefit from more people being able to obtain it. The more people that had it, the more people that would interested in it, the more development it gets. Plain and simple
To even further help with the pricing, I think different levels of XBMC+ would come in handy, and be perfect. Think of it like Windows' rating system. You could build the cheapest supported system, say a Mini-ITX AMD 880G based system with a single core CPU, which already has a built in GPU, and 1GB of RAM. You would then have yourself a XBMC+ 1.0 spec system. It may not seem like much, but could it emulate just about every 64-bit and under console? You bet it could. It could also handle just about every video you threw at it. Want to emulate some PS2 games? Upgrade to a 2.0 spec by bumping the memory, switch to dual core, and add a video card. With different levels, people could actually build their next home computer to the spec, and dual boot between Windows and XBMC+
Why?: I look on the forums, and I see tons of people of people with Atom/Ion systems building HTPCs just for XBMC. Now, how many of you would have rather spent $50-$100 more, and basically had a beefed up Xbox. Something you turn on, watch some movies, play some emulators, browse the web, etc. I know I would, and hopefully you would too. I think $50-$100 more for something that is infinitely better is a GREAT deal
How?: Well, with your help. There are tons of people that loved the original Xbox, like everyone over at Xbox-Scene. There are tons of developers that loved coding for it, like Xport. There are also tons of people that love Linux, and love coding for that like the PCSX2 team. What we need to do, is find them, and bring them all together. It's a task, sure, but it's not impossible. It will take time, which is a good thing
When?: Not now, and certainly not "soon". I think the first target platform should be, at the very least, the next wave of chipsets. I would like to see it based on the coming AMD 900 series chipset, which will hopefully support vital features such as bitstreaming
It's like they say, good things come to those who wait...
I think we can all agree that XBMC dedicated hardware would be a great thing, so its something we do pursue 
