Xbox Console
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Publisher: Microsoft List Price: £99.99  |
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 | Product Details: Release Date: 27 August 2004 Publisher: Microsoft Rating:   Sales Rank: 1872 | | Look for similar items by category:
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| | Customer Reviews: No competition for the PS2 (08 September 2008)I own an Xbox. I love my Xbox. I specifically like the fact that it can handle otherwise PC exclusive game like Half life 2 (5/5), star wars knights of the old republic (5/5) and dreamfall (5/5) right up to 2006. The Xbox has 3 advantages over the PS2; 1) Superior hardware (can play higher-spec games) which most gamers never notice because most games are available on either platform. It also means you have slightly more options with the graphics upsacaling - again this goes unnoticed. 2) The ability to Rip CD's (VERY slowly) and use the soundtracks in SOME games. Very similar to any PC for the last 2 decades. 3) The hard drive allows for faster loading and saving than the PS2 memory cards. From here on the PS2 OWNS the Xbox; XBOX FAULTS: - Frequent overheating - Size - Price - No USB ports - Easily damaged - Noise - Inadequate memory card compatibility (none) - Very short life (Xbox 360 comes out in 2005) - Ability to play DVD's (Flawed) - Less advanced controllers. The PS2 is older, but better made. Just like the PS3 is newer, and better made. This isn't just a console. It can be so much more. (24 August 2008)Why is the now-aging XBOX such a great piece of hardware? Read on. FRESH OUT OF THE BOX: I'm a very casual gamer these days so I tend to be nearly one generation behind. I simply don't see the point in paying £50 for a brand new title that'll be worth £10 in only a year so I let most of the console generations pass me by thse days, then I pick 'em up when the newest shiniest one comes out and the old ones are dropped like broken toys. It was by chance my flatmate decided to give me his old XBOX. He threw in some good games; THUG2, Deus Ex Invisible War, Project Gotham Racing 2, Thief Deadly Shadows and some others. That was fine, but I soon got bored with playing games and was tempted to start letting it gather dust, sitting there under my TV set which at the time I didn't use much anyway, not being a big fan of most of the shows currently airing then. THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX: I remembered an article I'd seen in a home cinema magazine that stated the XBOX was capable of being used as a budget media centre with very little expenditure and effort. After a little research on teh internetz I discovered that no hardware modification was necessary as it could all be done via software. Scripted software no less, simplifying the entire process. Needless to say, I got ahold of the free utilities - which incidentally are incredibly well made and worthy of donations to the authors - and sat down over the course of a few evenings, figuring out what I was going to reconfigure the XBOX, which is basically a scaled down PC in a small black box, to do. After modification with use of XBOXHDM and Ndure 3 coupled with applications like UnleashX and the mighty XBMC, the XBOX becomes a powerful tool. You can swap out the tiny internal harddrive for the biggest currently available with a simple ROM patch and the EEPROM code to lock the drive to the XBOX; a simple process with XBOXHDM. (I currently have a 160GB unit in there and have found the console so useful I'm considering moving up to 1TB.) That's where the fun starts. ADVANTAGES: Software modified and sporting a bigger harddrive, the XBOX comes alive. You can: (*) Play all region DVDs without buying the extra kit - although it's worth considering as XBMC allows you to reprogram the remote if you have it. (*) FTP your music/film/TV show collection to the box and use XBMC to play them all, complete with decent quality visualisations for the music. Or have your PC in another room and stream from that, negating the need to copy anything. (*) Rip CDs/DVDs to harddrive. Yep, on the XBOX itself. (*) Copy all your XBOX games to the harddrive to speed up load times and manage them all from the new dashboards. This allows you to store your originals somewhere they won't be scratched or damaged in some other way. (*) Install emulators: PSX, SNES, Genesis, Nintendo 64, Amiga, Dreamcast and several others. Most of which run at full speed and in some cases actually improve the visuals over the original system! Makes 'Virtual Console' services look like the ripoff they really are. (*) Run one of several adapted Linux builds and use the console to browse the net; choosing a build like XDSL allows you to do such things as watching YouTube videos through Firefox, too! (*) Add a keyboard and mouse can be added with an inexpensive adapter that connects to the controller ports. Ever wanted to play Halo with mouse aiming without shelling out for the software again? Done. (*) Still run Live when using an original game from power on (read up before doing this so you don't get banned). (*) Boot back to MS Dash, should you want to. (*) Run stripped down versions of Windows 98, 2000 and XP! (*) Soft reset any time - LTRIG, RTRIG, BACK and BLACK buttons. Impressed? You should be. There are many other great things you can do but it won't all fit in this review! CONCLUSION: To me, the XBOX symbolises the start of the integration age, where one inexpensive unit can provide all your home entertainment needs, with just a minimal amount of technical knowledge required to maximise the unit's potential. The console is a basic PC, games unit and media player capable of running in HD and/or with Dolby Surround 5.1. Of course not everything can be output at maximum quality, but given only 64mb of RAM and a 733mhz processor it does a lot. All it has cost me is £3 for some TORX screwdrivers and time setting it up. If you have an old XBOX and some time, I recommend it. You can never have enough media players these days, it seems. LINKS: xbox-linux.org/wiki/17_Mistakes_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xbox_Security_System forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=496263 xbmc.org I like it! (21 January 2008)i have owned and xbox for 4 years now and it has finally given up the ghost but it has been v. reliable and i have had no problems. only problem is that htere r no good platform games but drving, shooting and evrything else r great . got xbox 360 now its not that much bigger than a ps2 and its ghot the same amount of buttons! Excellent multi media centre (but not in the way Micro$oft intended it) (14 November 2007)I bought my main xbox over a year and a half ago and now own two of them! - And I still use both of them quite extensively! Why would you want to buy an xbox these days when there are so many alternatives like the psx 2, or xbox 360? - well I bought mine with the intention of using it as a multi-media centre (no, not the default rubbish that micro$oft gives you!) - I had a lot of divx & dvd backup movies of dvd's that I owned on the pc and mac that I wanted to watch in the living room. Back a year ago the only options was to add a `mod chip' to the system that would allow you to run other software (other than micro$oft approved), nowadays you can `soft mod' the xbox which means you don't even have to buy a mod chip or open up the xbox! I chipped mines with the X3 mod chip, nowadays you can buy a solderless version which means you just push the legs into the right places and away you go! I use XBMC (xbox media centre) homebrew software, which is a totally FREE media playing software that runs on xbox and you can use it to view pictures, play music (wma, mp3, mp4 etc) and play many video formats as well such as divx, xvid, vobs, bins, dvd etc. Since the xbox is plugged into the tv & hi fi, now all our photo albums , music and films are viewable on our living room tv and through the hi fi! It was so easy to set up, that some months later I bought another second hand xbox and a solderless x3 chip for our bedroom. The other big plus, is you can fit a bigger normal pc hard drive - I put a 320gb drive in one of the xboxes, and backed up all my games that I own on it - no more scratched disks - I play them straight off the hard drive! Also you are now, not limited to just European games, you can play US games on it too (there are a lot of titles that were just not released in Europe). On a side note, for those geeks out there, I also installed Gentoo Linux and DSL Linux, both run quite happily on the chipped xbox - both offer virtual keyboards, but browsing the web is a bit clunky due to the resolution (on a normal tv connection you can only get a really low res like 600x800 or so - I think you get better res on hdtv connections (780/1080i), but movies play just perfectly (through XBMC). So if you have a lot of content on your mac, linux or windows pc that you would like to listen/view on your hi fi/tv in another room then an xbox would be an ideal candidate! NB. Some of the older xboxes can have a noisy fan that is audible when your film/music is on low volume, if you are buying a second hand xbox try and get xbox model v1.3 or above. (Also any form of modding or chipping will obviously invalidate any warranties you may have) a great console but only 4 stars (17 May 2007)it rely is a great game console but there is one problem the xbox it over heats and wen it does it stops playin games well mine does an there is a massive variety of games on the xbox startin from rely crap ones to awesome games like halo, hitman, call of duty, project gotham racing, etc etc it goes on and on and to be fair not all ppl like action games so u might want games that i call crap but if u love em then gd for u but if u want a wide variety of games and dont mind that your xbox overheatin then get one but jus make sure u get a new one or one that has been refurbished by a compant that specialises in it and jus dont buy a second hand one for very little money cos you will be disappointed |
