hey guys, this is my first post so forgive my ignorance, but I got my xbox chipped 3 years ago, and since then obviously xvid/divx etc. codecs have come a long way and been updated, so now when i play some films they don't work very well as my xbmc is running on outdated codecs. I use FlashFXP to access my xbox, and wondered how i would go about easily updating those codecs. Thank you very much, I've read through a few of the HowTo:s on this site and can't find anything that helps. Thanks!
XBMC is a funny beast.. It's a linux app built from what looks like totem-xine. I guess the files that are giving you problems are the h264 things which are becoming very common.. I'm going to be frank for a mo and point out that the xbox doesn't have enough onboard processing power to cope with them properly.. All I can suggest is looking for the open source linux i386 32 bit versions of all the main codecs (w32codecs is the usual package name) and after unpacking them dropping them in a folder where XBMC can find them when needed. I don't fancy rebuilding XBMC from scratch to use new codecs.. because it's an involved and technical procedure (player needs to identify codec type from stream.. then apply it) so you are on your own from here on in. I think you may have more success using a current media player while running linux.. and then finding out how codecs are handled. I think xbmc is pretty old.. and hasn't been updated in any relevant way for a couple of years.. after all.. it's an obsolete player for an obsolete console. further reading http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=306945 http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=10515 http://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/93619-xbmc-codec-pack-update.html http://xbmc.org/wiki/index.php?title=Supported_File_Formats Last update more than 2 years ago
It's a shame that development of XBMC for pc's doesn't seem to be continued/completed, especially with newer stuff like h264/x264 (i still haven't figured out the difference) out there. Xboxes do indeed only have so much oopmh, so i stick to 'normal' AVI files ie files that the xbox can handle. What i do in regards to using newer XBMC builds is to install via Auto Installer Deluxe from http://www.aidtracker.com/ - the latest being v4.30 I use this on various xboxes, a couple of which are chipped machines. You can also get 'T3CH' XBMC builds here - http://217.118.215.116/ - I only once used one of those and i couldn't get it to work but that'll be due to me messing something up, usually whenever i've setup a new xbox i just install XBMC from the latest Auto Installer Deluxe. My (ancient) chipped machines came with ancient installs of Avalaunch & EvolutionX dashboard, after some mooching i found that EvolutionX have an evox.ini file, in there are the pathnames to the ancient equivalents of XBMC - see here - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/680638/4140981 So you can install a new version of XBMC then edit the evox.ini & use the existing xbplayer or XBMP menu choice to point to the directory that contains the newly installed XBMC; or another way is to rename the existing xbplayer or XBMP directory out of the way, then rename the newly installed XBMC directory to xbplayer or XBMP so that EvoltionX will 'see' XBMC. For the Avalaunch i just did the directory renaming trick to get XBMC to be 'seen'. As Varnull posted, the old xboxes only have so much grunt, so even the latest XMBC builds can only do so much, though i'm happy enough with watching dvd's and AVI's encoded with 'normal' codecs thru the xbox, but one day Hi-Def will be much more common in which case i guess we'll just use Linux or Windows pc's to play that content. (I think xbox 360's can stream video but i won't go near a 360 personally due to the fear of it breaking, at least with old xboxes they pretty much only fail due to old age).
thanks for all your help guys, but all this is going over my head! I'm not trying to be able to watch HD movies on my xbox, just want to upgrade the divx/xvid drivers so that the newer films i put on it can play properly and not be so jumpy. I found eg a folder on my xbox under xbmc called mplayer and that has a folder called codecs or drivers with a bunch of dll files in it. I can't simply find a bundle of new drivers and put them in that folder? I'm guessing that they'd have to be registered somewhere on the xbox for xbmc to know to use them. Really I appreciate the help, I just don't know very much about this kind of thing. I'm a bit of a n00b. I am getting my 360 from my mums house though over xmas (i share it with my step-bro but he's going to canada for a few months so i figure i'll take it cos we live in sweden). It's chipped so I should be able to do much more stuff with that, and I'm guessing that it updates its drivers itself via the download updates thing.
Sorry, sometimes we post things so that they cater for people out there who are just lurking, stuff like this always help others, it even helps me when i've forgotten in the future I haven't had any luck putting newer codecs into an existing XBMC installation, hence why i chicken out and install via whatever the latest Auto Installer Deluxe has to offer.. p.s. I certainly don't profess to know about all the latest fandangle codecs and whatnot, let's just say i have lots of AVI's, and the only ones my XBMC installs can't cope with are h264/x264 (as i say i don't know or care about the difference) and obviously Hi-Def stuff. (h264/x264 may even be classed as Hi-Def for all i know!).
is Auto Installer Delux an actual program? Cos i was thinking that the best option is probably just installing a completely new media player with up to date codecs. Any ideas for what the best one is and where to find it + how to install? can i install using flashfxp as i'm pretty comfortable with it
You can get Auto Installer Deluxe from here - http://www.aidtracker.com/ and elsewhere too. Yes, it's an incredibly useful installer, it contains tons of stuff, even various emulators. Basically you usually softmod an xbox then use Auto Installer Deluxe or similar to install any bits and pieces that you need. I used to use FlashFXP but moved to Filezilla (free) in the end. As your xbox is already modded you can just boot up Auto Installer Deluxe and install XBMC, for instance. There are other methods such as FTP'ing stuff over, and different installers, i only use Auto Installer Deluxe personally, it's fairly simple to use.
