X5 expansion kit adds up to four drives to your Xbox
posted Oct 17th 2005 1:45AM
The poor old regular Xbox just doesn't get much love anymore. The daily pressures of being a console are hard enough without the prospect of being supplanted by a faster, slimmer, and whiter version of itself. So show the old guy you still care with an additional four hard drives. That's right, 10GB just doesn't cut it in this media centric world, so why not slap a terabyte of storage in there? You know you want to. The X5 is an expansion kit that doubles the height of your existing box and adds the room for four drives (not included), a couple of fans, and an external knob for selecting which drive to run from. There is a decent amount of work involved to modify your unit with this expansion, but the instructions are fairly clear, and you won't be doing anything crazy like soldering to execute them. Sure four drives are absolute overkill if you're just humming along with a standard issue Xbox, but if you're running some of those mods all the hipsters are sporting these days, then this might be just the ticket for your multiple bootable Linux distro fantasies.
Sweet! Slap *nix on that thing, pump it full of MythTV, and you instantly have a DVR with virtually unlimited storage.
Cheapest media center PC money can buy, I tell ya.
AND you can use MythTV to play your favorite emulators--SNES and MAME included.
(Besides all the sweet, sweet irony of turning a Microsoft product into an open-source bastion of joy and wondrousness. At least, once you get it set up.)
How does it become a DVR if there isn't a video in? Is there a mod for that?
Weak engadget THey have had a product like this for about a full year now .
http://www.modchipman.com/xtender-hydra-put-hds-in-one-xbox-p-181.html
And it is only 50 bucks . I would expect this out of other sites but not engadget . Please do not give this person free sales and advertising for a weak overpriced cloned product .
#2 Touch?!
Anyway, an Xbox with XBMC is an awesome way to watch all your tv torrents on TV.
I haven't seen a mod for doing MythTV on Xbox yet.. dosen't mean they aren't out there though. Seems kinda hard to do.. maybe with some of the USB hacks out there they can do a USB input?
However, if you're looking for a network video player, XBMC is the best networked video player for TV hands down - http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/
I bought a Dlink DSM-320, and returned it after it had problems playing tons of my XviD/DivX files. Looked at a couple others, and they all were limited to MPEG2 only or didnt work with all my files.
XBMC plays pretty much every file I've thrown at it, and is the slickest looking media player by far. I'm suprised no one has taken the XBMC code, and made a commercial product out of it. Add to this the fact it can do network weather, Apple quicktime trailers, IMDB lookups, etc.. It simply rocks.
Whoa, thats huge!
Does this remind anyone else of the Nintendo 64DD?
Woah thats uncessary more like.
One drive of 200gb is pretty much enough, and that doesnt require you to have a goofy case expansion, it just involves replacing the original hd.
If 200GB is enough for a PC, why would you need more on an XBOX?
Yeah is old, pointless, and the Xbox 360 is coming out in just over a month.
Yawn
I can't back the myth thing up, honestly. I was researching MythTV and somewhere, somebody talked about using MythTV on the Xbox, and I'm far too lazy to dig up the link. Surely, though, it can be done--especially considering the enormity of that mod.
Yeah, #1's an ass.
Excuse me while I cower in shame and humiliation.
Dont put yourself down Vincent, it is cool, but it is sooo 2004..
Theres a lot more than running movies/TV series and emulators that can be done...
I already did this!!!
900gb of beauty http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/xboxmod/
catch up guys!
well that's going to be good for us geek
I just don't know if my old Xbox will last any longer... The thing is makin' some pretty weird noises. I don't trust it enough to throw new money at it!
Vincent is right. U can actually install a mythtv front-end on the xbox that plays content from the back-end/server that has the actual pvr/tuners.
The Xbox Xtender Case released over 1 year ago does exactly the same for just 50usd.
review: http://www.xbox-scene.com/hardware/xtender.php
Are the HDs included or what with a 200usd pricetag on this 'X5' ?
SilverX,
The Xtender can only accommodate 2 drives. Apparently, the X5 also has much nicer fit and finish than the Xtender.
This was actually done over THREE years ago!
http://411gb.50megs.com/411gb.htm
It's a waste of time and a generally bad idea. You can't address 4 or 5 drives with the Xbox, heck you can't even adress 2. The best solution for massive storage is installing XMBC to boot as the default dashboard and then configuring it to use network shares for all the data. You can use a larger 250gb drive in the xbox itself if you wish to run "homebrew" software on it, but for media playing it is a way better idea to use a network source anyways as you can then configure the xbox to spin down the HD and also slow the cooling fan which makes the thing actually quite enough to not be bothersoem and drown out dialogue....
The problem with the xtender,the so-called original..........does not work 95% of the time. The X5 works! And able to have a total of 5 hard drives in the console. The main thing here is it works and better built. Id rather spend more on something that works than something that don't.
Ok...
First off, all of your comments prove that none of you can actually read.
Otherwise you would have read up on both products you are speaking of and noticed some MAJOR differences.
1. The OLDER Xtender mod only allows 3 hard drives to be installed at one time and it is buggy.
2. The new X5 allows 5 hard drives, AND IS 100% solderless!!!!
So you are wrong. There is no other mod like this, and you need to read up on shit first before you start posting like idiots.
Now go home and die.
Sweet! Slap *nix on that thing, pump it full of MythTV, and you instantly have a DVR with virtually unlimited storage.
Cheapest media center PC money can buy, I tell ya.
AND you can use MythTV to play your favorite emulators--SNES and MAME included.
(Besides all the sweet, sweet irony of turning a Microsoft product into an open-source bastion of joy and wondrousness. At least, once you get it set up.)
How does it become a DVR if there isn't a video in? Is there a mod for that?
Weak engadget THey have had a product like this for about a full year now .
http://www.modchipman.com/xtender-hydra-put-hds-in-one-xbox-p-181.html
And it is only 50 bucks . I would expect this out of other sites but not engadget . Please do not give this person free sales and advertising for a weak overpriced cloned product .
#2 Touch?!
Anyway, an Xbox with XBMC is an awesome way to watch all your tv torrents on TV.
I haven't seen a mod for doing MythTV on Xbox yet.. dosen't mean they aren't out there though. Seems kinda hard to do.. maybe with some of the USB hacks out there they can do a USB input?
However, if you're looking for a network video player, XBMC is the best networked video player for TV hands down - http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/
I bought a Dlink DSM-320, and returned it after it had problems playing tons of my XviD/DivX files. Looked at a couple others, and they all were limited to MPEG2 only or didnt work with all my files.
XBMC plays pretty much every file I've thrown at it, and is the slickest looking media player by far. I'm suprised no one has taken the XBMC code, and made a commercial product out of it. Add to this the fact it can do network weather, Apple quicktime trailers, IMDB lookups, etc.. It simply rocks.
Whoa, thats huge!
Does this remind anyone else of the Nintendo 64DD?
Woah thats uncessary more like.
One drive of 200gb is pretty much enough, and that doesnt require you to have a goofy case expansion, it just involves replacing the original hd.
If 200GB is enough for a PC, why would you need more on an XBOX?
Yeah is old, pointless, and the Xbox 360 is coming out in just over a month.
Yawn
I can't back the myth thing up, honestly. I was researching MythTV and somewhere, somebody talked about using MythTV on the Xbox, and I'm far too lazy to dig up the link. Surely, though, it can be done--especially considering the enormity of that mod.
Yeah, #1's an ass.
Excuse me while I cower in shame and humiliation.
Dont put yourself down Vincent, it is cool, but it is sooo 2004..
Theres a lot more than running movies/TV series and emulators that can be done...
I already did this!!!
900gb of beauty http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/xboxmod/
catch up guys!
well that's going to be good for us geek
I just don't know if my old Xbox will last any longer... The thing is makin' some pretty weird noises. I don't trust it enough to throw new money at it!
Vincent is right. U can actually install a mythtv front-end on the xbox that plays content from the back-end/server that has the actual pvr/tuners.
The Xbox Xtender Case released over 1 year ago does exactly the same for just 50usd.
review: http://www.xbox-scene.com/hardware/xtender.php
Are the HDs included or what with a 200usd pricetag on this 'X5' ?
SilverX,
The Xtender can only accommodate 2 drives. Apparently, the X5 also has much nicer fit and finish than the Xtender.
This was actually done over THREE years ago!
http://411gb.50megs.com/411gb.htm
It's a waste of time and a generally bad idea. You can't address 4 or 5 drives with the Xbox, heck you can't even adress 2. The best solution for massive storage is installing XMBC to boot as the default dashboard and then configuring it to use network shares for all the data. You can use a larger 250gb drive in the xbox itself if you wish to run "homebrew" software on it, but for media playing it is a way better idea to use a network source anyways as you can then configure the xbox to spin down the HD and also slow the cooling fan which makes the thing actually quite enough to not be bothersoem and drown out dialogue....
The problem with the xtender,the so-called original..........does not work 95% of the time. The X5 works! And able to have a total of 5 hard drives in the console. The main thing here is it works and better built. Id rather spend more on something that works than something that don't.
Ok...
First off, all of your comments prove that none of you can actually read.
Otherwise you would have read up on both products you are speaking of and noticed some MAJOR differences.
1. The OLDER Xtender mod only allows 3 hard drives to be installed at one time and it is buggy.
2. The new X5 allows 5 hard drives, AND IS 100% solderless!!!!
So you are wrong. There is no other mod like this, and you need to read up on shit first before you start posting like idiots.
Now go home and die.