Eliot Phillips - Engadget

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Stories By Eliot Phillips

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Xbox

Xbox By Eliot Phillips

How-To: Run Flash games on your Xbox 360

Note: Microsoft broke this fun how-to when they released the dashboard upgrade yesterday. The upgrade fixes some bugs, breaks things like this how-to and doesn't offer any new features. So, if you aren't experiencing problems, there is no reason to upgrade. Opt-out and have fun with this how-to instead:At the end of 2005 a hacking group known as PI released a copy of the demo disk found inside of the Xbox 360 kiosks. PI has been cranking out a lot of these game ISO files even though there isn't a way to play them yet. The thing that makes the kiosk disc special is that Microsoft didn't enable many of the security features found on regular game discs. Granted, the actual executable files are still cryptographically signed, but you can manipulate many of the other unsigned files on the disc. The disc doesn't have a strict media flag either, so you can burn it to a CD/DVD and it will play in any Xbox 360. The Xbox-Scene community has been investigating booting your own Flash files using the disc which is what we'll be showing you today. The final result will be a disc that is playable on any Xbox 360.
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Computing

Computing By Eliot Phillips

How-To: Build a practical HTPC

We've seen a lot of home theater PCs lately and being in need of a new workstation, we decide to build one of our own. We started planning by looking around to see what others had done. It would be fun to own a HD capable 2TB box , but we're not going to drop $7,400. SnapStream's 11-tuner performance art piece looked fun too, but not practical. Even Ars Technica and ExtremeTech had decent looking guides, but both systems broke $2K. We wanted to build a machine that had: Good desktop performance Long life through upgradability Cost close to $1,000 So here's how we did it, click on to check it out!
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Xbox

Xbox By Eliot Phillips

How-to: Make an iPod dock for your Xbox 360 (part II)

For last week's How-to we set out to mount our trusty iPod into our new Xbox 360 before that new console smell even wore off. We moved the Xbox 360's hard drive to a location inside the console and cleared the way for this week's How-to: building the dock for the iPod. Follow along and we'll show you how we constructed a dock that fits with the console's lines and can be replaced easily if we want to return the Xbox to its stock appearance.
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Xbox

Xbox By Eliot Phillips

How-to: Make an iPod dock for your Xbox 360 (part I)

The Xbox 360 has iPod support built in, so we thought, "Why not just build the iPod in?" Okay, the train of thought wasn't really that short. We were probably staring at the hard drive blister during a really long download and wondering, "Why the heck is that on the outside?" You could remove it and haul it around like a memory card — and we're sure its size would complement your Zach Morris phone nicely. What should be on the outside? iPod dock. The 360 has good iPod support and your iPod it deserves a better home. For part one of this project we will be moving the hard drive to a new location inside the Xbox. Check here next week for part two where we'll build a dock in the space vacated by the hard drive. This modification is non-permanent and can be easily reversed.
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Streaming

Streaming By Eliot Phillips

How-To: Control iTunes from any web browser

For today's how-to we're going to set up a simple web server in XP so that we can control iTunes remotely. Engadget reader Jordan Parker was tired of having to walk into the other room to change tracks so he put together the PHP script we'll be using. The page it generates should be usable on any device with a web browser. Similar solutions exist for OS X. Click on to get the full skinny — it's worth your time, promise!
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Streaming

Streaming By Eliot Phillips

How-To: Stream almost anything using VLC

The VLC media player is an amazing piece of software. In its most basic form it is a lightweight media player that can play almost any audio or video format you throw at it. VLC is also multiplatform in the most extreme sense of the word; it can run on Windows, OSX, Linux and PocketPC / WinCE handhelds along with other systems. VLC works great as a streaming server and video transcoder too. We used VLC to move Tivo recordings to an iPod before, but today we are going to show you how to stream any type of media file from your computer to another device on your network. We will also demonstrate how to remotely control VLC using any web browser. Using these techniques you could stream video from your office computer to a laptop plugged into the living room TV and control the playlist with your PDA.
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Computing

Computing By Eliot Phillips

How-To: Build a WiFi biquad dish antenna

Wireless enthusiasts have been repurposing satellite dishes for a couple years now. This summer the longest link ever was established over 125 miles using old 12 foot and 10 foot satellite dishes. A dish that big is usually overkill for most people and modern mini-dishes work just as well. The dish helps focus the radio waves onto a directional antenna feed. We're building a biquad antenna feed because it offers very good performance and is pretty forgiving when it comes to assembly errors. Follow along as we assemble the feed, attach it to a DirecTV dish and test out its performance. Why? With just a handful of cheap parts, a salvaged DirecTV dish and a little soldering, we were able to detect access points from over 8 miles away. Using consumer WiFi gear we picked up over 18 APs in an area with only 1 house per square mile.
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Gaming

Gaming By Eliot Phillips

Functional Revolution controller mock-up

We've been known to get a little anxious waiting for new gadgets, but we usually don't take it as far as building them ourselves. Tsietisin wanted to know how the new Nintendo Revolution controller would actually play. Luckily he already had an assortment of bizarre controllers. By combining a Gyration mouse with an ASCII Grip one handed Playstation controller and a custom keymap he tried playing Half-Life 2 deathmatch. Aiming proved to be more difficult, but Tsietisin feels that, with a little practice, gamers will love this new controller layout. Oook.
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Accessories

Accessories By Eliot Phillips

HOW-TO: Connect your Linksys WRT54G network to the internet wirelessly

Got friendly neighbors that want to share their broadband connection with you? Even if they don't want to, you can still use "client mode" to share a single wireless internet connection with your entire home network. You also get the added bonus of a firewall between your network and the private network you're connecting to. This tutorial shows you how to upgrade your Linksys WRT54G to a third-party firmware and then enable client mode.
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