Back when I was teaching secondary and A Level education I decided to purchase an Xbox as a way to unwind after dealing with not so delightful children. I also had the Xbox modified in order to play backed-up games. Sadly it has not been used and has been living in a loft for well over six months now boxed-up and ready to be sold on.

A few weeks ago I decided to sell it on Amazon Marketplace but then remembered how a colleague at UCE uses an old Xbox as a media center, networking it to several hard drives around his house and streaming video onto the Xbox. In fact, a modified Xbox running a program called Xbox Media Center offers numerous possibilities to the user. So I have decided to undertake a little project to turn my old modified crystal Xbox into a fully operating HD compatible media center as an addition to my ongoing research into digital counter-culture as well as pursuit of general interest. I intend to add the following additions:

Once these have all been added I should be able to store media files, such as music, films and television shows, on the Xbox hard drive as well as stream video from my laptop. The necessary components should cost no more than £100. So not only do I get a new wireless media center but also some desperately needed storage space. More information on Xbox Media Center (XMBC) can be found on the official site and the non-academic source Wikipedia (a little reminder for any of my students that might be reading this). I will update my progress with this little project over the coming weeks.