I've been debating getting an Xbox (original) due to it's media abilities. What kind of abilities are offered with third party applications for streaming meida over a network? What all will I be able to do?

I think the XBOX (after being modded) can stream any form of media EXCEPT high definition content.

This is a great website for you Spec!

The program you're looking for is XBOX Media Center.

Here's an "official" 'mod' to the XBOX from Microsoft

Here's a 'how-to' on how to build a XBOX Media Center

And finally, here's the Wiki page for the whole process

Many would say that the XBOX media center is a lot more versatile than the integrated media center extender in the XBOX360, but the main thing at this point is...the XBOX isn't powerful enough to do 720p or 1080i (HD) resolutions...

From the Wiki Page...

Format support

XBMC can be used to play/view all common multimedia formats 'straight out of the box'. For a detailed list see the "Supported Formats" list in XBMC online-manual here.
XBMC uses two different multimedia player cores for video playback.
The first is a ported version of the open source cross-platform player, MPlayer, which is known for playing proprietary media-formats without having to pay license fees. XBMC handles all codecs and containers normally supported by MPlayer (all FFmpeg supported codecs and also several external one with the help of proprietary DLL-files: RealMedia, QuickTime, WMV9/WMA9, VP4/5/6), and the sources are synced at regular intervals. Here's a list of supported formats.

• Container formats: 3gp, AVI, ASF, FLV, Matroska, MOV, MP4, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia
• Video codecs: 3ivx, Cinepak, DivX, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV, XviD
• Audio codecs: AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, MP3, RealAudio, Shorten, Speex, Vorbis and WMA.

The second is a in-house developed DVD-player for DVD-Video movies, including the support of DVD-menus, (based on the open source libraries libcss and libdvdnav). This core support all the FFmpeg codecs, and in addition the MPEG-2 video codec, and the audio codecs DTS and AC3 (based on the open source libraries, libmpeg2, libdca, and liba52 respectivly). One relativly unusual feature of this DVD-player core is the capability to parse and play DVD-Video movies that are stored in ISO and IMG DVD-images, and DVD-Video movies that are stored as DVD-Video files (IFO/VOB) on a harddrive or network-share, and also images in RAR and ZIP archives. In addition the DVD-player core can upconvert all DVD-Video movies and output them to 720p or 1080i HDTV resolutions in better quality than most (if not all) HDTV's native function to upconvert video.
For audio playback, XBMC includes its own in-house developed player: PAPlayer (Psycho-acoustic Audio Player). Some of this cores most notable features are resampling to the Xbox's native audio frequency (48 kHz), Gapless playback, crossfading, ReplayGain, Cue Sheet and Ogg Chapter support. It handles a very large variety of sound files: MP2, MP3, OGG (Vorbis), MPC, LC-AAC, AAC+, APE, FLAC, WavPack, SHN (Shorten), WAV, DTS, AC3, CDDA, WMA, IT, S3M, MOD (Amiga Module), XM, NSF (NES Sound Format), SPC (SNES), GYM (Genesis), SID (Commodore 64), Adlib, YM (Atari ST), ADPCM (GameCube). It also supports many different tagging standards: APEv1, APEv2, ID3v1, ID3v2, ID666 and Vorbis Comments.
XBMC also handles many picture/image formats with the options of panning/zooming and slideshows, with the use of CxImage. Supported formats are: BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, MNG, ICO, PCX and Targa.
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Limitations

• XBMC can currently not play any audio/video files protected/encrypted with Digital Rights Management (DRM), such as music purchased from ITunes Music Store, MSN Music or Audible.com. Workaround: Removed that DRM protection/encryption with some third-party software before you try to play it, like: hymn, FreeMe, Un****, DRM2WMV or DRMDBG).
• Universal Disk Format (UDF) file-system limitation: XBMC only support UDF version 1.02 (designed for DVD-Video media), which has a maximum file of 1GB (meaning if you burn a DVD-media in a newer UDF version with a video that is larger than 1GB then XBMC will not be able to play that file), same goes for UDF/ISO hybrid formats (a.k.a. UDF Bridge format). Workaround: Burn all your CD/DVD-media in ISO 9660 format which is the largest is standard anyway, (though ISO 9660 has a 2GB file-size limitation that there is no workaround for).
• The Xbox built-in harddrive is formated in FATX which has a 4GB file-size limitation, and only supports file/folder-names up to 42 characters, a maximum of 255 in total file-structure character-depth and a maximum number of 4096 files/folders in a single subfolder, plus in the root of each partition the maximum number of files/folders is 256. FAT does not either support all ACSII characters in file/folder names (like for example < > = ? : ; " * + , / \ | ¤ &). XBMC will automaticly rename any files/folders you transfer to the Xbox by these limitations. (None of these are XBMC issues that can be fixed as the limitation is in the Xbox itself). Workaround: Store your files/folders on your computer or a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) device/box and share them over a local-area-network instead.
• With its 733Mhz Intel Pentium III and 64MB shared memory, the Xbox does not have enough hardware-resources (not fast enough CPU nor large enough RAM-memory) to play 720p/1080i resolution-native HDTV video (at 1280x720 and 1920x1080 pixels), (like WMV HD). Workaround: XBMC can however upconvert all 480p/576p standard-resolution movies and output them to 720p or 1080i HDTV resolutions in better quality than most (if not all) HDTV's native function to upconvert video.
• Again with its 733Mhz Intel Pentium III and 64MB shared memory, the Xbox does not have enough hardware-resources (not fast enough CPU nor large enough RAM-memory) to play MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) encododed videos with Cabac and Deblocking if the video-resolution is higher than 352x288 pixels. Workaround: If you encode your MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) videos without Cabac and Deblocking then the Xbox hardware can handle up to 480x576 pixels video-resolution. Though best is to encode your videos to MPEG-4 ASP (like DivX or XviD) instead, then the videos native-resolution can be up to 960x540 pixels (a.k.a. HRHD resolution).

Thank you for those links NCXCStud. Looks promising, cheap aswell. Maybe a viable alternative to building an HTPC.

Quote: Originally Posted by Spectrum Thank you for those links NCXCStud. Looks promising, cheap aswell. Maybe a viable alternative to building an HTPC.

And a fun hacking project to boot.

Hit me up on MSN Spec I can give you all the programs and info you need. I have done over 50+ boxes.