??? did the forum go haywire? I thought we had a thread somewhere on this.

my bad I did something wrong...maybe the webmasters can fix it.

no biggie, I thought my browser was borked.

From what I hear - the first ones won't even have a HD in'em. They are going to Extra lengths this time to MAKE SURE that no-one can install extra stuff on em, since it was pretty funny that a bunch of Xboxes were made into linux computers for just $200 :)

anyway - that's all I really know about it.

Dave

Wrong. The first shipment comes in two flavors. One without the hard drive that sells for $299, and one with a hard drive for $399. The reason for the hard drive is to play old xbox games as I believe they are copied to the hard drive to help speed up the code transition.

XBox 360 has already been modded to allow 3rd party apps. The first boxes wont have a HD-DVD drive though which really pissed me off especially after I had already put down my non-refundable deposit.

oh well - Guess I was wrong - as I can tell by your first word :)

Have a good one pmasters :)

Dave

Dave, my apologies if I came off with a bad tone. I assure you I did not intend it to appear that way. :)

no no no - I was afraid it might come across as upset. I wasn't at all - I was laughing - it was funny.

:)

No worries man - no worries at all.

Takes a heck of a lot more than one person can do (probably) to piss me off :)

Dave

"The first boxes wont have a HD-DVD drive though which really pissed me off especially after I had already put down my non-refundable deposit."

That does indeed blow. I wonder if this will have a real cooling effect on sales of this device come Christmas...I'm sure all the hardcore gamers are going to try and wait it out for the HD version.

Also, on paper these sound like insanely cheap screamers but I'm wondering if benchmarks will tell another story?

Hands-On Preview: Xbox 360

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1869701,00.asp

Triple 3.2 Ghz IBM Cores, TeraFlop performance. GDDR3 RAM

Sounds awesome

Using X-Box's as render farm's SOUNDS like a good idea, but it would require major modding to get it working. it's not an intel/AMD x86 CPU, different MB interfaces, etc.

You could probley get Linux renderfarms faster & easier then you could get x-box ones. You'd have to re-write the Vegas rendering software anyway, and every time MS changes the specs on the X-Box MB the software would have to be re-written. :(

It's a nifty idea though. But, screw render farms. I want to edit using Nintendo's wireless 3d motion controller. :D

> ...every time MS changes the specs on the X-Box MB the software would have to be re-written. :(

Why would the software have to be rewritten? What does the MB specs have to do with application level code? The Xbox uses IBM PowerPC processors and IBM already has Linux for PowerPC. Porting the Vegas network rendering engine to Linux is a good idea anyway. Once it’s there, hardware changes shouldn’t affect it.

You know someone will hack a Linux for Xbox 360 (if they haven’t already). All we need is the Vegas network rendering engine on Linux and this becomes a very feasible proposition.

~jr

DirectX might be a big hangup in mapping to Linux. If M$FT wants to, seems they could support the box quite nicely for porting PC applications.

Seems that Apple is trying hard to make the change from PPC to iNtel as easy as possible.

There is a curious line in the preview,

" Connectivity is taken a step further with Windows Media Center and the Xbox 360 acts as an extender meaning that it has full Windows Media Center functionality including My TV, My Pictures, My Movies, My Music, and online spotlight"

So, it's not yet apparent what might be involved in porting to this platform.

Okay I am beyond moist now....

Any hackers reading this put me on your beta team list for the XBOX360 render agent.

It would be nice if it had a remote pc or pc anywhere funtion so I would hafto to switch the TV output from them.

I don't know the ramifications of programming directX, but the idea of porting the render service to linux would be great if it's possible.

But, from a business perspective, Sony Media Software most likely will not want to gear up support channels for a linux add-on to Vegas, regardless of how much we want it. A module like that would better flourish if released as a download with no support, and let us whack away at it.

Again, if there is some DirectX thing that prevents all this then, disregard....nothing to see here....

And then there is that .NET thing too. It seems to the distrubuted render engine in V5/6 is a copy tof Vegas that runs in the background. Might see these things on xbox before you see a replacement in linux.

the OS's for consoles are for specific hardware: for the GameCube it's made to run on an IBM RISC & an ATI video card. PS2 is another risc chip. The X-Box was the exception: it used comman PC parts, stripped down (kinda like cheap pre-manufactured PC's).

The X360 doesn't use PC parts, so an os can't really be ported over, it has to be customised. No biggie, but the problem lies in if MS changes the design (replaces one type of memory with another then the OS memory addresses change, different model of CPU that supports slightly different instructions, etc) or changes the firmware down the line. Current consoles already have software problems with different versions of the same console (Metroid Prime for CameCube would sometimes freeze up on older gamecubes, but a different firmware/design in the later ones didn't have this problem).

I'm sure a "generic" OS could be made (like Windows on PC's) but then odds are you'd loose all the speed increases inherant on a console because of the tweaking. Or, like linux, you'd need to spend hours reading manuals to get everything set up perfectly.

For $400 a pop + editing PC it would be just as expensive in the long run to build an 8-CPU Opteron render & have each CPU act as a computer in network rendering. Or, if you got duel core, it would be even better.