I've got a couple of new versions of XBMC recently, and they aren't bad.

I was running a version from last year for a bloody long time, but it wasn't great, and I don't think it had proper ty support.

I got a newer version a couple of months ago, but I could never manage to get it to play any videos, I don't know what the problem was there.

Anyway, I got a new version a week and a bit ago, and put it on, it was pretty good. Looks like mplayer is used from playing ty stuff now, and it worked a lot better than the old way.

The other huge thing with this one, was that the beta dvdplayer functionality is in there, so now I can just pop (any region) DVDs in the drive, and it plays them!

The old XBMC I had on there would play DVDs, but it couldn't handle encrypted discs, and it didn't run the menus, you had to just run the vob files, which was a real pain, because I found that I had to use my laptop to decrypt the DVDs to the hard disk, and then either copy them to the Xbox, or play them with the laptop's disk mounted.

I love the samba server functionality built into the Xenium chip too, that makes it so easy to install. I just smbmount the xbox's disk, and unrar the XBMC distribution straight onto the xbox.

Anyway, I put another new version on, after adding the xbox into IPCop's DHCP list, and setting up a couple of DMZ pinholes so I could access it (since it's on the LAN/Green interface, and my laptop is on the Blue/Wireless interface).

I haven't noticed much difference between this version, and the one I put on a couple of weeks ago, I think it was a security patch or something.

Anyway, while my LAN is in the state it is in, with bugger all machines patched back onto it (or turned on), there's not much media shared.

I've been listening to internet radio on the Xbox (a bit more convenient than having a great long cord stretched across the room from my receiver to my laptop).

I just did a quick google, to see if WestNet offer any free radio stations, and I found that they do, there's a forum thread here, and the link to the stations is here. It's probably not much use unless you're on an ISP with access to 3FL or whatever, but anyway.

Oh, and I noticed that one of the streams they have, is the SomaFM Beat Blender stream, which I've been listening to a bit lately, in order to waste my bandwidth, so now I can listen to it for free, groovy!

I'm also looking a bit more thoroughly for a PlayStation emulator for the xbox, since I found those bin/cue files the other day.

I found references to "pcsxbox", but couldn't find anywhere to download it. When I looked on the xbox's disk (via ftp, since I can't find any smb server functionality in XMBC), I found that I already had it on there.

Same old thing though, you need the PSX BIOS file. A quick google, and I found that I could download SCPH1001.bin from driverguide, LOL.

I've got quite a bit of free space on the Xbox disk anyway, so I might fill it up with movies and PSX CD images, save them filling up a disk I could use somewhere else.