Having done more of an opinion than a full review of the Xbox 360 extender, I thought I would do a review on the first generation Xbox Extender for completeness. I have been using this extender for well over a year now, and it has served me very well.
I bought the Media Center Extender for Xbox from a large computer chain in America in January 2005. I don't think Microsoft did a very good job of marketing this package, since the people working in the shop had no idea what it was. I expect that from some of the guys working in computer shops here in South Africa after MANY experiences of either blank expressions, or the guy trying to act clever and telling me the biggest load of garbage. Anyhow, I thought that didn't happen in the States, but it does.
The box contains the Media Center Extender for Xbox disc, a disc with a software update for your MCE machine, some documentation, a remote control and an IR reciever for the Xbox.
I am going to start with the best part of this package. That is the remote control. This remote is awesome. It is by far the best remote of all the Media Center remotes I have used so far, and I have used quite a few. It is black with grey buttons. The weight and feel of this remote is just perfect and the buttons feel good when you press them, high quality. The button layout is excellent and all the shortcut keys you need are readily available. It has keys to access My TV, My Videos, My Pictures and My Music directly. It also has shortcut keys for Live TV, Guide, Recorded TV and DVD Menu. It includes a full numeric keypad and an Xbox button, which I will get to in a bit.
The IR reciever is exactly the same unit as you get with the Xbox DVD playback kit. It simply plugs into any controller port on the Xbox. The Media Center Extender software will not run without this device plugged in.
Installation is very simple. You have to insert the Extender disc into the Xbox. On first load, you will be presented with an 8 character code which you need to write down. You then put the other disc into your Media Center machine and start installation of this software. You will be asked for your CD key (included in the box) and you will need to activate it via the Internet before it will function. You will be prompted to type the code displayed on the Xbox and this will set it up as an Extender. You also have to specify if you want to make all media available to all users or not. That is the entire installation process done.
Onto using the extender. The quality of TV through the extender is very good. I would say it even looks a bit better than having your MCE machine connected directly to the TV. (Of course, I am talking about standard PAL TVs, not plasmas or any kind of progressive displays.) The interface is the familiar Media Center interface but it has been cut down a bit. There are none of the nice page transitions, the green selection bar just jumps from one option to another, rather than the nice sliding effect on the MCE, and there are no music visualisations. You also can't play Divx files. (Although see
this article for a solution to this problem) Otherwise, it's the same.
If you use Xbox Live, you will be signed in with your gamertag and you will be alerted to any Live messages or friends coming online even while watching TV. There is a button labled, XBOX on the remote, which is used for manageing the Live portion of the software.
The one bad thing about this, (which they have fixed on the Xbox 360) is that you have to have the Extender disc in the Xbox drive at all times to use it. This is a bit of a pain. (Unless you "work around" it). Also, there is no way to shut the xbox down using the remote. If you press the power button on the remote, the extender software simply disconnects from the MCE PC, and waits there for you to turn it off manually, or press ok to reconnect. You also cannot switch the Xbox on from the remote control. Actually, they have fixed all of these problems on the 360. Great!
This kit also enables DVD playback on the Xbox. The DVD menu button I mentioned earlier is used for this purpose. DVD playback does not happen inside the extender software, but rather through the built in Xbox DVD player, since you do have to remove the Extender disc to insert the DVD.
On the whole, it works really well, and I do love it. I did make a few "modifications" to mine, making it a little more usable. I
softmodded my xbox, which enabled me to run unsigned applications. I then installed Xbox Media Center as a dash board, which is VERY good. I then copied the Extender program into the Xbox Hard Drive rendering it unesessary to keep the disk in the drive. This is a much better solution. I also have a
post on my blog about hacking the actual extender XBE to support a progressive scan display, since it only supports interlaced by default.