# XBMC for the Original Xbox

21 Hacker News commenters recommended XBMC for the Original Xbox and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free media player for the Original Xbox that people remember as smooth and far ahead of its time, playing movies and TV from network shares and disc files.

## Why people recommend it

- Felt futuristic and far ahead of its time (4 comments): "Long before there was Netflix, there was an Xbox running XBMC loaded with movies and TV shows" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46009836)) "it just being so much better than anything else available at the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46007033)) "truly felt like something from the future" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006888))
- Revives old hardware as a cheap player (4 comments): "24 year old hardware that is not only useful but punches above most of the set-top boxes you'll find on Amazon" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006609)) "It was a life-changing tool: take some cast-off free hardware and a bit of free software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46010850)) "Still have the original Xbox, working like a charm." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018436))
- Streams media from network servers (3 comments): "I had XBMC in the living room connecting to my server which auto downloaded all the latest tv and movies." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46010277)) "it was even able to stream movies from multi volume rar files over SAMBA which felt like magic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006887)) "So many streaming sources and high performance/responsiveness." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006499))
- Smoother interface than Xbox 360 dashboard (2 comments): "being blown away by how much smoother and nicer it was then the blades interface on the Xbox 360 at the time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46008612)) "Very cool to see such an old console get a first class modern media player experience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46007501))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [VLC media player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vlc-media-player.md): 172 recommend
- [mpv media player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mpv.md): 82 recommend
- [Infuse video player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/infuse.md): 78 recommend
- [Kodi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kodi.md): 64 recommend
- [TV Explorer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tv-explorer.md): 37 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "XBMC for the Original Xbox", https://hackerapproved.com/p/xbmc/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).