Microsoft has officially started banning Xbox 360 users who’ve altered their consoles in order to play games downloaded illegally from the Internet in a bid to counter piracy. Over 1 million players of the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community have been banned. Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software, but some players have successfully modded their machines to circumvent DRM protections. In light of this event, we have decided to look at some of the most notable Microsoft mods out there.
Carbon Tablet
The creator of this carbon fiber touchscreen tablet PC wanted a Windows 7 touchscreen that could play and stream HD content in an HD resolution. The 13.4″ screen has a resolution of 1366 x 768 and is able to playback 720p content and stream most 720p Flash content. According to the inventor’s blog, almost all Netbooks as well as the iPad have screen resolutions less than 720p (1280 x 720) so they cannot truly playback HD video in an HD resolution. The tablet weighs 3.2 lbs and runs on Windows 7 OS. Instead of using the power-hungry Nvidia Ion, the tablet uses the Atom Z530 with the GMA 500 because of its very low power usage and ability to play HD content.
Windows 95 on iPad
Though we can’t say there is much use in running Windows 95 on an iPad it does bring back old memories (good and bad). The developer managed to fit the 15-year-old operating system running a BOCHS emulator (Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms).
Windows 7 on JooJoo Tablet
A modder known as “darkdavy” installed Windows 7 on to a JooJoo Tablet. Using only the JooJoo’s stock hardware, he was able to create a device with “flawless” 720p movie playback. He’s also noted that the only major drawbacks are lack of support for the accelerometer and inbuilt 3G modem.
Zuneboy
This mod made me say “Yay!” The Microsoft Zune 120 was put inside the shell of the original Nintendo Gameboy. As one of the comments on YouTube astutely pointed out, “this is the most awesome anti-theft system ever”.
OS Xbox Pro
Will Urbina built his OS Xbox Pro so he could run Final Cut Pro for his job as a video editor. According to Engadget, the machine is based on an EFI-X “hackintosh” dongle, has a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550s paired with an NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT card, 8GB of RAM, an 16GB SSD, and four traditional hard drives: one each to boot Windows 7 and OS X, and two 500GB 7,200rpm drives in a RAID0 array for video editing.
Xbox 360 Portable
This is one of Ben Heckendorn‘s latest projects. The Xbox 360 Portable (he calls it portable instead of laptop since you probably won’t play it on your lap) has removable standard Xbox 360 hard drive for easy profile/data swapping, internal wi-fi module and no external antenna (the antenna is strung out inside the unit like other consoles/laptops). It has a full-sized hard-drive and memory card ports to easily transfer data. Of course if you’re looking to manage a high performance environment you’ll need a hosted sharepoint server. He has used the Gateway 17755 LCD monitor with a resolution of 1280×720.
Suzuki Xbox 360 Concept Car
Image Source: Xbox-Scene.com
Not exactly a mod, but certainly worth a mention is the Suzuki SXBox. It was unveiled at the 2006 San Diego International Auto Show as part of the company’s new “LIVE Series” designed for “life enthusiasts, adventurers and thrill-seekers”. Equipped with a dashboard-integrated Xbox 360 video game console, it has a close proximity digital projection system to display games or watch HD DVD movies on the interior of the vehicle’s retractable hood, which can be enabled by the push of a button.
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