Hacking Stock dash makes my eyes bleed...options?

[HarvesterOfBeer]

I have a fairly recent slim that is updated to the latest patches from MSFT. I don't want to play game copies or play from a hard drive. I don't subscribe to Live/Gold/$$$$. I just want a clean dash that doesn't make my eyes bleed and isn't full of ads and be able to play games from disc.

I'd be very happy if I could run XBMC on it.

Are there any options that don't involve spending almost as much as I paid for the xbox?

Thanks.

 

[FAST6191]

There are some early stage media players and though they do what they set out to do they are barely wii mplayer frontend grade let alone XBMC quality, if you are willing to go to whatever silver is called these days you can download some media addons and it gains a few features (though not even PS3 grade and far from XBMC on a raspberry pi* let alone XBMC on a full machine). Homebrew on the 360 involves fairly serious hardware level hacks (and being on the latest updates and with a later model it might be a touch harder, I am not sure what the going rate is but I would not be surprised to see it up around the price of two new charting games or maybe one and a half if you find a cheaper installer, if you can solder and have a machine with a parallel port then it is not so bad).

*such things are about 10 times better than any standalone console since the original xbox, plus they play H264 where the original xbox struggles a bit.

I am not sure what goes by the way of custom non homebrew skins these days but it was never that great when the dash was nicer (if you are not familiar with them do a search for 360 blades dash and 360 NXE dash to see the previous two styles). You can stick a few pictures around here and there I believe but that is just pictures and not better functionality as you might get from a homebrew hack.

If you do go in for a homebrew hack you can get the freestyle dash aka FSD and xexmenu (there were once others but FSD became where it was at). The skins can change quite a bit with these programs so have a snout round either youtube or maybe http://spiffy360.com/themes.php .

Ads. I tended to have hacked/old dashes without so much as a network cable facing the internet plugged in so I tended to miss out on them (it was a huge shock whenever I went rounds friends that had live). I am not sure if pulling the proverbial cable will still do that for you but it might be worth a go.

 

[DinohScene]

If you don't mind soldering, or can find one that's good in soldering then get it RGH'd

And like FAST said.
FSD is your dash to go then.
To install it and set it up, refer to this tutorial.
As for skins, what FAST said.
FSD has a collection of skins, just search the site and get one you'll like.

 

[tbgtbg]

Yeah, that official dash keeps getting worse and worse. I fucking hate Metro! I used to want the blades back, now I'd settle for NXE. Of course, FSD looks pretty similar to NXE, but that's beside the point.

 

[DinohScene]

Blades where pretty okay ish.
NXE was the best dash ever imho

 

[HarvesterOfBeer]

Ok, thanks for the info. I'll check into doing a RGH hack. Soldering is no issue...

 

[DinohScene]

I hope that you got a V1/V3 Slim and not the others, as the others require a MMC dumper.
And those are pretty pesky to install.

 

[banjojohn]

Do not RGH. R-JTAG is a newer and better alternative...

 

[DinohScene]

R-JTAG is only for Phat 360s
OP has a Slim 360, I wish you the best of luck getting an R-JTAG chip to work on that ;p