Xbox web browser?

markkilpatrick

Anybody know or heard of one?

GrumPy

Xebian (linux distro) has mozilla.

zAbbo

linkboks, pretty good, available from the usual outlets

mukki

yeah linkboks, but its difficult to read text on the telly

silverlining

mukki wrote:

yeah linkboks, but its difficult to read text on the telly

You wont get any better at the moment I'm afraid. Have you tried increasing the text size from the menu?

Nick_oliveri

The http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/ will soon have a web browser, so you can listen to music and use linksboks. Even watch video and use liinksboks.
Go to http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=396230 for the development process. (currently in beta i think).

Screenie
Edit btw, i have used this, doesnt seem to work with some .wma's e.g it would crash running the web browser script playing damien dempsey.
Crashes if too much data e.g too many images on a web page.
Otherwise, wit the virtual mouse. Its better than the current version of linksboks. You will have to compile yourself. Or use othetr mehods... which are not supported by the dev team.

kaisersose77

Get XDSL ( well it was called that but i havent used it in ages). Its linux but it runs just like a normal app and is only around 50 mb's . Firefox boots up real quick and you can make the font big so its easier to see on the telly.

Nick_oliveri

I have used xdsl but cant get it to work with a PAL display(overscan). Do you use a HDTV to view it properly, or did you change the video settings on xdsl itself from the HD?

kaisersose77

Worked fine on a normal telly (32 inch JVC widescreen). Could be some setting in the .cfg you have to change. Just check out the linux section in the xbox-scene forums and u'll probably find out what the problem is. I put a new HD in my xbox so dont have XDSL on it atm.

silverlining

Nick_oliveri wrote:

I have used xdsl but cant get it to work with a PAL display(overscan). Do you use a HDTV to view it properly, or did you change the video settings on xdsl itself from the HD?

The problem is to do with the Xcalibur video output chip in the v1.6 xboxes (crystal and newer). There is no linux driver for this chip so the overscan problem occurs. There is a trial and error method that will reduce the amount of the interface that exists outside the area of your TV screen but it takes a long while to get right. I used a PAL xbox hooked up via x2vga to a flatscreen monitor (works on TV too though) but I dont have access to that anymore. I use a PC for browsing now and linksboks whenever I'm stuck but a browser for xbmc would be great.

btw does anyone know of any good scripts for XBMC? I have the script installer which is handy but I'd like to connect to some other streaming sites like warp records etc. Maybe I could do it myself? is it easy?


btw also here are those instructions for trying to fix the overscan problem on 1.6 xboxes:

On v1.6 xboxes the kernel has limited support for the xbox's graphics chip and so has no built in overscan correction i.e. the timing (the sum of visible and non visible pixels) is fixed. Simialrly there is no overscan correction when using any of the hdtv modes on any xbox versions.

In theory it should be possible to increase the number of invisible pixiels and decrease the number of visible pixels by the same amount, reducing the resolution but correcting overscan.

The command you need to use for this is fbset. This shouldn't be run in X so you need to start in textmode and either have a usb keyboard or be able to ssh into XDSL (add 2 ssh to the append line in linuxboot.cfg) see the CHEATCODES.txt included in the download for more details. Then if your using ssh connect to your xbox using the username root and pass xbox.

First run fbset -s to see your current framebuffer infomation

it should look something like this:

mode "640x480-60"
# 25.176 MHz, H: 31.469 kHz, V: 59.942 Hz
geometry 640 480 640 480 32
timings 39721 40 24 32 11 96 2
accel true
rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,0/0
endmode

the format is as follows

geometry xres yres vxres vyres depth
timings pixclock left right upper lower hslen vslen

If you want to find out what all of these mean type man fbset. The ones we are interested in are:

xres, yres - horizontal and vertical resolution
vxres,vyres - virtual horizontal and vertical resolution (should match xres, yres in most cases)
left, right, upper, lower - margins at left, right, top and bottom of the screen

We want to decrease the resolution and increase the margins to compensate. The horizontal and vertical resolution number must always be divisible by 8 and the sums

xres + left + right
yres + upper + lower

should remain constant. You should keep any other settings (pixclock etc) the same

You can apply new settings with

fbset -g <xres> <yres> <vxres> <vyres> <depth> -t <pixclock> <left> <right> <upper> <lower> <hslen> <vslen>

So for example you could could try decreasing the vertical resolution by 40 and increasing the top and bottom margins by 20 each to compenstate

Starting with the timing infomation above this would yield

fbset -g 640 440 640 440 32 -t 39721 40 24 52 31 96 2

Moving centre of the screen:

With these adjustments you may find it fixes overscan on one side of the screen (e.g the bottom left) but not on the opposite side as the screen is nolonger centered. To change this try the following:

Looks like to change the position of the screen you need to change the position of the sync pulses. This time tweak hslen and vslen while keeping the sums

xres + left + right + hslen
yres + upper + lower + vslen

constant

hslen is length of horizontal sync pulse, vslen length of vertical sync pulse

To move the screen to the right I think you need to increase hslen & decrease the left and right margins to compensate. To move the screen up increase vslen & decrease the top and bottom margins to compensate. I think you will need to make your changes in multiples of 8 (i.e. could decrease top and bottom margin by 8 increase vslen by 16)

Disclaimer: I don't have a v1.6 xbox or hdtv set to test this on - this is all theory. If you make big changes to the timing infomation it may be possible to damage your television - be careful when changing things and just make small changes.

If it does work for you add the fbset command you used into /opt/bootlocal.sh so it is run everytime you use XDSL

I couldnt find the original link since the x-dsl site dissappeared a while back but luckily I had this saved locally