[nickysielicki]

Anyone else have fond memories of playing around with a modchipped original Xbox? I know I do. I think I still have that thing somewhere in a box, XECUTER3 and all.

I don't think the article makes a big enough point about Kodi being rooted in XBMC, and XBMC being a project that started on the Xbox homebrew scene. Kodi's roots in XBMC are inherently tied to piracy, because every early developer and user had to chip their xbox, and they probably did that so that they could pirated games. That filters who is going to be contributing and using the project, so it's no surprise that movie and music piracy addons popped up with time when you consider that one of the first features of XBMC in the first place was being a launcher for pirated games.

Don't get me wrong, XBMC always has had a legitimate and legal use case, and Kodi certainly has a legitimate and legal use today. But the roots of the project had to do with piracy and it shouldn't surprise anyone that the project attracted piracy addons and continues to.

[octalmage]

I have very fond memories of those days. I remember the first time I saw the Linux boot loader after a successful exploit using Mech assault, my buddy and I high five'd.

The project has obviously come along way since those days, and could probably not be as successful with Xbox in the name or with the stigma attached to it. Hence the rebrand. Their only chance at making it is to distance themselves as much as possible from the piracy.

The reason it's attractive to (pirate) plugin developers is that it's cross platform (they've already figured out how to get it on AppleTV for example), and a generic enough API. You can write Python to hit a webpage, find a URL, and tell Kodi to play it. Kodi has also solved distribution (repositories) and auto updates. I get it.

[b3lvedere]

Very fond memories. Never thought it would be so (relatively) easy to hack wide open such a well protected system like the Xbox. It was so much fun and i learned a lot in the process about BIOSes and firmware.

It also taught me that any device can be (ab)used to the max if you just have the right tools and knowledge. Some exploits are so amazingly easy.

XBMC/Kodi is awesome. I bet there will be a lot of copy procjets if they ever try to lock it down.

[electriclove]

I modded my original Xbox for XBMP/XBMC. I never played Xbox games on it though I did play emulated classics. Not sure if that is typical or not..