New School Slide Show
When I was a kid, my dad was known for his slide shows. It seemed like every month he’d haul out the slide projector and all of us kids would pile up on the floor in the living room and watch through dozens of photos from the previous year. It was always a cool experience - one that families have, for the most part, replaced with digital videos. But sometimes you just want a good old slide show.
That’s where your trusty old XBox comes in handy. If you’re lucky enough to have a kid down the street who can “mod” your XBox (a pretty technical process the requires a willingness to void your warranty), then you just might be lucky enough to get your hands on a wonderful program for the XBox called XBox Media Center (XBMC). XBMC is a great way to turn your old XBox into a media manager for all of your videos and MP3s - a single box that allows you to get your data from all over your house and play it on your stereo or TV. But the brilliant thing about it is the Photo Slideshow.
While playing around with XBMC, I happened to connect into our laptop, where we store all of our digital photos. If you’re like us, you probably have hundreds of megabytes (or gigabytes!) of photos that you almost never look at, let alone share them with your family. Well, I happened to find our photos via the network and while browsing through them on the television, accidentally clicked on the “Slideshow” button. XMBC popped up the photo I had clicked on, but then started fading in and out the others, zooming in and out like the whole thing was a show created by a professional.
Wanting to get tricky, I went over to the MP3 player and started up a playlist of music and then went back to my photos. Now I not only had a professional looking slideshow of all of our digital stills, but it had a great soundtrack from my previously ripped CD collection! I was transported to those good old slideshows my dad would put together for us, but this was so much easier than hauling out the screen and sorting through slides for an hour.
Anyone else with new-fangled ways to bring back the old slideshow? Maybe you’ve tried out XBMC and have your own tips! Let us know. Oh, and about modding XBoxes: it’s one of those don’t ask, don’t tell kinds of things. Wink.
Responses and Conversations
Love this article! You just have to love those things you “don’t” talk about. This almost makes me wish I had an Xbox.. almost.
Comment by Mike on June 6th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Almost?!?
Apparently a good deal of this functionality is available in the Xbox 360, but I don’t have one to try it out on. Personally, I think this is the best reason to get a gaming console - for the media connectivity and the way it frees your photos and music from your computer hard-drive. It seems like all of the other “media” devices just fail to deliver on this front.
Comment by Chris Frazier on June 6th, 2006 at 11:08 am
[...] I loved Chris’ article today about modding your Xbox to run a slideshow. Sounded like a great idea for anyone with an Xbox, but for us who don’t have one, and don’t really feel like supporting Microsoft, here’s a few other options. [...]
Comment by Digital Photography Blogs - Capturing Your World - Blog Archive » Slideshow “No Tell” on June 6th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Hmm.. If I did get a gaming console though, I would almost never use it (for actual gaming) as each game costs about 50 bucks new and I don’t see how one could work better then a computer. Just doesn’t sound right.
Comment by Mike on June 6th, 2006 at 11:19 am
“and I don’t see how one could work better then a computer.”
In that case, the original XBox would be perfect for you, since it’s literally a PC (700MHz Celeron, actually) that’s been converted to:
In fact, when I originally purchased my XBox, the first thing I did was install a standard computer operating system on it (Debian Linux), just because I could.
Of course, if you play video games it’s even better.
EDIT: Fixed bullets.
Comment by Chris Frazier on June 6th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Sounds interesting.. Still though, saving money, don’t have 100 bucks to drop. And I’d have to get a screen as well probably. That’d be something interesting to try though, come to think of it.
Comment by Mike on June 6th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Stop pushing, you XBox dealer!
So, um, when can I come over and play your XBox?
Comment by John Koontz on June 6th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
A good functionality available in the Xbox.
Sounded like a great idea for anyone with an Xbox,
It seems like all of the other “media†devices just fail to deliver on this front,here other option is…
Comment by sam on July 20th, 2006 at 3:54 am
[...] Isn’t Shooting the Kids about digital photography for the baby set? You bet. The thing is, Amy is the one who’s in charge of taking the pictures and I’m in charge of handling storage, slide shows and pretty much anything that goes along with printing out our photos. Switching from Windows to Ubuntu required us to change the way we work, especially with our photos. We don’t have Photoshop anymore and so we’re learning all new software. We discovered that Ubuntu had a cool photo management program called F-spot so we’re learning how that works. For the most part the experience has been positive, but sometimes we run into snags. [...]
Comment by Shooting the Kids - » Why Post About Ubuntu on Shooting the Kids? on December 18th, 2006 at 12:01 pm