Like most kids in the 90s–00s, I pirated the usual stuff off Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, etc. But it wasn’t until this episode of The Screen Savers in 2004 that I really dove in. Modding my Xbox and installing XBMC absolutely blew my mind, suddenly I could stream movies from my family PC straight to the Xbox over my LAN.
I spent countless hours reading tutorials on Xbox-Scene and lurking the forums until I finally upgraded the stock 8GB hard drive to a massive (to me at the time) 80GB Seagate from Walmart. I proceeded to back up all the games my friends lent me, but I wanted more. That’s when I stumbled onto a forum post mentioning newsgroups. By pure luck, my ISP at the time (RoadRunner) included newsgroup access for free, and that changed everything.
Games, movies, and music all instantly accessible from my Xbox at the push of a button. No more swapping discs, no more Blockbuster runs, and no more taking the bus an hour each way just to get ripped off at GameStop.
To this day I still pirate my media off of Usenet and have this clip to thank for it. Wherever you are on your journey keep on sailing.
Kevin Rose was awesome! He had a little handheld he was talking about that introduced me to the concept of war driving.
That sounded waaay more exciting than it turned out to be.
I know that's right! LMAO
so many good memories with that stuff, miss those days for sure
I can Digg it.
The irony of this site pretty much being the downfall of Digg.
Digg is alive again FWIW
In the form of a private equity cash grab. Digg was the tits in 2008, then got outmaneuvered by mobile browser pivots.
I see what you did there. Take my upvote
Still remember finding out Rachel got blown up in The Dark Knight, and Fedor lost, thanks to Digg
This was such a great show. I also learned a bunch from them.
Bro this show and Kevin Rose specifically got me into IT. I used to idolize this dude lol. I’ve been doing IT work for 14 years now. Crazy how fast technology has changed.
I remember being stoked I used an employee discount to nab a deal for $72 for a mind blowingly massive 2GB flashdrive, back in the day.
Now a box of 300 sit above my desk to just give away to any rando who needs one.
this is the smoothest ive ever seen anyone who gives hacking tutorials talk
I'm still mad about the G4 upheaval of TechTV. I think a lot of the crew is still doing the same type of stuff, but separately and on podcasts/youtube/their own. Call For Help was also a good one. Who else remembers the 24 hour CFH-athon? Those were the days and exploits like this made learning fun (kind of how you can be in a school science lab and make something go boom). And the weekly game hosting!
I really wish TSS and CFH had present day iterations.
God, I'd still watch those shows on a loop if I could/they were available...
TechTV was a good network.
Dude, I remember this.
I remember I was poor, so I couldn't get any adapters to get the save file onto the Xbox, but I had a memory card, a controller, and a broken USB device (I think it was a broken mouse).
So I took the controller apart, drilled a hole in the back of the controller, ran the USB cable that I clipped from the broken mouse through the hole and soldered the wires onto the wire connections for the controller (hoping that the color coding was the same), plugged the USB into my computer and voila, I was able to transfer files over to my memory card.
Then I ran this exploit with the Splinter Cell game.
I think I was 13 at the time.
That was a lot of fun.
I still have that Xbox. My kids play on it now With my old save files and gamer tag.
I had a similar journey, but I got a blockbuster account and ripped games for a month.
My journey started in 1996-97 on my PS1. We would copy and burn games onto DVDx, then you had to pin down the PS1 lid sensor, and perform a timed disc swap with a legit game by listening to the loading clicks and spin timing. Start with a real game, sawp to the burn, back to the real game, and back to the burn one more time.
Yep i had some weird disc and plastic insert I put in mine that would hold the power (?) down or something so you could swap the disc after the import disc had ran. I used it with one import dbz game I bought bc it was so expensive and took long to get back in the day. I think money order was the way you paid for it lol
XBMC was the goat. I had used standalone media players for years before that, but when I had to make things presentable for my wife to use it XBMC really made things feel clean and professional.
We changed to Plex a couple years after that and when I got tired of their shenanigans (who wants the interface changing every year?) upgraded to Jellyfin in 2020. Now with the arr family everything is basically hands off.
Back then u could figure this shit out in your basement with a good IRC
Nowadays you need a cs degree and we didn’t even crack denuvo fully
Anyone else feel old when you hear the name Kevin Rose, think of Digg.com and some strange folks from another site I had not heard of at the time coming over and doing some "reddit brigade" stuff? I went to reddit, but did not "get it" at the time. How time flies.
now lemmy is where the cool kids hang
Kevin Rose. Patrick Norton. Tech TV. \Nostalgia Feels**
My piracy started when my dad went into our basement and messed with the filters so we can have Disney channel in the 80s. This was before black boxes which we had all over the house also.
It's funny to see piracy sorta pop up as mainstream. I was downloading shit off BBS's and going over to people's houses with a whole stack of blank floppies.
Thank you to them and the XBMC people. I love my Kodi.
This was in the back of my mind. The first game I ever messed with was because of this video
G4 BABY.
I always share one of my favorite scenes on X-Play.
Tech TV.
They're the same picture.
G4 merged with Tech TV when I was hs, so I didn't pat attention to it as much.
I missed the merger.
My favorite scenes were the ones with Morgan Webb & Olivia Munn.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I just remember why did you kill me......WHHHHHYYYYYY!!! when I was a kid and me laughing my ass off.
As soon as I found it on YT, I saved it.
I also revist clips from ATHF and many [as] shows.
Diane Mizota
I modded my 360, was even playing games before they were released and getting trophies. Those were good times b4 it was banned
It was banned?
That console yeah. Shockingly my XBL account wasnt
Now I need to know if anyone made an archive of X-Play lmao
What ever happened to this channel and hosts? All I remember the one girl did Maxim and some movies afterwards.
This brought back a sense of nostalgia I had when I modded my Wii
My god, it was beautiful. We didnt know what we had and lost.
funny to think about my family was "pirating" since before I was born. Recording TV on VHS tapes or recording radio or other cassette tapes. I also found usenet and never looked back. Haven't torrented anything in over 10 years.
The most millennial show to ever exist
Oh the mammaries.
They were the breast of times
Cool video, I love og xbox history. This is a super early look at the modding scene at the time. most of what hes showing is from 2002 ish. but I think by 2004 we had auto installer delux. And he is using a later lpc modchip with dual boot options.. that platinum hits copy of MechAssault is from 2003 though... and correct me if im wrong, but they patch the exploit with the platinum hits ver. og ver is MS02301L from 2002. platinum hits is MS02308L from 2003. (redump marks the platinum hits as "rev 1")
Another fun little thing. He has never updated or taken his xbox online, which was out in 2002 with MechAssault as hes stock dashboard is the 3 menu item one, missing the xbox live 4th option. (well settings is 4th, xbl is 3rd but now i'm nit picking)
Cool.
I had a pink one of those shitty MP3 players.
My Xbox was the first system I owned that I modded myself.
There's a lot more things you can do to it if you look.
Cozy
Seeing Evolution X was a blast from the past!
Definitely purchased some books by Leo Laporte back in the day!
Anything similar these days?
Its all on YouTube these days loads of how to on there 👍
This is the pioneer of piracy. Cool.