Xbox 360 Homebrew — XboxHello + Plex360

Two native .xex apps for RGH/JTAG consoles (or devkit), with a standalone command-line toolchain:

• Plex360 — native Plex client: library browsing, poster grid, detail pages, photo viewer, and video playback (local WMV + streamed transcode). BSD sockets + XML + JPEG + XMedia2/XAudio2.
• XboxHello — D3D9/XInput demo (advanced Hello World).

Build — nothing to install

The XDK 21256.3 toolchain (Xenon PPC compiler, linker, imagexex) is used directly from the command line. VS2010 is NOT required.

build.bat            → build\Release\bin\Plex360.xex
build.bat XboxHello  → build\Release\bin\XboxHello.xex

Plex360 — configuration

Copy build\Release\bin\Plex360.xex and config.ini to the console (e.g. Hdd1:\Homebrew\Plex360\). Edit config.ini:

server=192.168.1.10   ; your Plex server IP
port=32400
;token=               ; optional if LAN is "allowed without auth"
;https=1              ; optional - TLS 1.2 (remote servers, port 443)

Token tip: Plex Web → Settings → Network → "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth" → add 192.168.1.0/24 (adjust to your subnet) → no token needed.

Plex360 — controls

Input	Action
D-PAD	Navigate sections / poster grid
A	Open section/item, fullscreen photo, play
B	Back
LB / RB	Page jumps in the grid
X (libraries)	Play local test.wmv
Y (libraries)	Play test.wmv via USER_IO stream
BACK + START	Quit (back to dashboard)

Screens: libraries → poster grid (background-loaded via /photo/:/transcode) → detail (synopsis, duration, year) → photo viewer.

Video playback

IXMedia2XmvPlayer (xmedia2) plays WMV/ASF: WMV3 / VC-1 + WMA codecs (WMV2 is rejected). Sources that aren't already WMV go through pctest\PlexRelay — a tiny TCP HTTP server on the PC (port 8090, no admin rights needed) that transcodes with Windows MediaTranscoder and serves the growing .wmv by byte ranges to the console's USER_IO stream.

PlexRelay.exe      → http://<pc>:8090  (/start /read /status /stop)

XboxHello — controls

Input	Action
Left stick	Move the cursor
A	Rumble + press counter
BACK + START	Quit (back to dashboard)

Deploying to the console (RGH/JTAG)

• USB: copy the .xex to a FAT32 stick → run it from Aurora / FreestyleDash / XeXMenu (file browser → launch the .xex).
• LAN: FTP into the running dashboard (user xboxftp, port 21) — pctest\deploy.py does it — or Xbox 360 Neighborhood with a full VS2010+SDK setup.

Testing without a console

Xenia Canary runs homebrew .xex files: drag Plex360.xex onto xenia_canary.exe (networking is hit-or-miss).

Layout

XboxHello.sln              VS2010 solution (optional, if VS2010+XDK installed)
build.bat                  Generic standalone build: build.bat [Project]
XboxHello/
  XboxHello.vcxproj        "Xbox 360" platform project (toolset 2010-01)
  src/
    main.cpp               App: D3D9 + shaders + XInput + HUD (~450 lines)
    font8x8.h              Embedded 8x8 bitmap font (public domain)
Plex360/
  Plex360.vcxproj          Xbox 360 project
  config.ini.example       Server config template
  src/
    main.cpp               Screen machine + worker thread + net queue + XMV
    net.{h,cpp}            HTTP/HTTPS GET (BSD sockets + TLS 1.2 via BearSSL)
    tls/                   XboxTLS (BearSSL TLS 1.2, MIT - Jakob Rangel)
    plex.{h,cpp}           Plex API paths + XML response parsing
    xmlmini.{h,cpp}        XML element extractor (tags + attributes)
    renderer.{h,cpp}       D3D9 quads/text/images (3 batches, single VB)
    font8x8.h              Bitmap font
pctest/
  PlexRelay/               C# relay: transcode → WMV, byte-range reads
  deploy.py                FTP deploy to the console
  fakeplex.py              Fake Plex server for testing

Technical notes

• No fixed-function pipeline on Xenon: everything goes through SM3 shaders compiled at runtime via D3DXCompileShader.
• D3DRS_HALFPIXELOFFSET enabled for pixel-aligned 2D quads.
• D3DUSAGE_DYNAMIC / D3DLOCK_DISCARD don't exist on Xenon.
• CPU-written textures must use D3DFMT_LIN_* formats (Xenon swizzles regular textures in UMA memory).
• Retail sockets are encrypted: XNET_STARTUP_BYPASS_SECURITY is ignored on retail consoles — each socket() must be switched to plaintext with the undocumented setsockopt options 0x5801/0x5802 (Net::MakeInsecure), or LAN connect() times out.
• Plex360: network results arrive on a queue (worker thread → main); each list request carries a ticket to discard stale responses.
• USER_IO streaming: pass XMEDIA_CREATE_SHARE_IO_CACHE plus the same callback and context for audio+video so the player demuxes one shared ASF stream itself.