I love my Philips DVP642

[JustAGuy]

Is it possible to play with a modded Xbox on Live? I was under the impression it was not, but the last reading I did on the subject was a while ago.

If not, having an Xbox modded would take away perhaps its greatest strength. Seems like sort of a steep price to pay for being able to run Linux and some media. Then again, if you don't play on Live I guess it doesn't really matter.
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Modded Xbox + Xbox Live = Xbox is banned and therefore unable to play on Live.

Yes, I agree completely with what you said. Xbox Live is practically THE reason to own an unmodded Xbox. BUT, mod chips can be turned off, if you have the proper type, and when the chip is off, the Xbox functions as a normal Xbox and can therefore connect to Xbox Live. If you leave the chip ON while you connect to XBL, the Xbox is banned. I screwed up once, and my Xbox was banned when I loaded up Ghost Recon (the bugger auto-connected on me). I believe that Halo 2 introduced a new form of detection where the chip didn't need to be on for you to get banned, not sure though, since I was already banned.

Anyway, I bought a second Xbox for a few reasons; 1. for unfettered Xbox Live play, 2. for Xbox LAN partying, 3. I wanted to own an Xbox in "mint" condition, considering my other one is only barely an Xbox now (in appearance and in function).

For me, there are two reasons for having my Xbox modded. Each reason themselves outweigh the cost of buying a second Xbox (for cheap too, they're practically giving them away nowadays!):

1. The Xbox Media Center. Incredible piece of software this is. I don't even watch TV anymore, I just download the shows in High Definition and watch them over the network.

2. Ability to copy games to the hard drive. Sure, it opens to the door to piracy, but if you own the games already like I do (mostly Xbox Live titles, such as Halo 2) it saves the disk from wear-and-tear, and speeds up loading times. Capcom vs SNK 2 for example has practically no loading time between rounds, whereas playing off of the disk has a noticable 5-10 second delay. Copying games to the drive also allows you to bring your Xbox to a friend's house and not actually have to bring all your games.

A side note about Linux: I would have greatly improved performance in Linux of I formatted a section of the hard drive in reiserfs or ext3, rather than using a loop-back system that sits on top of the Xbox File System (XFS). That's why my Linux is slow as mole-asses.