the rumours of an north american xbox price drop in april has finally come true as microsoft just now officially announced that the xbox® video game system will be available $149.99 (u.s.) in the united states, $199.99 (u.s.) in canada, 1,999 pesos in mexico and $249 (australian) in australia effective as of march 30, (2004), which translates to a consumer savings of roughly $45 u.s. in addition, microsoft also stated that they will reduce the price of several popular software hits. as we all know, xbox prices in asia was already lowered recently to even less than the price now is in north american after this price drop, however no information yet been made available if all these price drops will be carried over to europe in the foreseeable future too, (so we can only hope and wait).

full press release: microsoft announces new robust north american xbox price move

first of all we like to apologize to all people who entered the contest for the delay we took in deciding a winner, just know it’s very hard to organize such a large team as xbmc/xbmp have become, and on top of that the contenders where all excellent it was so very hard to choose just one. the winner of the xbmp/xbmc official logo competition is tamper with his 31a entry, congratulation 31a. we will now ask tamper to tweak and perfect his entry as the official xbmc/xbmp logo(s), he will in exchange receive a xenuim modchip with lcd-display, (courtesy on team-ozxodus). our thanks goes to everyone who entered the contest.

xbmc forum discussion: xbmp/xbmc logo contest

friendtech, the manufacturers of dreamx send us an e-mail telling us they like to offer frodo a dreamx-733 as their donation to our buy frodo a dreamx-733 campaign. the dreamx-733 by friendtech is a standard xbox upgraded with to 128mb ram, and like it’s big brother the dreamx-1480 it also has comes with a 120gb hdd and built-in spdif optical output (for dolby digital 5.1 surround sound). so our huge thanks goes this time to friendtech for their very generous donation, thank you! again, donations are still always welcomed and needed.

announcement: friendtech supports xboxmediacenter development

cykiller from maxconsole.com responding to xbmc’s buy frodo a dreamx-733 campaign offered a very generous donation, a dreamx-1480 to frodo for further development of the xboxmediacenter project. the dreamx-1480 by friendtech is a modified xbox running on 1.4ghz cpu and 128mb ram, it also has built-in spdif optical output (for dolby digital 5.1 surround sound). other donations we received so far and future donations will of course still be used to further xbmc development. few things on our list are digital-receiver for testing ac3/dtc digital passthrough, and a x2vga for hdtv debugging (on vga monitors). so donations are still more than welcomed and needed.

a huge thanks goes to cykiller and maxconsole.com for their generous donation, thank you!

currently frodo (xbmc founder and lead developer) only has one xbox that he has to develop/debug/use xbmc and play games on, the xbmc-team have therefore decided to start this campaign to collect donations for frodo so he can buy a dreamx-733 to dedicate for xbmc development. we hope to raise at least $500 (for dreamx and shipping), monetary donations are welcomed via paypal. so come on, be generous and help out frodo to support the xboxmediacenter project.

make a donation for frodo’s dreamx via paypal: $10, $20, $50, $100 or $=other
note! remember there is a small fee to send payments using an paypal account

more info and discussion: the buy frodo a dreamx-733 campaign (link)