Now that the Xbox is dirt cheap I'm considering getting one. Alas I don't know much about them and the scene. What's makes them worth buying? I know that I could get it soft modded and use it a media center. I would love to use it for emulation purposes....can I burn lots of roms and an emulator to a dvd and play them off that? Or would I need to to replace the harddrive? How does this work?

Basically I'm wondering what are the many cool things that can be done with it?

Also could someone suggest an irc channel I can ask lots of (dumb) questions in?

Thanks

read the pinned topics

Yes don;t bother asking lots of dumb questions. Use google, look at the tuts...
Basically, you can do all that you mentioned, you can also use them as computers and run Linux.

Yup, and you don't even need a new hard drive to do any of the things you mentioned, a stock hard drive will work just fine. That said, you most likely WILL want to upgrade the hard drive later after using it a bit, since it makes things a lot more convenient.

amen to the upgrading hdd!!!
although you can get fullsets for genesis,nes,snes,and a bunch more on the stock hdd with the proper management of space i got all+ 50 n64 games, and halo maps, and media center. i'd say go softmod, but i thats cuz i dont have any experience with chips