All right, so I modded my console after MS started banning the 1.6 Ixtreme cfw modded consoles on XBL and I never went online with it knowing that I'll get banned. I've been waiting for the new LT firmware from c4eva to come out for hitachi but i'm running out of patience. I personally want to be able to buy dlc and XBL games like Limbo. My question is if I can safely connect to XBL without launching a game, go on the marketplace and buy dlc and w/e games I want without getting banned.

No-one know's for sure. Your best bet is to flash back to stock to be uber sure, and then grab what you want - although there's no guarantee that your 360 won't get banned. Most people have two 360's now - one for Live, one for offline use.

doesn't make a bit of difference how you did what, or what little bit you did actually do! *especially* with 1.51... 1.51 is the auto-ban fw. if you've ever had it installed in your dvdrom, they'll detect it as soon as you do eventually someday get online. no matter if you've ever played a game or not. and once they do detect it, your'e a goner. 1.51 is a hopeless situation. tis a shame you had to learn this lesson the hard way, but, we all started at that point, one day....

Hey,

I also have Hitachi 1.51 and wanted to download Sonic 4 but was worried that I'd get banned. I almost never use XBL but I wanted to this time.

What I did was took apart my xbox, unplugged my dvd drive, turned it on, went on live, downloaded what I wanted, turned the console off, plugged the dvd drive back in, put it back together, and bang, MS had no idea that I was using hacked firmware.

EDIT: You can play XBL arcade games offline so there will be no need to connect in the future.