Wired's How-To Wiki details step-by-step how to set up port forwarding to make sure you're getting the best experience from your Xbox 360 and Xbox Live game play. Depending on your router you may never have needed to do this, but if you've ever experienced long wait-times between games and other suspicious network problems, there's a fair chance that a quick trip through your router's settings could make a big difference. While you're at it, you may be interested in tweaking your router to ensure your Xbox gets the lion's share of your bandwidth when you need it. Finally, now that you're gaming is set up for top performance, maybe it's time you do more than just game on your 360.

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Any platform running XBMC: AEON transforms your Xbox Media Centre with a beautiful new and friendly interface. Installing AEON is simply a matter of dragging it into your XBMC's skins directory and then getting started. Whether your running XBMC on your Mac (a fork of which has just been renamed to Plex), your classic Xbox, or your thumb drive, AEON is an excellent tool to improve the look and feel. If you'd like to try XBMC on your Mac with a more social flair, check out previously mentioned Boxee.

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Millions of homes have an Xbox 360 sitting in the living room, but if you're only using your 360 to game, you're missing out. With some free tools and a little elbow grease, that compact, networked PC sitting under your television can offer a whole lot of useful media functionality. The fact is, your 360 is capable of so much more than just gaming. Let's take a look at a few ways you can get more from your Xbox 360. (We covered some of this territory in our recent guide to what to do with your new cheap Xbox 360, but there's plenty of extra goodness to be had.

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One intrepid Ubuntu hacker has written up a little script that allows your Xbox 360 to locate and stream music from any computer running Ubuntu. Downloading, setting up, and activating the script will require a bit of terminal work, but the commands can be easily copied and pasted from the Ubuntu Forums post linked below. Got a better solution for connecting the two systems that normally would never get along? Share your solutions in the comments.

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More devices in your living room have Ethernet ports than ever before, but you can't plug them into the network if your router's in the other room. When your Wi-Fi access point is in the home office but your TiVo, Xbox, and media centre are screaming for network love under your TV in the living room, you want a wireless bridge (also known as an Ethernet converter). A wireless bridge catches your home network's Wi-Fi signal and provides ports where you can plug in wired devices near it. Let's take a look at how to wire up your living room using a wireless bridge.

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Mac OS X only: Whether or not you've already transformed your old Xbox into a media center with Xbox Media Center (XBMC), chances are you've seen what a killer media center application XBMC is. If you've ever wished you could bring the same saucy media center interface to your Mac, your wishes are finally being answered with XBMC for Mac. That's right, the Unix app for the original Xbox has been ported to Macs, and though it's only the 0.1 version, it already performs amazingly. If you're already a Front Row/Apple TV lover, you're probably wondering what the point of XBMC on your Mac is. Well, the main reasons you may way to run XBMC (lifted from the 9 to 5 Mac interview) are:

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Whether you're using it for video games or as part of a media center powerhouse, all of our Xbox 360s have one thing in common: They're loud. Hardware site ExtremeTech walks through how to replace the stock fan unit (which screams like a 747) with a whisper quiet, $25 alternative. This is one of those warranty-voiders, so you'll have to decide whether or not a little peace and quiet is worth it.

We've shown you how to stream DivX/XviD video to your Xbox 360, but here's a hack for dealing with a much simpler problem - the 360's noisy fan. ExtremeTech likens the sound of the Xbox 360 fan to that of a Cessna revving for takeoff, and gives a walkthrough for replacing the fan with a quieter one. The article does note that opening the console does void the warranty, and also that you'll still get noise from the DVD-ROM. However you should have a quieter time when playing Xbox Live Arcade games or watching downloaded or streamed movies or music, since they don't trigger the optical drive.
You can buy a fan which is customised for the Xbox 360's fan mount - for this exercise they use a green Whisper Fan. If you're DIY minded and have the proper tools, you can unlock and open the console case yourself, but Extreme Tech says they opted for a Team Xecuter 360 Unlock V2 kit which cost $12.
The article goes on to give a full walkthrough with pictures, and sums up by saying the new fan is "startlingly" quiet. It's up to you to decide if the risk of voiding the warranty is worth it for quieter performance.

Hacking your Xbox 360 fan [ExtremeTech]

Now that the Xbox 360 has been updated to support DivX/XviD playback, work-arounds like conversion and the Transcode 360 Media Center hack aren't strictly necessary. The Pain in the Tech blog offers two walkthroughs for using Winamp Remote (part of Winamp 5.5) or Windows Media Player 11 to stream video from your PC to your XBox. Both programs have their pros and cons (based mainly on media accessibility versus buffering times), but both also get the job done. If you've put together your own PC-to-Xbox streaming solution, let's hear it in the comments.

So your router and Xbox 360 are on completely opposite sides of your home, running a long, ugly wire along the floor is out of the question, and you don't feel like dropping $100 on an Xbox Wi-Fi adapter? If you've got a laptop with Wi-Fi, Instructables details how to use it as an Xbox 360 wireless adapter. In all its a really simple process involving sharing your laptop's wireless internet connection with your Xbox through an ethernet cable. It's not as good as a wired connection, but if you don't regularly rely on the connection, it's a good workaround. If you want a slightly more permanent solution, you can also build an Xbox Wi-Fi adapter on the cheap. Thanks Graham!