The original Xbox was way ahead of the other media centers I knew of at the time (2004-2010,roughly):
* CD/DVD player
* upgradeable HDD
* 1080i output (though I mostly used RCA connectors, and I don't think you can decode 720p+ with it)
* quite cheap compared to a fully fledged computer
* trough XBMC, integrated games library management, with native and emulated titles
* and of course, the plethora of add-ons and protocols Kodi supports to this day
And though it was big and heavy, it had an integrated PSU.
This was before raspberry pi was a thing, mind you. The alternatives were expensive (~€200) hard disk enclosures that couldn't do a fourth of this. I would have kept on using if it wasn't for its inability to cope with HD formats, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that it helped to promote the console quite a bit.
