I'd go the route of acquiring a xbox either a used one from EBGames or a new one depending on confort level and availability and check out the forums for
xbox-scene which has a bunch of mod chip installers who are fairly reasonable on price who will do custom configurations usually as part of the service. There are also usually a plethora of pre modded xbox's online on
craigslist , etc... I'd suggest going either of these routes as you can likely have some say as far as what is installed on the xbox and you can be using it very quickly.
-Goz