With the recent WB announcement, I was looking for a Blu-ray player. I found the PS3 to be the best choice. It can also be used for some media streaming, though it's best to get something like a Popcorn Hour. Here's what I've found:

General notes:
- PS3 can play back from from memory stick, external USB hard drive (FAT 16/32 only), or internal hard drive
- To stream from a computer, you must install a UPnP AV/DLNA server, like TVersity
- DLNA servers can be set to both stream original files and transcode/stream unsupported files
- HD files require too much CPU power to transcode on the fly, so you must transcode them into a compatible format before streaming
- You lose the ability to FF, "Go to", remember last position, etc. when playing files transcoded on the fly
- The PS3 has very spotty video support. It is very picky even with the files it natively supports.
- DivX, XviD, and WMV files >2 GB must be streamed with a DLNA server
- HD files should be streamed via a wired ethernet connection or 200 Mpbs powerline network. Wireless-n can lead to stutters.

Video formats:
SD/HD DivX - PS3 native support (will not play DivX 3 or older)
SD/HD XviD - PS3 native, but many files won't work
SD/HD H.264 - PS3 native
SD/HD x264 - PS3 native
SD/HD m2ts/mts files - PS3 native (cannot have copy protection)
SD/HD vob files - PS3 native (cannot have copy protection)
SD/HD VC-1 (wmv) - PS3 native
SD/HD mpg - PS3 native
SD mkv containers - DLNA on-the-fly transcoding
HD mkv - External transcoding required
DVD iso files - not supported (DLNA?)
IFO files - not supported
Bu-ray iso files - not supported
EVO files - not supported
SD w/ subtitles - DLNA on-the-fly transcoding
HD w/ subtitles - External transcoding required

One-step freeware transcoding programs:
*.mkv -> vob = mkv2vob
DivX/Xvid -> compatible XviD = AutoGK (must use ESS-standalone option)
PS3 video (by Red Kawa) will also convert any video to be PS3 compatible, but reencodes audio to stereo

Popular UPnP AV/DLNA programs:
TVersity - free
Twonky - $40
Windows Media Player 11 - free (will not do on-the-fly transcoding)

Audio formats:
DTS / Dolby Digital / AC3 pass through - PS3 native
WMA, MP3, WAV, AAC - PS3 native
FLAC - DLNA on-the-fly transcoding

I'm no expert on this stuff, but I've been following this thread

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=969198

You may find some good information there. It seems like Twonky is better for streaming HD....

No, you got the 2 GB limit wrong. Only two types of files are limited to 2 GB, the Divx/Xvid and WMV files.

I have successfully streamed some .mt2s files ripped from my blu-ray collection after renaming them to .mp4 and using the instructions posted here:

http://a8t8.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2518DD508BB713E8!156.entry

So far not all files will play, not sure why. :confused: Newest version of PowerDVD will not play BD files off HDD anymore. WMP11 will play some files but not others, both before and after changing file extensions.

When they do play on PS3 AC3 audio is intact! :)

Can someone help me update this list so others can know at a glance what a PS3 can do for them?



Good idea, a version change list may be good too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_System_Software

This thread might be a good sticky if someone could do it in an organized way.

I get my PS3 tomorrow and I was going to spend the weekend testing it out, so I'll update this list. The wikipedia list is good, but it doesn't include playback problems others have had, what can be played with 3rd party programs, and what transcoding programs to use.

I get my PS3 tomorrow and I was going to spend the weekend testing it out, so I'll update this list. The wikipedia list is good, but it doesn't include playback problems others have had, what can be played with 3rd party programs, and what transcoding programs to use.

True. The other twonky/tversity threads have a lot of good info. I think transcoding threads get messy really fast and are hard to follow unless you are in from the beginning. Doesn't de-value them. On other sites it is damn near impossible to get any solid info, here OTOH, there are reliable users who contribute.

So a simple question: Can I hook up an NTFS formatted external hard drive via USB and play a 20gigabyte H or X264 movie via the PS3, or wont that work.

I've been playing with trying to get my PS3 to stream various things, from various sources. Specifically, here is a thread I posted in the DMS forum about getting PS3 to work (or not work) with WHS

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=971144

It hasn't been getting much play over there, so I thought I'd try this forum instead. I was surprised to see someone list .vob as native to PS3. If you read my thread you'll see my initial attempts to get PS3 to read my .vob was unsuccessful. Probably I need to rip to a single .vob, rather than the multiples that inherently come off the disc? I've ripped to a single .iso before...is that supported by PS3 natively?

It's starting to look like I'm going to have to swallow the pill and use a product like TVersity; can't believe PS3 still won't support FLAC. Will TVersity not only settle my FLAC transcoding, but take care of any .vob or .iso issues as well? Or is everyone doing a vob2mpeg conversion?

One last thing: is the whole Rhapsody issue simply DRM run amuck? I mean its just sitting right there, begging to be played...right until you get down to unsupported file type! I've looked...this has yet to be cracked, right?

CD

So a simple question: Can I hook up an NTFS formatted external hard drive via USB and play a 20gigabyte H or X264 movie via the PS3, or wont that work.

The PS3 can only read Fat16/Fat32 partitions.

Might be good to specify/clarify which audio over which cable. I think that is my issue currently. I am trying to get 5.1 via optical from aac mp4's.

Might be good to specify/clarify which audio over which cable. I think that is my issue currently. I am trying to get 5.1 via optical from aac mp4's.

For my setup audio is over HDMI to an Onkyo receiver. Tried a couple more movies last night, successfully streamed Casino Royale and Into The Blue, both with LPCM audio.

Still having trouble with .ts cable captures though. Can get them to play with 5.1 but the video flashes an out of sequence frame from a few seconds earlier in the video. It varies from one file to the next how often and how bad this is, but its usually every 5-10 seconds. Files have been sent through TsRemux.

I am getting straight vob's to play and see Dolby Digital but am not getting surround over optical. Any thoughts?

On further investigating, my avr shows 2 channels but I am hearing audio in the correct speakers. Is this simulated surround or the real deal?

My next idea is to take film I really know the audio for and give it a shot.

^must be simulated.

A broadcast can send Dolby Digital w/ only 2 channels. Some digital cable shows do that.

Right now, I'm converting a file to DivX AVI with AC3 6 channel audio, and hoping that will play natively with the PS3. Am I right?

Let me ask you guys a question. Are there any third party apps (I did a google search and came up with a ton of crap, literally crap, nothing useful) that play MP3's on the PS3?

To be clear, I can find my MP3's through the XMB, I just find the built-in player to be, well, clunky. I have a rather large collection (90 Gb on an external drive) that I would like to have access to. I would also prefer not to stream. A couple of things the XMB does that irritate me - first, when listening to an album it goes by alphabetical order. All of my mp3's are fully tagged but the XMB doesn't use the tag information, just the title, at least as far as I can tell. Second, I really do like to be able to play big groups of songs randomly but I can't seem to get that to work properly without making playlists.

The alphabetical thing really gets to me as there are many albums I have that work better in the order they were intended, so if there is an easy workaround for that, I would appreciate it as well. Perhaps I completely missed an option somewhere.

Success!

I got the 2.10 update loaded it and BAM! 5.1 via optical with straight VOBs. Screw transcoding I get to keep all the quality now. The only downside is having to load the file locally to get the animated icon and losing chapter skip. Honestly, I never use chapter skip anyways and I can rotate files to keep the interface fresh.

Makes me wonder though if handbraking a few will net the same result.

By my math, with a 500g external drive, i should get 120 odd movies on there. With smart shrinking I may get it up to 140. My experience with shrink has been taking dual layer DVDs down to 4.5gigs has rarely made a difference in PQ. Win-Win.

I am able to help anyone with this process, the server streaming not so much.

The PS3 can only read Fat16/Fat32 partitions.

Thanks, so its streaming or nothing....good to know.

Anyone have luck with subtitles???

If it helps, I would recommend PS3 Video, which, I believe is made by Red Kawa. Seems like a simple VideoWizard program. I set everything to max settings with that software for upscaling all the video media I put into it. Seems to be the best way to get the results that the PS3 is hungry for. The software hasn't failed me yet. Just combine that with TVersity, and boy, best free software combination ever for PS3 media.

^does that allow 5.1 audio?

I believe that it would upscale audio, but I have a hard time believing that it'll do any better than the source media, as far as that's concerned... However, setting both audio and video to max settings for conversion, I'd have to say that it'll make the source media as pristine as it possibly can for PS3 broadcasting. I'm gonna take a screenshot of PS3 Video's settings menu, when I make my next video conversion, to show you what you can do with the VideoWizard app. I'll do that in another thread, as a tutorial. You gave me a great idea, thanks.

Just got a 40gb ps3 yeaterday. I have it connected to my rx v1800 via HDMI and a 5.1 speaker setup.

I have a favorite site I use on my computer to listen to music. I was on the site today via the ps3 and in order to listen to the stream I have to download either winamp, aac plus, or windows media player. Is it ok to do this? If so is there one anybody recommends?

I think this list is finalized. All in all the PS3 is a decent streamer with a good interface, but it's too picky with its files. About half of my videos don't play that are supposed to.

Just got a 40gb ps3 yeaterday. I have it connected to my rx v1800 via HDMI and a 5.1 speaker setup.

I have a favorite site I use on my computer to listen to music. I was on the site today via the ps3 and in order to listen to the stream I have to download either winamp, aac plus, or windows media player. Is it ok to do this? If so is there one anybody recommends?

I doubt the Ps3 will let you install any of those players.

Can the PS3 decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master 7.1?

Let me ask you guys a question. Are there any third party apps (I did a google search and came up with a ton of crap, literally crap, nothing useful) that play MP3's on the PS3?

To be clear, I can find my MP3's through the XMB, I just find the built-in player to be, well, clunky. I have a rather large collection (90 Gb on an external drive) that I would like to have access to. I would also prefer not to stream. A couple of things the XMB does that irritate me - first, when listening to an album it goes by alphabetical order. All of my mp3's are fully tagged but the XMB doesn't use the tag information, just the title, at least as far as I can tell. Second, I really do like to be able to play big groups of songs randomly but I can't seem to get that to work properly without making playlists.

The alphabetical thing really gets to me as there are many albums I have that work better in the order they were intended, so if there is an easy workaround for that, I would appreciate it as well. Perhaps I completely missed an option somewhere.


I have around 86GB of music and I use streaming via Tversity simply because it sorts all the music I have in a variety of ways. I have found that the fastest way was to sort it by Year>Artist>Album.

I have my music on it's own partition on my computer's harddrive. It seems to have decreased the access time of the stream. I usually can get a song going in 10 secs and all subsequent songs after the first one play within 4 secs.

Good enough for me.

Let me ask you guys a question. Are there any third party apps (I did a google search and came up with a ton of crap, literally crap, nothing useful) that play MP3's on the PS3?

To be clear, I can find my MP3's through the XMB, I just find the built-in player to be, well, clunky. I have a rather large collection (90 Gb on an external drive) that I would like to have access to. I would also prefer not to stream. A couple of things the XMB does that irritate me - first, when listening to an album it goes by alphabetical order. All of my mp3's are fully tagged but the XMB doesn't use the tag information, just the title, at least as far as I can tell. Second, I really do like to be able to play big groups of songs randomly but I can't seem to get that to work properly without making playlists.

The alphabetical thing really gets to me as there are many albums I have that work better in the order they were intended, so if there is an easy workaround for that, I would appreciate it as well. Perhaps I completely missed an option somewhere.

Just curious,as I am considering a ps3. When you say it lists alphabetical, does it list the actual file name or does it go by Song title?

By the way, what you are looking for, the 360 will do through it's dashboard or through MCE directly, no streaming. The irony is, I hate that way, I want a folder tree although I'm spending a lot of time lately trying to get my coverart/id3 tags cleaned up because it seems everything want to list that way instead.

Can the PS3 decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master 7.1?

Dolby Tru HD yes, DTS HD master not yet...but perhaps in a F/w update to be rumored to be coming in the near horizon

newfmp3 it can do it either way but I find the folder tree seems way more consistent

I have around 86GB of music and I use streaming via Tversity simply because it sorts all the music I have in a variety of ways. I have found that the fastest way was to sort it by Year>Artist>Album.

I have my music on it's own partition on my computer's harddrive. It seems to have decreased the access time of the stream. I usually can get a song going in 10 secs and all subsequent songs after the first one play within 4 secs.

To be clear the reason I don't want to stream is that I don't want to have my computer on all the time. Since I need the backup anyway, I thought playing directly from an external drive would be a nice solution. That said, it's not like I am going to use the player all that much.

To answer the other question regarding alpha-order, I believe it is by filename. Some of my albums the filename leads with the track number, and those are in somewhat correct order, except that if they have more than 10 tracks 11 gets displayed before 2, etc.

Well, one thing that I've noticed is that with WMV HD files, the video plays, but you don't get the sound with them. I wonder what type of audio encoding WMV HDs use that they can't stream audio as well as video. Should the audio be converted to the AAC profile somehow?

That's why I convert WMVs to MP4 files in PS3 Video for, so that way I get the video into the PS3 the way it was intended to be played and viewed.

Thanks for the information. I am compiling a list of compatible formats that the PS3 can play. Credit will come your way...

My link in my sig is a website I am dedicating soley to PS3 media streaming. I have a Tversity tutorial set up so this will come in really handy.

Is there anyway to get the PS3 to play x264 video without any transcoding.
Thanks

Is there anyway to get the PS3 to play x264 video without any transcoding.
Thanks
same question, keeping dts?

Thanks for the information. I am compiling a list of compatible formats that the PS3 can play. Credit will come your way...

My link in my sig is a website I am dedicating soley to PS3 media streaming. I have a Tversity tutorial set up so this will come in really handy.

Great website

Is there anyway to get the PS3 to play x264 video without any transcoding.
Thanks

Still working on this folks. Stay tuned.:)

Is there anyway to get the PS3 to play x264 video without any transcoding.
Thanks
What source container? AVI? MKV? MPG?

What source container? AVI? MKV? MPG?

MKV I guess

Hoping somebody can help me here. I can't find the info. I'm looking for in any thread.

Can the PS3 stream music, video, etc. from a Mac? My laptop just died, and I am looking at buying a Mac instead of a PC. Just want to be sure that it will be compatible with my system.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the media interface looks like? Is it just like browsing a folder, or can you attach cover art?

I have several TV series that I have ripped down to my PC as AVI files. I have a folder for each series, and then subfolders for each season. I have cover art saved as folder.jpg in each folder. How will the PS3 display these, does anyone have any screenshots?

Also, will the PS3 play these off a network share? Or do I have to have an external HDD attached directly to the machine?

Thanks

For network shares, it's just like browsing a folder. For videos that you've copied to the hard drive, the PS3 displays a preview video of the first 15 seconds of the file (you can change it manually for each file). I don't know if it displays videos for HDDs attached via USB.

For network shares, it's just like browsing a folder. For videos that you've copied to the hard drive, the PS3 displays a preview video of the first 15 seconds of the file (you can change it manually for each file). I don't know if it displays videos for HDDs attached via USB.

It doesn't show a preview if you are browsing via USB, you'll just get generic icons.