Can The PS3 Take The Place of MultiMedia Server Players..??

Have you tried streaming with TVersity, WMP11, Nero, Winamp?

From what I've read, the Xbox 360 works better than PS3 as a media server player. Its reliability is terrible, however.

The PS3 does have pretty good media server capabilities. Using a program like TVersity allows you to stream all sorts of movies and music files from your PC. Its reliability is much better.

Either way, I'd recommend you get a game system that also works as a media server. It allows you to play games . And watch movies (PS3's blu-ray player is great).

Yes, and more. The only thing is you must be networked to a PC to transcode some of the formats not supported natively by the PS3, like VOB's. Oh and a hard wire is recommended over wireless if you are going to stream HD. I am networked to an old P4 and have no problems streaming VOB's, with full 5.1DD.

The PS3 supports very few formats without transcoding or converting, something like the Popcorn is going to run damn near everything out there.

Go check out this part of the forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forum...aysprune=&f=39

At the moment, I think you're best option to get more flexibility out of the PS3 would be to run linux on it with a multimedia front end and a few supporting apps. I don't know which if any will get you the functionality you want, but that will get you farther than the PS3 built in OS will get you. If the PS3 would just play iso's streamed from my server I'd be happy. The more I read, the more it looks like the A-110 is the best option. Like you though, I just wish I could accomplish this with either the PS3 or 360.

define "media fies" more. What types?

Have all the consoles myself, ps3 and a psp for remote play, tversity on pc, love it so far. xbox with tversity is horrible.

ps3 gets my vote

The problem is that the PS3 does not support every kind of file out there, like most media players do. You can transcode them on the fly if you have a fast enough CPU. If your CPU is not up to par, then you can expect some hiccups.

I think the best media player (but probably most expensive and also the most hassle to build and set-up), is still a HTPC.

yeah by far the easiest thing to do is use TVersity or a program like it. If you want to store all media locally, that means you'll need to manually convert all files and then transfer them over. Very time consuming!

In addition, if your PS3 craps out on you, you'll either a) lose your hard drive and have to reformat (best case scenario), or b) have to send in the PS3 for repair (worst case scenario). Either one means no more files on the hard drive. A way around this is to get an external hard drive, formatted for FAT 32, and store all data there.

So you can see how just getting a htpc or even a regular pc networked w/the PS3 is a far easier solution!

not sure if the ps3 is the best choice... i am currently using it with tversity to send over ts files but i am limited on the ps3... i want to send over iso files and apple trailers but i cant....

plus i feel the picture would be much better from source than being sent from somewhere and then played

My PS3 performs that function in my home theater and does so quite well. Not yet as effective as XBMC on the old Xbox, but very good.

I'd recommend trying this new UPnP server software that is specifically for PS3 use:

http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/

If I were buying something new, I'd probably buy a Popcorn Hour. (Or set up a $400 HTPC running XBMC)

That said, it works well as long as it supports whatever format you want to play. I can't transcode HD..my server is far too slow. It plays a lot of DivX/Xvid videos and with remuxing, plays most mkv files that have H.264 video and AC3 audio.

I use the PS3 as my primary streaming media player. I put my media on my DNS-323 NAS and stream across a 100Mbps wired network. No hiccups and with the more recent firmware updates, it plays just about everything I throw at it. I also have an X360 and it works well as a streaming media player, too, but I prefer the PS3 for this purpose because it's much quieter than the X360 and faster to access large music libraries (the X360 takes considerable time to build a list of artists, titles, etc.).

It's certainly not as good as one of the dedicated units, I'm sure, but it does exactly what I need. I've used an HTPC in the past and I can say that the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is MUCH higher with the PS3, and the hassle is much lower.

I did just get a Mac Mini that's connected to the home theater so I was going to check it out as well. I primarily bought it for iPhone development (connect to it remotely for development), but for $500, it's a good option for an HTPC and I'm sure it supports a huge variety of media formats. It also comes with a media player UI and remote (and works out of the box with my Harmony), so Apple's definitely taken home theater usage into account from the get-go.

SCWells72: I have the same setup (DNS-323 & PS3), but ran into an issue last night where the PS3 would not properly play a video file over 4gb. The file was 4.6gb and the PS3 would only see 600 mb of it! When playing the file, it stopped after 15 minutes or so, which I assume to be the first 600mb of the file. Have you had a similar problem? I thought the PS3 would be able to play large files as long as they were streamed rather than on the local HDD, but apparently there's a disconnect someplace...

I haven't tried any files of that size, so I can't really help you. Which UPnP server are you using, the one that's built into the 1.05 firmware or one of the alternatives such as Twonky or Mediatomb? If the former, you might try installing one of the latter and see if it helps. I personally use Twonky right now, thought I'd read that the 1.06 firmware should include substantially better streaming to the PS3 and X360.

Hope this helps!

I can't say I've ever found a multimedia server that will play all available filetypes. With them forever evolving and the inability of standalones to handle incorrect tagging, I always end up using a computer for some of them.

So far I don't think there is a "perfect" solution for this. I started out in the early days with a LinkPlayer2, it was a decent piece of eqipment but required firmware updates and never quite got there. The PS3 works decent for many types of media but requires a good server. The new Java based one is working very well for me. Tversity sucks for me and so does Twonky. I think if you read all the avs threads for devices built using the latest versions of hardware built on the Sigma Designs/Syabas middleware they all have some issue with some media. I don't think any platform yet supports all the media that is available. I think the latest gen hardware is close but the GUI interfaces and constant need to update firmware make them basically for folks who like tinkering around with computers. The average person will not want to struggle through the various network protocals ( HTTP, NFS, SAMBA, FTP) that many of these players require and some can have hard disks installed. I would love to find a single solution but so far each of the devices I look at either won't play a file format I want to use or has a clumsy interface. Just some random thoughts take em with a grain of salt,

Snoots

I'm currently using the 1.05 firmware UPnP server. Is it difficult to install twonky? I'm not much of a linux guru, so I've been a little hesitant to start playing around with this sort of thing... if you know of a set of instructions for the linux-impaired, I'd really appreciate it!

Many thanks...

Snoots, I also found that I didn't like Tversity, but I'm not overly eager to keep my PC running all the time (it's a power hog), hence my move to the DLINK NAS. Since it can run Twonky, that's an option: do you mind if I ask what your problems with Twonky were?

I have Twonky on my Infrant X6 NAS and also bought it for my PC. I actually like it better than Tversity but support for it has dropped way off and they don't seem to be evolving the product. I am really impressed with the Java PS3 media server. It even handles my hdtv recordings from Vista Mc. I also had some issues with Twonky not updating the content in my shared folders without me having to rescan and reboot the X6 or the PC. I have a large music collection about 80g 700 to 800 CDs worth and browsing with it was quite slow. Just my observations I know each installation is different.

I've actually found out that the PS3 CAN playback .vob files stored on its hard drive or external storage media. The thing is, the .vob files MUST be decrypted as it can't decrypt them for you. So I just took all of my music video DVDs, decrypted them onto the hard drive of my computer, then copied them over to my PS3 without ANY loss of quality or audio tracks. The only thing the PS3 can't do is handle the menu systems of DVDs. So you'll just have to extract exactly what it is that you want and copy that over to your hard drive.

I am VERY happy to have my music video DVDs on my PS3 now since I never really feel like breaking them out, putting the disc in, etc. etc. Having them immediately available to me is a very nice option.

Correction: today I figured out the problem affects anything over 2GB if it is not in DivX format. Confirmed this with a couple of observations from DNS-323 forums, but haven't yet found any solutions. Has anyone been able to play a .mpg or .vob over 2GB on the PS3?

Over the network, I stream 8GB m2ts (AVC/AC-3) files from Mediatomb on a fairly regular basis. I've also done 12GB files before.

How does one decrypt a .vob file to play it back on a PS3?

Are you running mediatomb on a PC or a DNS-323? If M2ts files can be done, it looks like this might be an issue with the media server in the DNS-323 firmware. That would make me happier than if it was a PS3 issue

On a PC

The PS3 can play very large files no problem. I stream 20 gig movies either as .vob or .ts all the time over my wireless network using TVersity. I also copy very large files directly to the PS3 since I threw in a 500 gig hd in it. It takes some time to copy them over, but i set it to xfewr at night then set the PS3 to turn off when completed. Again, no problem at all playing very large files. MKV2VOB is a great tool for the PS3.