Can't replace my HTPC with PS3 afterall

You're serious? Why did you think a game console would replace a media center PC? And if you think the Xbox360 will do better, you're kidding your self.

1) You have to stream everything to the 360 from a PC anyhow. So you STILL won't get rid of your media center PC, you'll just be able to have it in a different room.

2) It won't play TS files either.

3) A PC is still the only way to record HDTV, neither console has tuner support.

4) The 360 won't play your pal discs either.

5) The 360 won't upconvert DVD's either.

The real advantage of an HTPC is that you can run so much 3rd party software and custom hardware. In fact, there is really has nothing about MS involved with why an HTPC is still better than a game console. Linux is a prefered OS for many HTPC builders.

As for the PS3, we all know DVD upconversion is coming and very likely broader media file support as well. It is the only gaming console that has such universal storage and networked device support at the moment. You can't even write to an external drive with the 360. But it will still never be able to match a good home built HTPC.

The 360 does play TS files perfectly fine.

The 360 does Upconvert regular DVDs perfectly fine.

It works excellently as a Media Center extender, which provides some people with an added bonus and option for watching their media on their big screen where it may not be practical for a pc or htpc to be located.

Wow before you drill the other guy, get your facts straight ... The Xbox 360 can upconvert your DVD's through VGA, yes you heard correct, VGA.

PS3 cannot upconvert your DVD's does not have a scaler ... DUH !!! The PS3 was supposed to output all games at 1080p native, yeah that has not happened and probably never will.

Also I think he was refereing to the original XBOX for its media center capabilities ...
The original XBOX when MODDED is a great media center.

Please read before you write stuff you don't have a clue about.

My HTPC recently died.

I was hoping could just plug in my NTFS hard drives into the USB ports of either the 360 or PS3.

Turns out, both only support FAT32!

I hope at some point they release a patch to support NTFS so I can just plug them into the systems and play .TS files.

Only time will tell.

Until then, I plan on builing a Vista box and just stream the .TS movies to the 360.

The 360 does marvelous MCE streaming capablities. Ps3 needs a lot of work..I expect a lot from them in the next year.
Mo!

I was hoping to use the TiVo S3 and the PS3 to replace the functionality of my htpc. TiVo is doing great, actually handles pics and music off the lan. All I need for the PS3 to do is play video files off of the lan and I would be happy, but alas it is not to be.

Well, that and the upconverting dvds.

edit: reason I want to do this is to get the highend (hot) pc out of the equipment closet and make things as easy as possible for other people in the house and guests to use.

it seems that consoles are becoming more and more functional; i wouldn't be suprised if by next generation we can get rid of our PC's in general (the idea of having a console and a laptop appeals to me and seems to make sense), but for now limited functionality is certainly the catch; it's frustrating because it really needs to do EVERYTHING, not just some things, to really be the "media center" we want; otherwise we still need our desktops and that sort of ruins the whole point

Maybe because thats how Sony has billed the PS3 since they announced the device? And the 360 does already do some of the things hes asking a console to do.

don't get rid of your big ole obnoxious ATX windows XP computer yet, it still has work to do alas; that being said i'm getting by with a laptop and xbox360 but only because i have much less needs than you; just some music streaming, a little video, nothing too fancy; an external hdd works on 360 and xp laptop in NTFS; but yeah, no tuner, no this, no that

Who's drilling!?!? Jeez man, I think you should take your own advice on the the "drilling" nonsense. What is up with the "DUH"!? The PS3 does have a scaler, it is called the cell processor. It is very similar to the "scaler" in the Xbox360 which is actually it's GPU. Both consoles run software playback. Look it up. Both are programable as well, hence the added 1080p support on the 360, and the upcoming SCALING on the ps3.

As for scaling DVD's via VGA. Cool, I had no idea. I don't use my 360 with a VGA cable because it looks so washed out that way. The gamma is way off. [edit] I can not find ANYTHING that corroborates the claim that even via VGA the 360 scales DVD's. Post a link please?
And as for .TS files, that is cool I did not know that either. Although, obviously they must be streamed as well?

And yeah, the first Xbox makes a great media center definitely. But good luck finding one. And again, that has nothing to do with MS does it? You have to mod it and run 3rd party software to do 90% of what makes it so cool.

Just relax man. I was sharing the knowledge I do have, there was no "Drilling" going on.


Brian, you can make 1080p video files and put them on your PS3 if you are cool with converting them. You just need to make MP4's. There is plenty of software out there that does this. And the PS3 is a surprisingly good media player. I have a 160gig internal drive in mine which I dumped a bunch of 3D animations I made using Maya. It is pretty cool to see them play back at 1080p so smoothly. The HTPC I have only recently became as effective at playing back 1080p content after I upgraded the CPU to a Core duo 2 6600 and added an 8800gtx. Which puts my HTPC at $2k.

Also, what that hot headed fella was saying about the 360 playing TS files is a bit of a fib. It does not play them, it can be fed them via HDTVPump. This means, if you have a hard drive full of .ts files, you can't plug it in to the 360 and watch them. You need to run HDTVPump on a PC and stream them.

Link to 360 upconverting via VGA:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/09/21...ent-1080p-vga/

or

http://forums.xbox.com/5071741/ShowPost.aspx

I didn't say it could play TS files ... READ again lol. HOT HEADED haha

You want a link about XBOX 360 upconverting DVD's ?? PM ME FOR LINK


I couldn't find the link in AVS about ANNA 360's SCALER, but I did find the link on another site. This also tells you that the PS3 has no internal hardware scaler, READ ON BROTHER.

PM ME FOR LINK


Oh and you can find a modded XBOX anywhere, or a non-modded one for that and mod it yourself, either a chipped mod or soft mod. SIMPLE.

Who the hell cares?!?!?

You bought a $500-$600 game console to replace a $300 PC? If you wanted a PC buy a PC.

Eventually there will be more media oriented software, if anything the PS3 is more open ended than any "videogame" I've ever seen, but the machine has only been out for 2mos for crying out loud!!!!

Frokta,

Regarding the scaler, he's refering to the difference between software scaling and hardware scaling. Hardware scaling (ala GPU) doesn't use the processor, so it can continue to perform other functions instead of being slowed by scaling.

Take a quick look at ffdshow for HTPCs for an application that uses software scaling specifically to bypass the video cards hardware scaler. The obvious downside is that software scaling takes processing power. So while the PS3 may be able to scale via software, it has a price in CPU usage terms.

Brian,

Have you used a MCE pc? I know it's capabilities but I've never bought MCE since I've been pretty happy running SageTV. Your fusion card is supported by MCE (and Sage) and of course the 360 can be used as a media center extender. The 360 as an extender offers full HD support for both WMVHD and captures from your tuner card. I don't believe MCE captures as a raw .ts file. But the 360 will play those captures. I hope to experience this myself soon. I've been waiting to make the jump to Vista. I've been waiting for an HD capable Sage extender but that wait is getting old.

Most of frokta's information is only relevant when talking about connecting a 360 to a stand-alone XP box. With an XP box, you are navigating the standard 360 dashboard and streaming files from the PC. It's a bit clunky, especially with video files. No divx support. etc. MCE changes all of that. You get a true extension of MCE. It plays your HD tv captures. It has playlists. You can watch live TV. Transcode360 can be used for divx support. The list goes on.

Brian,

You were posting as I was typing.

Have you used or own a 360? I realize this is the PS forum and don't want to start the eternal flame war but if your HTPC is for DVD and HDTV, the 360 and MCE do EXACTLY what you want.

I'll stop there so I don't ruffle the natives.

Over what connection type?

I'd recommend trying out a 360 (at someones house, not in a store) before buying one, especially if you intend to watch anything with quiet sections.

The 360 is VERY LOUD compared to the ps3, which for my purposes makes it unsuitable for a home theater device.

Brian, a modded Xbox is a great way to go for almost everything. I was actually messing around recently and it was upscaling DVD ISO images to 1080i over my network (which is a big improvement because their initial 1080i upscaling of DVD sources, even off the physical drive was not so good). That said a BIG limitation for you is going to be lack of ability to handle native HD files as it just is not powerful enough to deal with 720p or 1080i streams ts, mpeg or other. 540p Xvid with AC3 works fine though (HRHD).

That's actually my issue. I love my Xbox/XBMC but it won't make the native HD jump. You can buy one used and get it set up easily enough (do it yourself or pay someone) but no matter what you do, swapping the processor and/or adding ram - neither of which are easy, you will still hit the GPU bottleneck and no one has managed reasonable HD playback ever.

I too was hoping the PS3 could fill the gap or people would start something with Linux. I'm still waiting and hopefull but without access to the GPU I'm not too sure how it will end up, either way there's no good solution yet. The 360 limits the codecs used (there are transcoding solutions but I'm not sure how limited on FF and RW but it's still an undesirable workaround) and required XP Media Center Edition for video streaming (hateful). I'm not happy or enthused about either console solution to HTPC functionality at this point. So it will be HTPC for me unless someone hacks the 360 or PS3 to run homebrew or manages something within linux for the PS3. All I really want is XBMC to handle HD and I'll be happy as all hell but it will have to move platforms for that.

And obviously people care - it's a home theater forum for God's sake. Right below this gaming forum is the media and content streamers which consoles are quickly converging with and which the XBox and PS3 have both tried to impliment. People in these forums need to chill the hell out and stop behaving like kids just because someone doesn't say something glowing about their favorite console or were hoping it fit their needs a bit better. This is a home theater site, it is not a rat head uber console gamer site (and owning an HDTV and next gen game system does not necessarily make one a home theater fan so maybe for some who are more "techies" or "gamers" there are more appropriate places to find and join others like themselves). The "fan-boy" and "anti-fanboy but still an ass" crap is getting old and it's ruining this place. Grow up people. It's a game console, it's for playing games and having fun (in your home theater if you are here). Try treating your fellow humans a bit more decently and not taking out your obcessive console war armchair quarterback driven frustration on these forums. Don't like a post, don't reply. Something misunderstood, reply nicely and point it out as you may well be the one who doesn't get it but just hasn't realized it. This is why the mods close and lock threads like mad, the behavior of members in these forums is inappropriate. And if you see someone else being inappropriate, report it, don't contribute. Think about it. Rant off. Sorry for your thread.

um...how come no one has suggested the OP install linux on there? I guess I will :P

I haven't personally tried linux on ps3 yet (looking for cheap htpc keyboard with built in mouse) but from various videos it seems like it will play TS files as well as divx etc...

Bad news is there's no wifi yet. Good news is that any external hdd should be recognized by linux, including NTFS formatted ones...

No idea if it will solve the PAL problem though.

I think someone said VGA above, there are some links and a lot of verbiage on it higher up.

Consoles can only replace HTPCs in limited instances. I need HTPC to watch avi's and matroska's with divx/xvid/h.264 streamed from a shared windows folder. I need HTPC (or something else) to play back my iTunes music server (served by my modded NAT box). Neither Xbox360 nor PS3 do any of that. PS3 doesn't stream anything, while Xbox360 requires a media center edition of XP (or to install media center utility on a regular one). The universality of a HTPC cannot be beat at this time. Linux on PS3 is promising... but way too many issues with it right now.

Ok,this is getting very misleading with all us "experts" countering each other.

Can we agree that neither the PS3 or 360 have a dedicated hardware scaler?

And most people using HTPC's use software scaling, not hardware scaling. FFdshow is software, right? Offloading to the GPU is something that can be done with the consoles as well, but it is not necesarily better. On the PC It just leaves more room for windows which is very resource hungry (hence lots of Linux HTPC fans).

Also, to say the PS3 does not have a dedicated scaler is a bit misleading. The idea behind the cell processor was to eliminate the need of such added hardware. Just read up on why Toshiba co-developed the cell. Yes, Toshiba, makers of HD-DVD, they jointly developed the cell to replace the multitude of chips that currently reside in their players and televisions. The idea being that the cell can handle decode, scale, and process better and more efficiently than a series of dedicated chips.

Oh, I see...VGA...since last year, VGA inputs on HDTV sets are vanishing faster than snowballs in Hell...doesn't sound like a long-term solution...

I don't think so. Unless MSFT and this article are totally lying and the picture of said scaling chip, called Ana, is a fabrication. Although certainly maybe your definition of hardware scaler is different, but this is the chip that enables scaling to any resolution regardless of render whereas the PS3's lack of such a chip forces games to render in the output resolution.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/headstart.ars/2

The idea may have been for the cell to handle such duty - but that certainly isn't happening so far.

The scaler in the 360 is not the GPU, it's a separate chip, dubbed "Ana".

Sony did not say anything to contest the claim the PS3 has no dedicated scaling chip. To me, that means the PS3 has no dedicated scaling chip.

I am sorry to say this, but I wouldn't want to bog down the CPU with a task (scaling) that is best performed by a dedicated chip.
I find it shocking that Sony decided to go without one.
Hopefully, their software solution will have limited overhead...or they are going to have a hard time claiming Microsoft's 1080p upscaling is below them.