PS3 as a Media Center
I bought my PS3 a year ago and since then I was trying to use it as a media center. I bought the PS3 in a package with a 40″ Sony Bravia, the full hd model, and a sound system. I realised that I’d rather watch my movies on the TV than on my 20″ monitor. This is where the challenges came.
Fiirst I tried using Windows Media Player. All was well the PS3 found the server no problem BUT I couldn’t play most of the videos because PlayStation 3 doesn’t have codecs for them and you cannot install any.
Second option was to use my Mac Book and again no problem finding the Media Server but still couldn’t play most of the videos. Just to say I had no problems playing the music and viewing the photos.
Installing Linux was kind of the last thing i wanted to do and i didn’t know of any other software at that time so I went for it. It was a difficult and time consuming job. I managed to ruin two of my flash memory chips. After two sleepless nights I managed to install Linux the way I wanted and then it was time for the test. Well first of all i needed to connect a keyboard and a mouse to the PS3 which was something I didn’t like but then if this works it’s all good. And it did work but there was a problem. The disk I was sharing was ntfs format and capacity of 500GB. I couldn’t mount it on Linux. For anyone who is interested in the manual on How to install Ubuntu on PS3
I did some research and found a software that not only creates a Media Server but it also trans codes movies on the go. The savior was called TVersity. I’ve installed it, very easy installation + setup, told it where all my videos, music and photos were and started synchronisation. That can take up to a day, it is very slow. A day later I sat in front of my PlayStation 3 and went to the Media Server detection, surprise surprise it found it and this time I could play all my movies I was so happy. But yet again there were a few problems. First was that for the first 10 mins the movie was stopping to load every 30 seconds. It was a bit annoying but once it went over the 10 mins all was great, up until after about an hour or so when the PS3 lost connection to the Media Server. Then I had to go to my PC and finish watching the movie/video. Not a very liable option. I thought that the problem might be in my network and have done a lot of tweaking but still same problem. I had given up on using the PS3 as a Media Center.
Almost a year later I found another Media Server software called Orb. Again very easy to install and setup and it trans codes videos when needed, just perfect. Installed it, set it up and created my account, the difference here was that I had to create an online account because Orb has a web interface you can use. What that meant was I could actually view my media on any PC anywhere, that was all good but then I was worried that if I use it on my local network I’d be using it over the internet and we all know how fast the internet is and also my usage was limited. I did a little research and found out that Orb actually knows if you are on your local network or over the internet. It was a smart little piece of software. Now it was time to test it on my PS3, again no problems finding the Media Server and it did play all the movies/videos and guess what no loading delays in the first 10 mins and now disconnection after an hour.
Well that is my experience up till now. If i find any bugs or a better software I will tell you ASAP.
Here are some other interesting sites I found:
links for 2008-08-30 – PS3 Media Center X 0.92 – Softpedia. “PS3 Media Center X is a multimedia server that allows you to stream certain types of files to your Sony PlayStation 3″. (tags: osx ps3 mediacenter). Hobnox.com :: Your Music, Film & Urban Culture – …
PS3 Media Center V2 – PS3 Media Center version 2 theme by Dj4NRv. Download: PS3MediaCenterV2.p3t. (1 background)
August 11th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I have lots of media on a linux box running mythtv. Most of it is recorded from UK digital tv (DVB-T).
My PS3 picks these up and plays no problem.
Re: your experiences with linux. It can read/write NTFS formatted drives and Im surprised your version of ubuntu didn’t support this. FAT works fine. I have linux installed on my ps3 and I can use the bluetooth control pads.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:24 am
The problem was that the drive was way to big to be mounted. I didn’t have problems mounting smaller drives. My only option was to partition the drive into smaller sections but at that point I didn’t have spare room to move all my stuff to.
My other problem with Ubuntu was that there were no wireless drivers but I read recently that the wireless is now supported.