PS3 as media player

[carter]

yes browse and play.you can do most things vidzone,pictures,play tv even view the eye toy.

only thing you cant do i think is play games

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Lenny,

I'm not sure about the max size of the HDD that you can put into a PS3 but (don't quote me on this) I believe its something to the tune of 500 GB but honestly a 2.5" laptop HDD is far to expensive. What I found was upgrading the HDD will give you more space granted but I wanted an SSD but it actually writes and reads a tad bit slower then the stock hard drive. Although Sony do encourage upgrading the Hard Drive i'd suggest unless you download lots off the PSN store then I wouldn't bother. However as this may suit you you can add a HDD to the PS3 or just add an external 3.5" hard drive which is the cheaper of the two options. As I said I think 500 is the limit but do not quote me on that. I'll try to find a website to give more exact details on capacity.

I would rather stick to streaming content from my computer/laptop as I have a router already in place and even on crazy bitrate mode i don't suffer any lag and that is with 10/100 ethernet card on the laptop. The ps3 has a gigabit ethernet port but i find the computer is where the, if any bottleneck lies. From my PS3 I have a HDMI connected to my Onkyo 876 which has an output into my pioneer 5090 so the HDMI sends the audio and visual so no need for anything else.

Yes the PS3 media centre will allow you to play FLAC files (tried and tested, again no lag barr you have a good spec computer, same for movies).

Also another advantage i discovered of the PS3 Media Server was that you can have scene selection by presing the Square button when playing a movie and you can have between 1 - 5 min intervals at the bottom of the screen and it plays a bit of the movie in the little window a great feature. But here I would like to take the opportunity to warn you that you will require a fairly high spec computer to pull this off, fast forwarding for me doesn't work so great because the laptop is not powerful enough to process the information quick enough. Having said that If i'm not mistaken you have video content in DivX so that will play without having to convert on the fly.

I do apologize for the long reply, but for me the PS3 Media Server is an integral part of my system and its free, it works and gives flexability that other consoles and dedicated hardware could only dream of. Please feel free to bell me if you have any other questions. I do hope this works for you as it did me.

 

[Anonymous]

here's a link to how changing the HDD will improve performance or how little it will. Also to note most 2.5" (laptop) HDD run at 5400 rpm as the same with cars, the higher it revs the quicker it goes.

http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/138288/7200rpm-vs-5400rpm-does-ps3-hard-drive-speed-matter/

I think i'm right in saying the HDD HAS to me SATA and (not sure about this one) but 5400rpm not too sure the PS3 will accepted 7200rpm hdd which what normal 3.5" run at but am pretty sure it will as it can accepted SSD hard drives which run at 10,000rpm and beyond (but its not that good with the ps3 very little or no perfomance improvement, in some cases the SSD fairs worse then the stock drive :s)

Well the slim PS3 will go up to 250gb that comes from the manufacturer so i'm pretty sure in assuming that the 250gb will work fine if thats enough to suit your needs.

 

[lee37]

ive got a seagate 500gb 7200rpm hdd in my ps3 and it works fine.

ive got the original 60gb fat ps3.

really easy to change just back up files onto a pendrive, change over and format and transfer files back.

i also connect a 500gb wd my passport to play all my avi, divx files.formatted to fat 32

just beware that the new wd my passport can only be formatted to ntfs so they will not work.

 

[Anonymous]

I stand corrected so the PS3 will do 7200rpm as indeed it will go up to 10,000rpm (SSD, raptor drives). But as I investigated the benefits of a 10,000RPM drive don't really come into play like you think they would. Glad Lee37 was able to confirm for everyone that it will indeed take 500GB. Thanks Lee37 (Y)

 

[Anonymous]

Ok, I've decided that I can't wait 'til Christmas, and neither, unsurprisingly, can my son, and I've nitten the bullet and gone for it.

I've ordered, from Play.com, Sony PlayStation 3 PS3 Slim Console with 120GB HDD + FIFA 10 + Extra DualShock 3 Wireless Controller, Play TV, Western Digital (WD) Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 2.5" Internal SATA Hard Drive (Sony Playstation PS3 Compatible), and an Official Sony Blu-ray Remote Control for PS3.

When it all arrives, I'll connect it up to my Samsung LE26R74BD, and my Cambridge azur 540A (I know, it's not high-end kit, but it's sufficient), and let you all know how I get on.

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP!

Mr Lenny

 

[Anonymous]

Great program:

http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/

I have been streaming star trek 1080p and transformers 2 imax, and no probs, but you cant fast forward or rewind becuase they are such large files.

Got all my downloads on my pc and watch all my stuff on the ps3

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Mr Lenny,

Thats great to hear, I do hope you enjoy the PS3 media functionality as I have and many others, you just wouldn't want to use anything else because of how flexible it is. Also because its free and can run on three different Operating Systems its only going to get bigger and better. Any problems give me a shout but am sure you'll be all good

Regards

'Sim

 

[Anonymous]

OK folks, it's all arrived and so far I'm impressed.

I've got Play TV up and running and the most obvious difference is the picture quality - on my old Scaleo E, the picture was terrible, not sharp at all, and I could never get the screen resolution quite right so edges were trimmed. Not so now - brilliant picture. Trying a blu-ray disk was a revelation as well - I guess like going from VHS to DVD back in the day. Very pleased. OK, so the programme guide and recording functionality is not as user friendly as in WinXP Media Centre, but that's a worthwhile compromise for decent viewing.

Music wise, I'm not as far ahead. I've imported just 1 CD so far (which happened to be Muse: Black Holes and Revelations, so a good workout for any system), but mainly because I haven't got around to replacing the HDD with my shiny new WD 500Gb one yet.

Now, here's a question: I have music currently sat on a 250Gb External hard drive NTFS formatted, but the PS3 won't recognise it when plugged into the USB port ...

[incidentally, with only 2 USB ports, and them being at the front, I'm always going to have at least 1 trailing lead - for my Play TV - WTAA Sony?? Why didn't you put the USBs round the back???]

...I've Googled alot and see that it will only read it if it's FAT32 formatted. So my plan is to copy the contents of this external drive to my 'home' PC, reformat the external drive as FAT32, copy the music back, plug this into the PS3, and then import the music onto my new 500Gb hdd. What's all this I read about FAT32 only operating in chunks of 32Gb? What does this mean and is my plan flawed in that case because the external drive is 250Gb??

Anyway, COD World at War to play tonight with my boy, with COD6 possibly from Father Christmas

Mr Lenny

 

[professorhat]

Hi Mr Lenny - if you read through the my guide for replacing the internal HDD, it mentions a program called Swissknife which you can use to format an external USB drive using FAT32. It allows partitions sizes up to 500GB on FAT32 and you can download from this site. This needs to be done on your PC and then your PS3 will recognise the external drive.

Link to my guide was posted earlier in the thread, but there's a link in my signature too. Hope this helps - let me know if you have any other questions and I'll get back to you when I can.

 

[aliEnRIK]

FAT 32 has its limits when formatting normally. In any case you can ONLY use file sizes UPTO 4 gig so take that into consideration (The PS3s internal drive will take ANY file sizes though)

To format a larger than normal hardrive in FAT 32 use SWISSKNIFE

 

[Anonymous]

professorhat:

Hi Mr Lenny - if you read through the my guide for replacing the internal HDD, it mentions a program called Swissknife which you can use to format an external USB drive using FAT32. It allows partitions sizes up to 500GB on FAT32 and you can download from this site. This needs to be done on your PC and then your PS3 will recognise the external drive.

Link to my guide was posted earlier in the thread, but there's a link in my signature too. Hope this helps - let me know if you have any other questions and I'll get back to you when I can.

Thanks Prof. SwissKnife worked a treat. I've now got my external drive formatted as FAT32, and copied all my music back onto it and attached it to the PS3. It is now available to view on the PS3 (at least when I remembered to have the music in a 'Music' folder!). Next step is the back up the existing PS3 drive and swap it out for my 500Gb one. Following your excellent guide of course.

Now, PS3 Media Server - someone mentioned that. Is this something that sits on the PS3 or on a PC acting as a media Server? If the latter, then if I'm not using a PC but am instead holding all my music on the PS3's HDD, do I still need PS3 Media Server?

Mr Lenny

 

[professorhat]

The Media Server software allows you to stream video and music from your PC / Mac so it's not something you need if you're storing everything locally.

 

[Anonymous]

Your options are:

1. Storing your music and video's on the PS3 internal hard drive (you can easily swap it out for a larger capacity one, it's a laptop 2.5" drive) or on an external one.

Both of above options have the same limitations. The PS3 uses it's own fileformat for the internal drive, and it can only read external drives that are formatted FAT32. The worst part about that is the filesize limitation, which is 4GB. So if you have video's that are larger than that, it won't read them. Another problem is that the PS3 does not read all codecs, including the common H264 type (files in MKV container) see below.

2. Install PS3 Media Server on your pc. It will stream music and video's over the network (wired and wireless) to your PS3.

This is a much better option.

Pros:

- No need to reformat drives to FAT32, so no file size limitations. You can keep using NTFS since the data will be read by your pc.

- The PS3 has only limited support for different codecs. It will for instance not read the very popular H264/MKV type. Most good quality videofiles are of this type nowadays. PS3 Media Server converts MKV's (and any other unreadable type) to something that the PS3 knows how to play.

Cons:

- Your PC has to be on.

- PC has to be an up to date model, preferably a low end C2D or anything higher to have enough power to convert MKV's on the fly.

- If you're going to be streaming very high bitrate video's (downloaded blu-ray rips and the like, usually >12 GB in size) you'll also need a fast wired 1000 MBit (gigabit) network. That means the PC or laptop needs a Gbit network card (very common), network cables need to be of the Cat5e or Cat6 type, router or switch needs to be of the Gbit type. The PS3 has a Gbit network adapter.

 

[Anonymous]

OK, I've got the 500Gb HDD installed without an issue and restored the system software and all the previously saved game stuff. Following PH's guide (and the PS3's own instruction manual which was quite good as well).

Loaded up some music - and there's the problem:

Music management is pretty poor don't you think? I wonder if Sony will be bringing out any firmware upgrades any time soon. If only the albums were laid out in thumbnail views like the photos. And don't get me started on album art! Mutter, mutter ...

Of course the biggest problem is track numbers - I have converted alot of files from FLAC, through DBPowerAmp batch converter to mp3 @ 320, using all the same settings etc. But, the transfer of track number is very hit and miss - some have none, some have all, some have some. What am I doing wrong? CDs imported directly @ mp3 320 are fine at least in terms of track numbers, but still no album art.

Oh, and can anyone tell me how to get updates for Play TV? It says one is available, but can I see how to get it??? Nope.

Mr Lenny

 

[professorhat]

Hi there,

Can't really help on the music issues I'm afraid, I don't use my PS3 for music at all - given CDs imported directly are working okay with the track numbers, it sounds like something is going wrong in the batch converter process but I don't know much about that software to help I'm afraid.

On the PlayTV front though, to update the software, simply press the triangle button to get to the main menu part where you scroll through Library, Schedule and that and choose the Software Update icon:

The PS3 will need to have a connection to the internet for it to work.

 

[Anonymous]

I love the PS3 although I can not connect it to my PC that has XP. I have a Samsung Home Cinema setup that will connect to the PC. It all works, but would love for the PS3 to connect to the PC and play Divx - it will connect to my Laptop that has vista, but again will not play DivX - is there something I need to do to get it to play the DivX. It will play MP3's.

Also, anybody got any tips to connect my XP PC?

Thanks