Media Servers

[Jason]

Does anyone else use media server software for streaming video to their PS3? I'm wondering which one works the best for people, and especially the best free one. I tried Twonky and it was pretty decent, but they want more money than its worth. TVersity is free but it always seemed like a hassle to update your library and have the refreshed list show up on the PS3. Nero MediaHome was quick and easy and worked great at first, but then it was having buffering or transcoding issues and wouldn't play. I would use Windows Media Player 11 but it won't work and I think its because it requires UPNP and I have an Apple Airport Extreme router that doesn't support it. I have looked around a lot but I was just wondering if anyone else had any good experiences with a particular one.

[Hoser]

TVersity is the best and easiest. Media player is a waste of time ot try and get running.

http://tversity.com/

[papillon]

Media Server works fine for me but the PS3 has been acting-up ever since I started streaming stuff from the PC.

[Hoser]

TVersity has been pretty much perfect. My PS3 fucked up once and froze a movie off its HD but thats about it.

[Jason]

The first time I tried TVersity it struggled to refresh my list when I added files to the shared folders, but maybe they have a newer version. I'll try it again.

[Hoser]

My laptop had to be re imaged so I lost all my programs. I got the new Tversity and it is giving me a lot of problems. Won't connect to server is what it says.

[Gary_Busey]

TVersity works perfectly for me. HD looks great and the video doesn't skip at all. The only problem I noticed was that it does't recognize all my music, only like the first 20 or so artist folders.

[mule]

Tversity vs Windows Media Player - any thoughts?

[TylerDurden]

i just had a lot of experience with this. part of the reason i bought the ps3 was for its ability to be so many things. i wanted to basically have a game system/dvd/blu-ray/audio/image/video repository. i've spent a great deal of money on my a/v equipment and figured it would be great to have everything in one spot. that said, here's what i've tried and eventually settled on.

first, about my ps3. i bought a 60gb because those are the best ones insofar as backwards compatibility, wireless capability, and external media is concerned. basically, as far as ps3s go... they're the best ones, save for the smallish hard drive capacity.

i started with windows media player 11, though quite by accident. i've had my ps3 less than a month. the first night i got it i jacked into my home network via cat5 (not wireless) and it immediately picked up my laptop's media library via wmp11. my laptop and every other computer in my house is wireless. i got excited thinking about the possibilities. i knew that i didn't want to just leave it at that, and that i wanted a more "permanent" media repository (i.e. NOT a laptop that goes with me everywhere, hence negating my girlfriend from being able to listen to music) so i began to look into configuring one of my desktops to act as server. to this end, media player failed. miserably. in hindsight i suppose it was necessary to learn from this mistake. basically using wmp11 is kinda... touch-and-go. it's not 100% going to work all the time. to be honest, nothing that's going to stream from an external source other than something physically connected to the ps3 is going to work 100% of the time. regardless, after researching this very topic i caught wind of tversity.

over three days i fought with tversity in conjunction with my network. first problem faced (though i should have known this straightaway): i forgot that windows xp home edition's networking capabilities are for absolute shit and would not work in the way that i wanted. undeterred i baseloaded the computer with xp professional w/sp2. immediately i was able to run back through tversity's configuration and at least get the basic concept working. from here it was a matter of dicking around with settings to get the best possible quality/consistency results from tversity. at this level be prepared to spend some time. there are a million configuration settings out there from people who say, "this is absolutely the best configuration to use," but honestly it's always going to be dependent upon your network, hardware, and home setup (wireless/wired connection, distance between computer and access point, configurations, etc.). unless you're running a wired connection between the media server and the router/hub, forget about streaming in 1080p. it's just not going to happen like you want. the load times will be almost unbearable and tversity itself may just have a stroke and die in the attempt. after fighting tversity (to no fault of tversity's... i think it's just a little ahead of its time yet) i got it configured the way i wanted. i had a small shindig a couple of weekends ago and figured it'd be a great way to get some use out of the media server. failocaust. when the computer wasn't losing connection the ps3 was ignoring the mp3's and telling me they didn't exist, they were corrupt, or they weren't supported. utter bullshit.

last week i finally broke down and bought a 320gb internal hard drive. my son, only a five year old, has an issue in correctly caring for cd's and dvd's with his child hands. the ps3 is slot-load. i can only envision the carnage ensuing when he attempts to jam a new disc into a drive that already contains one, finger prints and scratches all over movies, etc. etc. fuck that. this shit's too goddamn expensive. so i got the 320gb drive and ripped all of his movies to mp4 format at 1080p quality (those that didn't start in that res got upconverted) at a cost of around 2-3.5gb apiece. factor in all of the other music and photos and at the end of it all i'm still left with quite a bit of space with which to install plenty of game content on.

in all honesty i'll probably stick to this method. the hard drive cost me $90 shipped. it took all of five minutes to swap out, and i've already gotten back over half the cost of the new hard drive by selling the old one. my son no longer has to mess with dvd cases, discs, etc. he can simply login as himself, scroll over to the movies, look for what he wants, and hit the x button and it INSTANTLY plays. the quality is better than the dvd and it's great to have everything in one spot.

hope that was helpful.

[JT]

What about organizing it all? Wasn't that a big pain in the ass?

[Gary_Busey]

I've only used Tversity for a couple 720p movies and it worked perfectly over our wireless network. I haven't really messed around with it. I'm thinking of grabbing a desktop from work and setting it up as a server, like Tyler did.

[JT]

I have a desktop upstairs that I really don't use for anything but dust. I need to upgrade the wireless since it's still using a B network.

[Gary_Busey]

So other than TVersity and WMP, what other media server options are out there?

[TylerDurden]

What about organizing it all? Wasn't that a big pain in the ass?

absolutely not. once it's on the ps3 just hit triangle on any stored file and you can change how it's categorized. movies i just put on there raw, root dir to root dir. music is done differently (artist folders)... ps3 does the rest.

it's amazing.

[Syndicate]

Everyone is having so much trouble getting from A (Computer With TVERSITY), To B (Playstation), to C (Your TV).

Why not just cut out the middleman and hook a dedicated PC up to your primary TV? That's what I do, and I have TOTAL Control over everything. I have a mid-range Dell that runs to my 46" Flat-screen via VGA. If your TV doesn't have a VGA or DVI connection you can always pick up a fairly cheap/decent videocard with either a component or s-video out. I have a 120GB internal drive in it, and two 320GB externals. I have roughly 1200 movies all around, I fire them all up straight through either Media Player or VLC. Between the two apps I have total control over EVERYTHING (Volume, EQ, Brightness, Contrast, Etc.), which comes in handy for R5's, screeners, and telesyncs, which as you all should know all usually have shitty sound, unsynced sound, crappy/dark video, or all of the above. In my new house the PC will be hidden within a closet directly behind my TV. When I had it setup here though, the tower just sat next to my entertainment center, which didn't look too bad/weird at all for people that are concerned about things like that.

[Gary_Busey]

That's how I used to have it, but I think I'd rather have it all consolidated in one spot where all anyone has to do is select a movie or show from the PS3 menu.

[Syndicate]

That's how I used to have it, but I think I'd rather have it all consolidated in one spot where all anyone has to do is select a movie or show from the PS3 menu.


Windows Media Center FTW!

[Gary_Busey]

Ha, I actually do use Media Center for watching TV in my room on my Vista machine.

So far, TVersity is working out pretty sweet, I have everything organized nicely and it streams without any hiccups, quality is just like it'd be if it was played off a PC or DVD. If I need to, I have a spare T40 I got from work that I could use to play media content off of, but I'm going to stick with TVersity until it fucks up.

[Bizz]

The cool thing about TVersity is that it'll change the format on the fly if your PS3/Xbox360/Media Center doesn't support it. I've been using it a while now, and I love it.

If you're looking for something else, Nero has a media server. It works, but TVersity is better, and free.

[Le Goat]

Hmm, I just DL'd Tversity and it's slick. I'll be testing it out in the coming hours (mmm cum)

[Le Goat]

fucking shit. I had the slick black/bubble design on my browser as well as the app window but now it's gone out of the broswer!!! how do I get it back?!@?!?!?

[papillon]

faggotry like this, makes me ill.

http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee359/papillon676767/tversity_mssg.gif

[Gary_Busey]

Turn off UAC. That's the first thing I did when I got Vista.

[papillon]

Turn off UAC. That's the first thing I did when I got Vista.
Looking into that now. Thx.

One thing I can't find is, confirmation that other users on this pc will still have separate accounts & all their files if I turn UAC off. If it's really only that annoying pop-up confirmation box that would disappear, then no sweat.

[Gary_Busey]

Yeah, their accounts will be fine.

[Le Goat]

Ok now I cant seem to fucking get video or any window to pop up in my broswer. It says a video is playing but nothing is!

[Hoser]

So other than TVersity and WMP, what other media server options are out there?

Red Kawa. I use that now since TVersity was messing up for me (all choppy and freezes).

I also just put movies on memory sticks now.

[G-Bus]

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/ PS3 Media Server PS3 Media Server is a DLNA compliant Upnp Media Server for the PS3, written in Java, with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files, with minimum configuration. It's backed up with the powerful Mplayer/FFmpeg packages. Current features * Ready to launch and play. No codec packs to install. No folder configuration and pre-parsing or this kind of annoying thing. All your folders are directly browsed by the PS3, there's an automatic refresh also. * Real-time video transcoding via MEncoder, tsMuxer or Avisynth * DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder * OGG/FLAC/MPC/APE audio transcoding * Thumbnail generation for Videos * You can choose with a virtual folder system your audio/subtitle language on the PS3! * All formats PS3 natively supports: MP3/WMA, JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF, and all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG) the ps3 is willing to play * ZIP/RAR files as browsable folders for pictures/audio files * Preliminary support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb * Preliminary Internet TV / Web Radio support with VLC, MEncoder or MPlayer Windows Only: * Lossless 5.1 PCM transcoding with DTS movies Trying it out now. edit - whoa, works pretty effortlessly. Installed and started it up. Found my ps3 right away. Added my movie directory and that was it. Some movies are working and others aren't. They're the same file type too (.AVI) so I'm a little confused.

[lukeass]

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/ Trying it out now. edit - whoa, works pretty effortlessly. Installed and started it up. Found my ps3 right away. Added my movie directory and that was it. Some movies are working and others aren't. They're the same file type too (.AVI) so I'm a little confused.


Does this "DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder" work?!

Im using Tversity and thats what function is just what i need!