Today I tested “PS3 Media Server“, a software that allows you to stream and view media from a PC to a Playstation 3, like HD movies. This is pretty much the same functionality as TVersity, which I have written a guide to on this blog, but PS3 Media Server is supposed to be able to handle 1080p videos with ease and also to include subtitle files and many other things.
PS3 Media Server is a free software that was released in version 1.00 just a few days ago, it requires no installation and no setup, for me it was pretty much working right out of the box (probably because I had all codecs already installed from my TVersity installation). I could share my movie-folder and it came up on the PS3 in seconds and I could play DVD ISO-files with no configuration at all. The only problem I had was with video and sound sync, they were several seconds out of sync, but I managed to solve that by disabling the “auto A/V sync” option in the transcoding configuration. The program has a large buffer that is visualized on the main screen and it works very well, there were no stuttering at all throughout the movie.
I liked this program alot, I will probably use this instead of TVersity now because TVersity is slow on updates, takes alot of memory and CPU usage and stutters sometimes in videos. This program seems much faster and more efficient. I’m looking forward to try it out with full HD videos and subtitles and see how everything works.
Howto stream x264.mkv to PS3 with TVersity
Streaming full hd (1080p) movies is no problem at all, very smooth and no stuttering. It takes about steady 70% of my CPU (TVersity spiked 100% on 720p movies). I love it.
[...] easy to setup if you have the codecs in place, PS3 Media Server. I’ve written a post about it here. It’s worth a look, it can stream full HD movies with much less resources than TVersity, no [...]
There is a problem with A/V sync when playing ISO-images that is not solved by disabling the “auto A/V-sync” option, if you do you lose all video and sound. I had this problem both in version 0.99 and 1.00. This issue is reporting and probably under investigation and hopefully solved soon.
Can uXM be used with this App? If so, How do you set it up?
There is no mention of this on their site, so I’m guessing no, atleast not yet. But good news is that the A/V sync problem is fixed in the 1.02 version that was released yesterday.
I tried it yesterday. Installation and configuration are both very smooth. 720p doing fantastic, 1080p seems to drain the buffer (my CPU can’t seem to decode as fast as the buffer empties) and it keeps stuttering.
Running on Intel Dual Core 3 Ghz with 1 Gb mem, XPSP2.
Looking at the Performance in the taskmanager I see the CPU cores still spiking to 100%, the same thing i had with Tversity. Memory and network seem to have more then enough capacity.
Playing around with the decoding settings doesn’t seem to solve my problems :o(.
Any advice?
Hm, I have a Intel Dual Core 2.8 Ghz with 2 Gb RAM on a Windows 2003 server and it’s no problem with 1080p (70% cpu load). Is your setup configured to use both CPU cores? It should be default.
Draupner, thanks for you response.
Both Cores are used and spiking to 100% (both visible in the taskmanager).
Weird, I don’t have that problem with a CPU slower than yours. Perhaps you better check the official ps3 media server support forums for this one.
I don’t remember how I came across your blog, but I’m glad that I did. PS3 Media Server is amazing. I always felt as if I was losing some quality when using MKV2VOB, but now that I can stream MKV files flawlessly, I’m a happy man.
Thank you for the suggestion.
Draupner thanks again, i’ll look into it.
Regards,
Roger
Wow, this is the best and simplest media server I have seen so far. TVersity and WMP11 can’t hold a candle. Haven’t had the slightest issue with HD files. Bravo, gentlemen.
Just found this programme, amazing 5 seconds to setup, everything streaming with no probs whatsoever, iso mkv. Now Tversity is going ;)
Mine is not working, for some reason it keep pause every few second. I got a core 2 duo and plenty of ram. But i running on Wifi G thought. Any of you running using wifi?
Fantastic fantastic fantastic. Was a Tversity user, but after a shedload of issues with Tversity and my new PC, I found this, and all I can say is WOW!!! So easy to use and configure.
Got 8 cores and more RAM than I can shake a stick at so not experiencing any buffer issues that have been mentioned above, its utilising 2% of my CPU usage on 720P HD movies.
Thank you so much, you have made me a happy bunny today!
Thanks a lot for this great program!
I stream mkvs to PS3 running Cat 5 Ethernet CROSS cable directly from the PS3 into my MacBook White. 720p movies are good but some 1080p movies with high bit rates stutters. But this is a much better result than running through the wired LAN (mine is an old DLink 100Mbps router). I have not tried a wired Gigabit router but I suspect that it will not be better than running direct with CROSS cable. What do you think? Is the bottleneck at point of the transmission speed through the cable or the transcoding of the high bit rate mkvs? If it is the latter, then I think maybe a faster speed computer will be better.
Any comments or help?
Just wanted to let you know that this works beautifully! Thank you so much! Now I can watch Wall.E hehe
Hi I’m a complete novice at this sort of thing. I have a HD movie as a .mkv file. I hav ran the PS3 media server and it is saying it has found my PS3. Also on my PS3 in the media servers I have found the Ps3 media server and have navigted to the mkv file. When I get there it is saying Trancode. I pressed x on the joypad an all it is doing is still highlighting on the transcode. Also on the computer it is showing transcoding buffer status as empty. in the traces section it is saying Sending Alive repeated ly after every few seconds.
What is happening is it running or am I mising something??? please help ASAP thanks
mkv2vob will re-compress only if the video is incompatible with the PS3. Some versions of AVC/h.264 won’t play on the PS3. So, yea, you’ll lose a little quality but if you re-encode with a high quality setting in mkv2vob the difference is negligible.
Most of the time, mkv2vob will just re-package the video and audio into a format that the PS3 will play. No encoding is done, so no quality is lost.
This media server will do exactly the same thing. If the video is already compatible, it will just re-mux to a format the PS3 will play. If the video isn’t compatible, it will re-encode into a format that it will.
mkv2vob is the preferred method. It will produce better re-encodes than a media server will do in real-time, and it will remove all burden from your media server. So, always use mkv2vob when you can. It will be better.
However, having the ability to stream other things to the PS3 in real-time is nice. PS3 media player does a good job of transcoding any number of video formats to something the PS3 can use. I have lots of little videos and stuff I’ve collected over the years, and they all play great.
So, for MKV files I use mkv2vob, but with the other formats that won’t play, I just let the media server transcode them.
Hello, I recommend u an easy-to-use but very useful tool that can burn DVD disc, DVD folder and ISO file from QuickTime. A nice software…
Wow, quick and easy. Spent hours trying to use Tversity and this worked first time out. Thanks for the info!
Hah my little netbook with an Intel Atom processor is transcoding 720p video to my PS3 no problem, less than 60% CPU usage, great program! My netbook isn’t even capable of playing 720p video lol
i cant wait to test this at XMAS *And i’m a 30yr old lad :) yav just gotta love ya gadgets man !!!
do you lads think my spec is good enough to use without having any buffer problems,
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300
4GB Kingston Ram DDRII @ 800Mhz
Why dont you all just join your setup through a router and stream it that way….much easier & faster :)