Playstation 3

Greetings!

I too have a PS3 which I use to stream my iTunes music, photo's etc from my Mac. I downloaded a program from Nullriver called medialink:

http://www.nullriver.com/products/medialink

It does cost money though, about £10. The price is listed in dollars ($20) but Paypal converts it for you. Medialink works very well and is worth the cash.

I downloaded the trial version of Medialink - works for 30 minutes.

Connects no problem, OK with iTunes, but seems a bit iffy with video. HD wmv files cause the server to crash, but this could be a network bandwidth problem.

Also having trouble getting a DVD rip to play (plays fine in my iMac's DVD player if the image is mounted). What format does the DVD rip have to be in for medialink to play it?

I've ripped a couple of my DVD's using Handbrake onto my Mac, and (probably) due to the file size it struggles to stream it across. Shorter video is fine with me, like half hour comedy shows, that sort of thing. Medialink also works perfectly for me, I thought the trial version limited how many tracks/videos you could play, not imposed a time limit?

I think the HD wmv files might be too big? I have my rips saved as mp4's for the record.

I've already got the DVDs ripped as iso images, because that's what my other media player uses. That player (Pixel Magic MB200) works really well, but I cant easily add files to it (acts like a USB HDD, so need to connect it to a computer). It does samba and NFS streaming, and I'd really like to get it working with an NAS, ideally the Time Capsule that I already have. Struggling with that, so looking for an easy alternative.

Maybe they've changed the trial version of medialink? It now runs for 30 minutes, then stops. You have to manually restart it.

PS3 won't play .iso PS3 plays wmv and mp4 and even of those I've had trouble with certain codecs of mp4. Use handbrake to convert the video to mp4 using the built in PS3 preset and then use media link to stream it. I've only been able to stream video without interruption by having the PS3 wired to the router if I use the PS3 wireless then the buffer runs out. I believe this is due to the PS3 being 802.11 b/g only so the speed is only going to get up to 54mbps which is not quite fast enough for video. Hop

I thought a little clarification might help. Media type is not restricted by medialink but by the PS3 itself. Nullrivers website used to have a FAQ section for medialink which stated the PS3 supported media formats. The "only able to stream video without interruption by having the PS3 wired to the router" statement is for the handbrake rips of full length videos using the PS3 preset. I can stream lower quality video fine over wireless but it does not look good. And even using handbrakes PS3 preset the image quality is not fantastic but tolerable on a HDTV.

Thanks for the info.

I think I'm going to do this "properly" - I've got a Mac Mini (and 500GB ministack) sitting around doing next to nothing since I bought an iMac. Might as well use the Mini as an HTPC. Probably be a lot easier to to use for media than either the PS3 or my Pixel Magic player.

All I need is a new 1080p TV to replace my "old" 720i Samsung.

That's the route I'd like to take in the near future. As I understand it FrontRow plays VIDEO_TS files but will it play them from an iso prior to mounting the image?

I've just tried Front Row on my iMac. I put an iso image in the Movies folder - wouldn't play it. Then tried copying the Video_TS folder - wouldn't play that either. More research needed...

Done a bit more research and playing with FR. .wmv files play OK, even HD ones, as long as flip4mac is installed. Tried a few HD files downloaded from Microsoft - they play perfectly.

Seems like FR uses Quicktime to play video, not the DVD Player application. This means that all your DVD files need to be re-encoded to a format that quicktime is happy with - not good.

I managed to find an app called DVD Assist, which claims to make FR use DVD Player, rather than Quicktime, on Video_TS folders. It requires a bit of fiddling with aliases, so I'll try it tomorrow.

Yeah I forgot about the DVDassist program. I tried it right after I upgraded to 10.5 I remember I didn't like having to mess with the file names.