So I got a PS3. Of course I use it to play games, but I know it's capable of more. I want to install Linux on it, but haven't gotten around to it yet. One of the reasons I wanted to do this, was to allow me to play my various multimedia content on it. By default, the PS3 didn't play video encoded with certain formats.
I was doing some research into streaming video to the PS3, when I came across some information about DLNA - Digital Living Network Alliance. As it turns out, DLNA is a standard for sharing multimedia content between different devices in the home. Lo and behold, devices like the PS3, XBOX360, PSP, and Wii are DLNA clients. Kewl!
These DLNA clients can get content from a DLNA server. Kewl!
Did some more
digging, and I came across guides like this one, which show you how to setup DLNA streaming to your PS3. As it turns out, Windows Media Player 11 can act as a DLNA server. Kewl! But I don't have
WMP11 nor do I want to upgrade to it, so what other options are there? Well, it turns out that the Nero package I had installed on my PC, came with a DLNA server - Nero Digital Media Home. Kewl! So, I fired it up, setup sharing of some photos and stuff, and booted up the PS3.
In the Xross Media Bar under the Photo, Video and Audio menu options, there turned up an icon for the Nero Media server. Selecting that listed the content there for audio, video and photos. Kewl! I was able to access multimedia content
served from my PC on my PS3.
But Nero started acting a little flaky. Periodically got some network and media server errors while accessing content. So I looked for another alternative. Then I came across Tversity.
I checked out the site, downloaded the app, installed it on my PC, followed the instructions, and shared my content. I booted up the PS3 and checked, and saw the Tversity media server icon. Browsed to it, and saw my content. I was able to access my photos, music and video content quite nicely, and it seemed to be more stable than Nero.
Tversity has some good features. For video that is encoded in a format that cannot be played on the PS3, it can transcode it to a compatible format on the fly before streaming it. It also can act as a web proxy server to allow you to access things like podcasts and other video/audio streams on the Internet. eg. YouTube can be accessed this way, so you can watch them on your TV. I setup to get my favourite podcasts that way.
The thing is though, that you will need lots of disk space if you have lots of media files and if Tversity will have to do lots of downloading (for the podcasts etc.) or transcoding. So budget some gigs of space for that.
I'm a happy camper. I'm getting more value out of my PS3 investment thanks to Tversity. But I must get back on track with that Linux installation ...