Want to utilize my PS3 for my HTPC... what do I need to know?

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USMC2Hard4U

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I have a PS3 and love it. I dont want to spend more money on a seperate HTPC box, I just want to utilize my PS3 to its fullest Capability.

Some questions I have:

Can I put a bigger HDD in my PS3? If so, is it just a standard laptop SATA drive?

Do I need or "Should" I get any additional software? or is the base PS3 software enough?

What ripping settings do I need to play smooth HD content on my PS3? (I have heard that too high of H.264 settings wont work)...

Thanks all... Semper Fi
 
You'll need a separate computer that runs software (Tversity) to be able to stream videos to the PS3. I used to do it with a 939 AMD Dual Core, so it shouldn't take much.

As for the hard drive, any SATA interface 2.5inch hard disk should work without any issues.

As for the settings, I didn't have to mess with any advanced TVersity settings to get HD to play smoothly, the first time setup walked me through everything and it worked perfectly, however YMMV
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
I have a PS3 and love it. I dont want to spend more money on a seperate HTPC box, I just want to utilize my PS3 to its fullest Capability.

Some questions I have:

Can I put a bigger HDD in my PS3? If so, is it just a standard laptop SATA drive?

Do I need or "Should" I get any additional software? or is the base PS3 software enough?

What ripping settings do I need to play smooth HD content on my PS3? (I have heard that too high of H.264 settings wont work)...

Thanks all... Semper Fi
Click to expand...

You can always get an external drive for your PS3. My Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 drive is recognized by my PS3 through the network.

I don't know what the best video codec is available for playing on PS3 as I've not experimented with that yet. I'll get to that as soon as I finish ripping all 600 of my DVD into my NAS digital library (still have about 200 more to go lol).

As for Hulu and other Intenet TV shows as the poster above me said, you need to run a program on your computer sharing called Tversity. TVersity has another advantage over straight network share. It allows your PS3 to play otherwise unsupported video files as long as your PC has the codec for it installed.

Your computer doesn't even need to be in the same room as the PS3. Just on the same network.
 
I'm in the same boat as you, USMC. I have a PS3 and would rather not spend money on a HTPC if I can get away from it. I do like the User Interface of Windows Media Center (and even the likes of XBMC) though. :p

I have had great experiences with the PS3 Media Server software when testing out options in the past. I haven't fully set it up yet though, just tests. (One downfall is that you have to install the Java Runtime Environment which is a bit annoying)
 
I would like to do it without a PC if possible. (for playback, I understand I need a PC for ripping)

I cant access Hulu etc anyway because I have a Japanese IP address.

I just want to rip my entire DVD library and or Torrent TV shows and play them on my PS3, and store them on my PS3
 
I have been doing a lot of experimenting w/ streaming media to my PS3. I have noticed that the format Geekbrief uses for their extra large video podcast files looks amazing on my 55inch through the PS3.

It chugs when streaming, but when copied to the hard drive, runs smooth and looks great. Info from one of their video files is below:

Dimensions 960x544
Codec: H.254/AVC
Framerate: 30 fps
Bitrate N/A

Audio
Codec: MPEG-4 AAC audio
Channels: Stereo
Sample Rate 44100hz

Of course you can play around with tweaking it, but this really does offer a great combo of quality and filesize. I will be adjusting my rip settings to something similar.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
I would like to do it without a PC if possible. (for playback, I understand I need a PC for ripping)

I cant access Hulu etc anyway because I have a Japanese IP address.

I just want to rip my entire DVD library and or Torrent TV shows and play them on my PS3, and store them on my PS3
Click to expand...

I haven't done any transferring in awhile. but there are two ways to go about this. You can either setup IIS from your windows machine and transfer via your network through the PS3 browser or you can copy each file one by one through transcoding . On a sidenote, I import videos as well through the PS3's internal card reader from my Sony CX7 camcorder.
 
So if I were to use a Qnap NAS on my PS3, and I purchased HD movies from PSN, would I be able to store them directly on the NAS?
 
I use my PS3 as a HTPC, just no TV support. I run PS3Mediaserver and store movies and TV shows on my computer, then stream it over a gigabit network connection. I would love to find a way to add TV support, because right now I have to torrent everything I want to watch and it can be annoying looking for new shows every week,
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
I would like to do it without a PC if possible. (for playback, I understand I need a PC for ripping)

I cant access Hulu etc anyway because I have a Japanese IP address.

I just want to rip my entire DVD library and or Torrent TV shows and play them on my PS3, and store them on my PS3
Click to expand...

You can do it without a PC. Western Digital has a 1TB 2.5" drive now. If you fill that up you can add an external drive but it will have to be formatted as fat32 so you will have the 4GB file size limit. There is a free program called mkv2vob that will convert you HD mkv files to m2ts so that your PS3 can play them. It doesn't do any trans-coding so it just takes a minute or two to run the file through. It's nice to have them on you PS3 because then you get those motion thumbnails.
 
maxinflixion said:
I have been doing a lot of experimenting w/ streaming media to my PS3. I have noticed that the format Geekbrief uses for their extra large video podcast files looks amazing on my 55inch through the PS3.

It chugs when streaming, but when copied to the hard drive, runs smooth and looks great. Info from one of their video files is below:

Dimensions 960x544
Codec: H.254/AVC
Framerate: 30 fps
Bitrate N/A

Audio
Codec: MPEG-4 AAC audio
Channels: Stereo
Sample Rate 44100hz

Of course you can play around with tweaking it, but this really does offer a great combo of quality and filesize. I will be adjusting my rip settings to something similar.
Click to expand...

And what format is the file? .AVI?
 
robothunter said:
You can do it without a PC. Western Digital has a 1TB 2.5" drive now. If you fill that up you can add an external drive but it will have to be formatted as fat32 so you will have the 4GB file size limit. There is a free program called mkv2vob that will convert you HD mkv files to m2ts so that your PS3 can play them. It doesn't do any trans-coding so it just takes a minute or two to run the file through. It's nice to have them on you PS3 because then you get those motion thumbnails.
Click to expand...

mkv2vob usually transcodes the audio, right? Is there a way to get it to play AAC audio in the video file with BD video (H264, VC-1, MPEG2)?

Also a huge gripe I have is NO 24p playback whatsoever from the PS3 unless it's directly from a BD. Even video straight copied from BD-->mkv--->mkv2vob will playback at 60hz with Judder Pulldown.
 
If the audio isn't PS3 friendly it will re-encode it. I think 24p playback works on the PS3. I encode BD-->mkv(Ripbot264)-->m2ts(mkv2vob) and it plays at 60Hz with no issues. As long as you output to m2ts the PS3 thinks it is playing a native blu-ray file.
 
robothunter said:
...and it plays at 60Hz with no issues...
Click to expand...

That's not what I would call working 24p playback. :eek:

I did a little more poking around and it's not possible to get the PS3 to playback at 24p w/o using an actual blu ray disc
 
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