CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

I am bowing to the inevitable, and am looking for a PS3 to use as a Blu-Ray player.

I know (from Kal's and others' recommendations) the PS3 does well with BD disks. I assume it's good at upscaling SD disks. (Correct?) If only it played HD-DVD disks... Smile

Now it's the media-center features that I want to nail down.

Obviously it can play media files from its internal HD, and you can upgrade the internal HD to a larger drive if you want. Can it play remote files over the LAN as well? So it could play MPG files off my PC (like my Momitsu DVD player does, only without needing the Momitsu's media server on the PC) or from a simple network disk? All the searches I try just come up with answers about gaming and LAN parties. Smile

Anything else in particular I should know about the PS3 in general or its media-center features in particular? I know about the Bluetooth remote, the different HD sizes, etc.

Any particular reason why you might suggest another player over the PS3? The PS3 is very attractive to me because of its media-center abilities, its good resale value if I decide I don't like it, etc.

Thanks!
Gary

ecrabb · Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 10:28 pm Post subject:

I love the PS3 and the media player capabilities. It can connect to any DLNA-compliant server as a UPnP client... So, WindowsMedia 11 or MCE can act as the server, and a host of other third-party and shareware/freeware servers. I'm a Mac and Windows guy and haven't had a chance to play with MCE or WM11, but I have played around with a product called eyeconnect on the Mac. Works beautifully. Sees my whole iTunes collection, which is mostly AAC. Very cool.

I also love watching trailers, and the Sony PS3 store has a few nice HD trailers, but there aren't very many of them and they don't add them very often. Fortunately, you can grab the HD trailers off the Apple trailer site on your computer, save them out as an mp4 file (no Apple QT .mov wrapper), and play them on the PS3. I do it as shared files from the Mac. I'm assuming you could do the same on a Windows box, as long as MCE/WM11 handles the mp4 files correctly.

Two thumbs up for the PS3 as a media center, and as a BD player. The only thing you'll miss is the high-res audio if you don't have a newer HDMI-based receiver.

SC

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

So I'm still not quite sure -- do you need the UPnP server on the other end, or can the PS3 just reach across the LAN and grab files? Because if I've got a simple networked disk drive, it ain't gonna have UPnP on it.

Um, audio. My receiver isn't HDMI-capable but the PS3 has TOSlink out so it's no worse than my Toshiba HD-DVD player.

BTW I was wondering why this guy was selling his unused new PS3 40GB with Spiderman 3 for $300, $100 less than Walfart sells it for. I forgot that, even though the Evil Empire has won, they're still offering 5 free BD DVDs with the purchase of a player, including a PS3. Or at least they were; you had to buy it by 1/31. But since there are only 1 or 2 of the offered movies that I'd want to own, I'd rather get it $100 cheaper.

**kal** · Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:22 pm Post subject:

Some have said that the PS3 doesn't have a very good built in scaler for regular DVDs but I'm very happy with it, and I'm pretty fussy.

Kal

Ridebreck · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:05 pm Post subject:

ecrabb · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:30 pm Post subject:

Matt,

What type of media files are you thinking about? I would think anything with multi-channel DD or DTS would work even over the Toslink output (and I can test that). If it would work over the Toslink, then it should certainly work over HDMI. If you're talking about the more advanced codecs, then who knows? I wonder if anybody here has both an HDMI-based processor AND media streaming capabilities AND media files with advanced codecs. In fact, the only files like that would be rips from HD DVD/BD. Is that what you're talking about?

SC

Ridebreck · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:27 pm Post subject:

What I was mainly getting at is that I know for sure that the PS3 only outputs 2-channel audio over optical when playing movie trailers, even though they have a multichannel audio track. I would love to be able to rip my SD DVD's to a harddrive and use my PS3 as a sort of media center to play them without having to pop disks, but I'm afraid that even if you could play the files, you would only get 2-channel output on the audio side. I was just curious if the PS3 outputs full multichannel audio via HDMI, because if so, I may have to upgrade receivers. Dolby PLIIx does ok with the 2-channel stuff, but it's still no substitute.

ecrabb · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:47 pm Post subject:

What movie trailers? You mean from Apple/Sony? Most of those MP4 movie trailers ARE stereo. There are a few that are multichannel, but they're AAC multichannel - NOT DD/DTS. To play AAC in multichannel over SPDIF to an outboard processor, the PS3 (or a computer for that matter) would have to on-the-fly transcode to DD or DTS... unless the receiver could decode AAC, of course - which nothing that I'm aware of can (nothing more than a year or two old, anyway). You can set whether your outboard processor is AAC-capable or not in the preferences.

SD DVD's would be a whole different story. They already have DD/DTS tracks muxed in. If the PS3 was sending the bistream, the connected audio processor (whether SPDIF or HDMI) would see the DD/DTS bitstream and kick in.

I'll do some tests tonight if I can get down the theater and I'll let you know what I can do with my old non-HDMI SPDIF-connected setup.

SC

oliverg · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:15 am Post subject:

The PS3 can send bitstream to your processor Smile

as ecrabb says - your processor will automagically change to DD/DTS - via optical anyway.

The PS3's upscaling is very reasonable. Being firmware upgradeable is a great feature too .. updates happen regularly too and often are useful - not just updates for the sake of them.

Ridebreck · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 6:32 am Post subject:

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 7:01 am Post subject:

Well, I tested out some different material on the PS3. I only had a few minutes (I should be working now, in fact), so I didn't test much...

HD .ts files - extension was a no-go - wouldn't even show in the file list. Renamed to .mpg - some played with perfect video and no audio, some didn't play at all.
VOB - one ripped from a DVD, and a couple I had laying around. Several with DD streams played perfectly. w/DTS - no audio. Those same DTS pieces I have trouble with on HTPC, too.

I tested a couple of other things and had some success and some failure. But, I was just grabbing some crap files I had laying around around a drive. In the next couple days, I'll try to find some known good source material and see what works and doesn't.

Keep in mind my source is a Mac OS X DLNA server called EyeConnect. I don't know what all things will function the same or different from stuff served up from a Windows box. Elgato (EyeConnect folks) specifically list unencrypted VOB as a supported media file type, though. I'll test more with a few ripped DVD's laying around, and I'll test the Windows box this weekend to see how it functions, too.

This is what I'm using for a server:
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/software/EyeConnect.en.html

SC

Ridebreck · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject:

Cool beans, crabby. Watching anxiously. I'll also be sure to check out that link.

ecrabb · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 5:36 am Post subject:

Hey, Matt - I played around with some more media files tonight. To reiterate, the PS3 no likey transport streams and PS3 no likey VOB files. VOB files being a problem isn't really surprising to me given what a VOB file really is. Anyway...

1. Pulled some HD program streams (.MPG) off my DirecTV Tivo box and moved them over to the DLNA server. These are 'HD Lite' 1280x1080i files with DD 5.1 streams from HDNet and HBO HD. They played flawlessly and the DD was perfect into my receiver. REW/FF work well, though not as well is off a disk (not surprising).

2. Extracted a few chapters from The Blue Man Group DVD (as VOB), opened them in VideoRedo and saved them out as program streams. They played back almost flawlessly. I say 'almost' because I went through the same 8-min. chapter a couple of times, and the only thing I noticed was twice I saw one frame that had some bad macroblocking. I went back and played over the same section again and they weren't there. I'm not sure if it's the PS3, my media server, or a network QoS issue. The audio was perfect DD 5.1, never burped or anything. One other interesting thing is the scaling quality. The Blue Man Group DVD is letterboxed. I'd never seen it before on my system any way but letterboxed and pillarboxed (which sucks ass!). Well, the PS3 has nice aspect ratio control... Original (pixel-for-pixel, so it's tiny in the middle of the screen), Normal, Fill and Zoom. Even zoomed, I was amazed that it looked as good as it did.

Bottom line is, depending on how your media is stored now, the PS3 may make a hell of a network media player.

Check out another nice little app for ripping DVDs to MPEG-4, too if you haven't already. Very simple and easy to use, and it'll process files besides DVDs. The new version will even wrap an AC-3 stream from a DVD into the MPEG-4 file, though I don't know if the PS3 will play it back. I haven't tried it because it requires OS X 10.5 for that capability and I don't have that on my primary Mac, yet.

http://handbrake.fr/

Hope that helps. I'm also excited that the PS3 will keep getting updated and should only get better.

SC

Ridebreck · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 7:59 pm Post subject:

I guess the good part for me is that I don't have any media stored right now. I'm probably going to get a new computer for our downstairs office and was going to take our old computer and turn it into a media server (at least try). From my understanding, it doesn't take much oomph processor-wise for the server, so I *think* I'll be ok on that end.

So if I'm understanding, as long as I rip my DVDs to MPEG-4, I should be good to go? How do you access the video files in the PS3's GUI? Does it scan the network and list them along with the other video files that are on the PS3's HDD? That would kick ass if it did - especially if you can custom select the 15 seconds of video that the PS3 uses for each video's icon.

ecrabb · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 8:46 pm Post subject:

I don't know if it's server-related or content-related, but not many of the videos in my XMB have the thumbnails with full video. Only a couple do, in fact. Not sure what's up with that.

You wouldn't have to rip to MPEG-4 (transcode), you just couldn't rip to VOB, which a lot of ripping software does. You just need to use a ripping tool that does 'main feature' extraction and rips to a single files - be it MPEG-4, or the original untouched MPEG-2 file. The MPEG-4 would be nice because you could save at least half the disc space without affecting quality noticeably, but it will take much longer to transcode/compress. The MPEG-2 would keep all original quality intact, and would be fast to rip, but would consume 4-6 gigs (about double) the space of an MPEG-4 encode. Considering how cheap drive storage is now, and the fact that you could probably store probably 100 movies or so per 500GB drive, it may not be necessary to do any transcoding.

As for how the remote media shows up, it's not in the list with your other 'local' media. There's in icon that says 'search for servers', or if the PS3 has already found it, there's an icon with the name of the server on the network - in each media category. In my case, it says "PowerMac G4" or something like that. So, you could have multiple computers on the network all sharing media and just choose which one you wanted to use. It shows up under each category - photos, video, music. You click it, then it expands to show all the shared media directories, and you browse them just like you'd expect. I'm impressed with how well it all works, really. No difficult configuration, no IP addresses, names, etc. The only problem I had was when I had the Mac on a different switch from the PS3 - they couldn't see each other. I don't know enough about networking to understand what that was.

Oh, and no - you don't need much of a machine to serve the media up.

SC

Ridebreck · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:39 pm Post subject:

ShaWeet! I doubt that I have even 30 DVD's to my name, so the MPEG-2 approach sounds pretty darned groovy. I need to make this happen.

The info is much appreciated, man.

ecrabb · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:41 pm Post subject:

No problem. Pretty low-risk to give it a whirl, too. The PS3 is enough in demand that you could buy one, try it for a month or two, and in the highly unlikely even you didn't like it, you could probably sell it for $50 less than what you paid. Not so true of a set-top, I don't think - at least, not to the same extent.

Go for it!!!

SC

Ridebreck · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 10:25 pm Post subject:

I've had the PS3 for a while, but I've only been using it to play Tiger Woods golf occasionally and for playing BluRay movies. The tough part for me is going to be figuring out what I need to do to our current home PC to turn it into a dedicated movie server. Off the top of my head, I'm looking at a new case, memory upgrade, new CPU cooler, and a big-arse hard drive. Time will tell...

ecrabb · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:05 pm Post subject:

Clarence · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:55 pm Post subject: