PS3 Media Centre Tips
The PS3 sits amongst all my media devices like Mr T, pitying the other fools with their poor format support and lack of blu-ray or HD. In Playstation 3 Media Centre by Jon Hicks he discusses using a PS3 as his main media centre. I’ve been using my PS3 this way for a while, and I’ve got a few tips to share so you can get the most out of your PS3. It’s great for watching video podcasts, or streaming music off your computer while you’re in the living room. It can take a little bit of work to get content converted, however.
Video Formats
The PS3’s manual outlines the supported formats: I’m going to detail converting mp4. Most mp4 videos I’ve tried have worked, that includes podcasts and downloaded YouTube videos.
Copying Videos from the PSP
Plug your PSP into your computer using a USB cable (you can use a PS3 controller cable for this), and select USB mode from the PSP’s menu. Once the PSP is mounted copy videos to the PSP’s VIDEO folder. The PSP and PS3 always look for a folder with the media type in upper-case.
Next plug the PSP into one of the PS3’s USB ports. Then navigate to the video menu and look for your PSP in there. You can copy videos off by pressing triangle then selecting Copy.
Copying Videos from the: Memory Card or USB Drive
Make sure you have a folder in the root of the memory card called VIDEO. Also, the PS3 can only read FAT32 formatted drives, so make sure you’ve got the correct format if you’re using a Mac. You can format the memory card using Disk Utility on a Mac.
Stream Videos from PC/Mac
To stream from your computer look for anything that supports DLNA: Microsoft supports it through Windows Media Player, so if you use Windows you’ve no doubt seen an icon on your PS3 for your PC.
I use MediaLink from Nullriver on my Mac. It streams music and videos to my PS3 pretty seamlessly, but obviously it won’t stream DRM’d purchases off the iTunes Music Store (iTunes+ tracks work). An alternative is Rivet.
To stream from Windows I use TVersity. It’s easy to install and use and does good quality transcoding with little configuration. It provides access to Internet content as well as your own videos, a feature I never use.
Converting Videos: Mac
My laziest technique of all is dragging videos into iTunes, then selecting a video and Create Apple TV Version from the Advanced menu. All it’s doing is converting a video to mp4, and obviously the video has to work with iTunes in the first place. This works 90% of the time.
Another solution is to use ffmpegx. If your video doesn’t work with iTunes this is the next thing to try.
If you just want to convert a DVD, take a look at HandBrake. It’s free and genuinely user-friendly. It’s no longer limited to just converting DVDs either, so you could use this as an alternative to ffmpegx.
Converting Videos: Windows
There’s dozens of high quality commercial (but cheap) video convertors for Windows. Red Kawa make a few, but they also make ps3video9 which is free.
YouTube
There’s a trick to getting YouTube videos in the correct format. Add &fmt=18 to the video’s URL. This will make the video mp4. Next, drag the bookmarklet detailed in this article to your bookmarks bar and click it while viewing the video.
Common Problems
Stuttering Video Streams: Rather than streaming the video, try selecting the video and pressing triangle, then select copy. This will copy it to the PS3. Not a perfect solution, but you’ll still get to watch that content on your big screen.
People have reported problems playing back mp4 streams, so you could try converting videos to divx instead.
Remotes: The biggest problem is the lack of IR support. If you use a universal remote you won’t be able to add the PS3 to it. This can be a major drawback if you’re a big fan of Logitech’s Harmony remotes. There exist projects to hack an IR receiver onto a USB port, emulating a controller, so perpaps at some point a more official solution will come along.
