PS3 media server

I recently bought a PS3 and a giant badass telly. My life is pretty much complete.
The only thing missing was streaming of ripped films from my PC to the PS3/TV. So I got to work.

Sony has mercifully added DivX support with firmware 2.10 so all you need to do now is install and configure a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) server on your network.

I am currently using a free server called FUPPES, unfortunately it runs only on Windows. This blog post gives you a list of the DLNA servers available on the net with a features comparison table.

Now to FUPPES.
After you install it and start it an icon will appear in your systray, that means the server is active. All you have to do now is configure it to share your media files.
Right click on the systray icon and select web interface (first option). Once the admin interface opens in your browser go directly to the configuration link. This page might display a warning at the top telling you that you can’t actually change the configuration from the admin interface. I had to go and look at the configuration file manually, the system will tell you the path to the file (X:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\FUPPES\fuppes.cfg) in the warning message so all you have to do is go there and open it with notepad.

The first section of the XML file is the “shared objects”. Basically a list of folders you want to share over the network.

<shared_objects>
<dir>C:\yourfilms\</dir>
<dir>D:\yourmusic\</dir>
</shared_objects>

Add as many folders as you like here then move on to the network item.
The default settings should work just fine; however, if you do have a firewall in your local network or computer you might want to set the http_port manually and make sure that it’s open in your firewall configuration. Can’t give you instructions to do that, you’re smart lads and I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

Next you’ll find a list of device-specific settings, first is the default device after which comes the PS3. First thing to do is enable it.

<device name=”PS3″ enabled=”true”>
<user_agent>UPnP/1.0 DLNADOC/1.00</user_agent>
<user_agent>PLAYSTATION3</user_agent>
…

Still inside the PS3 settings you’ll notice that in the file_settings section only audio files are mentioned. The easiest thing to do is to copy the VIDEO_FILE settings from the default device and paste them in the PS3 section.

<file_settings>
<file ext=”ogg”>
<type>AUDIO_ITEM_MUSIC_TRACK</type>
<transcode enabled=”true”>
<http_encoding>stream</http_encoding>
</transcode>
</file>
<file ext=”mpg”>
<ext>mpeg</ext>
<type>VIDEO_ITEM</type>
<mime_type>video/mpeg</mime_type>
</file>
….
</file_settings>

One thing I suggest you change is the mime-type for avi files. By default it’s set to video/x-msvideo, the PS3 does not support this format and most likely all your avi files are going to be divx nowadays, so just change that x-msvideo for divx (video/divx).

This should do the trick. You may have noticed that FUPPES supports transcoding.
By transcoding the files you can convert them to a format suppored by the PS3 in real time while streaming. I won’t spend time explaining how it works here but do feel free to drop me a line should you need assistance.

<transcode enabled=”true”>
<ext>vob</ext>
<mime_type>video/x-ms-vob</mime_type>
</transcode>

Save the configuration file and close your editor. All that’s left to do is go back to the web administration interface and from “Options” select “rebuild database”. Once the process is completed (it may take a while if you’re sharing a large number of files) you should see the list of shared folders in the configuration section of the admin interface.

I had a problem here because FUPPES did not reload the device configuration automatically. If the same happens to you just restarting the server should do (right click on the systray icon quit and start it again).
Now go back to your PS3 and search for media servers!

Hope this is helpful.

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Tags: Configuration, Console, DivX, DLNA, Film, FUPPES, Games, Network, Playstation, PS3, Server, Streaming, Video, XML