He was talking about gaming on the PC, but recoding still isn't much work.
A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players
- Thread starter TrungGap
- Start date
Be nice if people have actually used both as well
I've used both extensively for video. I take all my blurays and I create lesser 1280x720 VC-1 versions more suitable for distribution around the house, portables, etc. They are usually 2 to 4gb in size. I've also got HD home video files. Originally everything was on a DNS-323 raid, now we've upgraded it to a 3 terabyte DNS-343 raid. I used to use twonky media server, but I've switched to tversity which seemed a touch quicker.
Originally I had a PS3 in the bedroom used to play movies off the raid. The biggest problem I had with the PS3 for video was it's inability to deal with large files when it came to fast forwarding or rewinding. I had posted a thread about this long time ago looking for solutions, and never never found any. The problem is simple, start playing a movie on the PS3 over the raid and everything works fine. Try fast forwarding to a scene I like and it's basically impossible. It stutters along at a very slow speed, basically unable to fast forward properly. Then when you hit play, it would freeze for a very long time. Basically, unusable. I even tried that preview feature they offered on a recent firmware where you hit a button and it puts up thumbnails spread at 5 minute intervals and it was also unuseable. It would stall and take many minutes to create the thumbnails. For whatever reason, I simple could never get the PS3 to properly support large HD video files over a network via dlna.
I just recently sold that PS3 and replaced it with a 360 arcade. Turns out, the 360 handles large video files far far better. First, it doesn't seem to have as many hangups fast forwarding. It's still not realtime quick, but it is useable. More importantly though, the 360 has a simple feature that makes fast forwarding simple. You just hit the bumpers on the controller and it skips ahead in the video in about 5 minute chunks. This works instantly, no hestiation, no delay. So now I can fire up a movie and if I want to watch a scene near the end of the movie, I just hit the right bumper a few times and I'm instantly there. Ultimately, this makes the 360 infinitely more useable to me as a dlna playback device for large HD video files, hence why I sold the PS3 and replaced it with a 360 arcade.
For file support, the 360 plays all my wmv's, the PS3 was unable to play them all. My home movies that I created from my Sony Hd video camera in wmv format were all unplayable on the PS3 for whatever reason, the 360 handles them just fine. Divx was hit or miss on both, but I have very few of those files anyways.
Ultimately, there seems to be something wrong with either the PS3's network support, or dlna support, but no matter what I tried I could never get acceptable performance from it. I expected it to perform better than the 360 given that we have a gigabit wired network all over the house, but it just never performed right. This seems like it should be a fixable issue, but until they do I recommend a 360 arcade as a cheap and fast network media player. They are cheap enough that you can put a few around the house, and you can use the money you saved compared to buying PS3's and buy a multi terabyte raid box to centralize all your videos.
I've got a launch box, very first gen elite (the first batch, just prior to the heatpipe GPU heatsink) and a new Arcade (though, not Jasper) there is a huge difference between my launch unit and the arcade - I've used both of these units sitting about 2 foot away. Can't really compare to the Elite as it exists in a different environment.
Its probably not necessatily much about the fan design - its more the fact that the newer processes on the newer chips are easier to keep at the desired idle / media playback temps and the fans simply spin less to keep them at that temp.
Aye my 60 gig makes less noise than my ps3 when using it for media playback.
joker454 and NavNucST3, here are my preliminary findings so far:
Fast forwarding and rewinding large video over the network will "suspend" the player. You will most likely also see DLNA protocol error messages intermittently. If you wait long enough, it will come back (at least it did for me, but I really don't want to try these more than 2-3 times). I tried it with TwonkyMedia 5.0 Server.
I suspect (but am not sure) this is due to deficiency in the DLNA server (Because it should look into the container and jump to the right "indices" as the video leaps forwards/backwards). If it doesn't do this fast enough, DLNA may time out. Microsoft may have added additional logic to uPnP to deal with this in its implementation.
In any case, my solution is to request the DLNA server to copy the video locally to play. Photos and music continue to be streamed from the DLNA server remotely. I then removed any HD or one-off videos from my PS3 HDD at my own leisure (since the server has a copy). Once the file is local, fast forward and rewind are extremely fast. In this way, I don't need a PC or RAID array (It's a cheap $200 box).
The main reason I do this though are:
(A) At home, I use a wireless LAN (77% signal strength). I tried viewing HD video over WiFi but the experience is not consistent. A lot of people will fall into this category in the near term.
(B) PS3 upscaling and other image enhancements. The videos on the PS3 HDD will be upscaled automatically (The player can employ better algorithms to treat the image if the file is local). My family loves this part since a lot of my home videos were taken on crappy cameras (or webcam my little boy took himself). They look great even in 1080p on my XBR today.
For me, the bad part is the folder organization. When I copy files from the server, it should automatically set the empty "Album Information" field to the server's folder name so that I can group them into the same folders as the server.
It seems that moving forward DLNA will introduce content synchronization capability (Many people probably don't have gigabit wired network at home):
* http://www.dlna.org/news/pr/view?item_key=5a6c918f2c3f852a705e2fce1c2b14bad7408b57
...and a more flexible playback infrastructure:
* http://www.dlna.org/news/pr/view?item_key=7c2e68c4a62b0fbf243f75c4f7046d2bdea31c7b
When I have time, I will look into open source DLNA server to understand the HD fast forwarding problem. But for now, I am tied up by work and other personal projects
Where noise is concerned, my new 80 Gb PS3 is quiet. It's supposed to be quieter than the 60Gb anyway. I am sure the newer PS3 (with 65nm RSX) will be even more quiet. Don't think it's an issue for PS3 at all.
EDIT: I remember someone complained about slow thumbnail display on a PS3. At that time, I commented that the DLNA server should probably generate the thumbnail (instead of the PS3, because the latter can't write the generated thumbnails back to the DLNA server). It looks like MediaTomb is doing that now: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=2714034&forum_id=440750 . I have not tried it personally though.
Fast forwarding and rewinding large video over the network will "suspend" the player. You will most likely also see DLNA protocol error messages intermittently. If you wait long enough, it will come back (at least it did for me, but I really don't want to try these more than 2-3 times
). I tried it with TwonkyMedia 5.0 Server.I suspect (but am not sure) this is due to deficiency in the DLNA server (Because it should look into the container and jump to the right "indices" as the video leaps forwards/backwards). If it doesn't do this fast enough, DLNA may time out. Microsoft may have added additional logic to uPnP to deal with this in its implementation.
In any case, my solution is to request the DLNA server to copy the video locally to play. Photos and music continue to be streamed from the DLNA server remotely. I then removed any HD or one-off videos from my PS3 HDD at my own leisure (since the server has a copy). Once the file is local, fast forward and rewind are extremely fast. In this way, I don't need a PC or RAID array (It's a cheap $200 box).
The main reason I do this though are:
(A) At home, I use a wireless LAN (77% signal strength). I tried viewing HD video over WiFi but the experience is not consistent. A lot of people will fall into this category in the near term.
(B) PS3 upscaling and other image enhancements. The videos on the PS3 HDD will be upscaled automatically (The player can employ better algorithms to treat the image if the file is local). My family loves this part since a lot of my home videos were taken on crappy cameras (or webcam my little boy took himself). They look great even in 1080p on my XBR today.
For me, the bad part is the folder organization. When I copy files from the server, it should automatically set the empty "Album Information" field to the server's folder name so that I can group them into the same folders as the server.
It seems that moving forward DLNA will introduce content synchronization capability (Many people probably don't have gigabit wired network at home):
* http://www.dlna.org/news/pr/view?item_key=5a6c918f2c3f852a705e2fce1c2b14bad7408b57
...and a more flexible playback infrastructure:
* http://www.dlna.org/news/pr/view?item_key=7c2e68c4a62b0fbf243f75c4f7046d2bdea31c7b
When I have time, I will look into open source DLNA server to understand the HD fast forwarding problem. But for now, I am tied up by work and other personal projects
Where noise is concerned, my new 80 Gb PS3 is quiet. It's supposed to be quieter than the 60Gb anyway. I am sure the newer PS3 (with 65nm RSX) will be even more quiet. Don't think it's an issue for PS3 at all.
EDIT: I remember someone complained about slow thumbnail display on a PS3. At that time, I commented that the DLNA server should probably generate the thumbnail (instead of the PS3, because the latter can't write the generated thumbnails back to the DLNA server). It looks like MediaTomb is doing that now: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=2714034&forum_id=440750 . I have not tried it personally though.
You might want to try out PS3 Media Server new(er) open source media server to share data for ps3. As far as I have tried it seems to be superior to tversity in all things that matter. Wider and easier support for transcoding/file formats/subtitles/etc. The selling feature for me was the .iso support+subtitles. This makes it possible to archive easily the dvd's I have bought as digital copies to server. Without subtitles I would be lost on the non english content I have bought. I also like that it doesn't create a database of content but rather "maps your harddrive directly" to ps3. This makes navigation snappy and no need to those "recreate database and wait for half an hour after update".
As for the original question, I find blu-ray playback and dvd scaling performance in ps3 really good. Waiting for cable version of playtv to use as secondary cheap recording box. For general mediaserver functionality ps3 needs a pc to help(i.e. that ps3mediaserver to share .mkv, .iso, .flag, etc). PS3 is also nicely silent which is pretty big deal for me if I want to put a device on the livingroom.
Locally it all works very fast, but that's not a good solution for us. Copying multiple 4gb files locally before playing them would become very tedious really fast especially when I want to quickly see some cool scenes in 4 different movies, and far more so when you have family guests over sitting on the couch around the tv and they quickly want to hop 40 minutes into an old baptism video. I don't really want to micro mange the whole thing either. All the files are there, safely on the raid 5 box, it should be able to play them from it.
Cool, would be interesting to see whats up. I was really expecting the PS3 to be better at playing hd video, it was very surprising to see a plain 360 arcade run rings around it. PS3 had similar speed issues when viewing photos, it takes long to create thumbnails of the photos, wheres my 360 arcade instantly pops them up making it far easier to navigate our thousands of photos. This clearly seems to be a software issue somewhere in the PS3 since with standard hdd and gigabit, you'd expect it to be better.
When I get into situations like this, I'd just do it over sneaker net. Once they are on the local HDD, there'd be no playback issues. Remember, I am on a WiFi at Home, not gigabit network. Playing HD movies over it was flakey in the first place.
If it's over a gigabit network, copying those 4Gb files should be a breeze. If the movies are rips of Blu-ray movies, just use the Blu-ray movies
! You get to show them the extras and the original 1080p quality.That's great ! Would love to try the PS3 Media Server out. Perhaps someone can tell him our issues with FF and REW over gigabit network.
grandmaster
Veteran
PlayTV's literally streaming a 2-4mbps MPEG2 file from the USB to the hard disk untouched, so should have an absolutely minimal effect on system performance.
I gave PS3 Media Server (PMS. Ahem...) a test drive. Here's a quick report:
Good:
- It uses "Video Settings" folders to turn on/off extensions from the PS3. Entering a "subtitle setting" folder will turn it on for the first time, and off the second time. So on and so forth.
- It includes all the video transcoding support in one package. It's the first time I get QuickTime movies (PhotoBooth) to play on my PS3. The result is mixed (There are audio sync issues) but it's a good start I guess. Transcoded videos are stored on the server for subsequent access from the PS3.
- It seems to perform better than TwonkyMedia in handling HD (1080i) video over WiFi. If I FF/REW the short HD video in TwonkyMedia, I'd get a network error pretty quickly. PMS was able to forward and rewind rather slowly/painfully (as expected). I repeated the simple test 2-3 times. There was no network error. I could bring up the player menu more responsively during fast forward too.
I am not certain if this means PMS outperforms TwonkyMedia. It might just be lucky. Will have to test using full length movie. For now, first impression is not bad.
Bad:
- Doesn't run on Mac OS X Leopard because of library version. Runs in SnowLeopard seed and Linux. I haven't tried Windows because I am working on it (Don't want to mess up the environment).
- I get DLNA error messages more often but they can be ignored. The server continues to work unabated.
Good:
- It uses "Video Settings" folders to turn on/off extensions from the PS3. Entering a "subtitle setting" folder will turn it on for the first time, and off the second time. So on and so forth.
- It includes all the video transcoding support in one package. It's the first time I get QuickTime movies (PhotoBooth) to play on my PS3. The result is mixed (There are audio sync issues) but it's a good start I guess. Transcoded videos are stored on the server for subsequent access from the PS3.
- It seems to perform better than TwonkyMedia in handling HD (1080i) video over WiFi. If I FF/REW the short HD video in TwonkyMedia, I'd get a network error pretty quickly. PMS was able to forward and rewind rather slowly/painfully (as expected). I repeated the simple test 2-3 times. There was no network error. I could bring up the player menu more responsively during fast forward too.
I am not certain if this means PMS outperforms TwonkyMedia. It might just be lucky. Will have to test using full length movie. For now, first impression is not bad.
Bad:
- Doesn't run on Mac OS X Leopard because of library version. Runs in SnowLeopard seed and Linux. I haven't tried Windows because I am working on it (Don't want to mess up the environment).
- I get DLNA error messages more often but they can be ignored. The server continues to work unabated.
Just out of curiosity, did you change the network settings before testing? The default transcoding settings use loads of network bandwidth to save some cpu cycles and to optimize quality. What I have seen with default settings even 100MBit/s connection might not be enough always for HD content. Using settings that use less network bandwidth should give much better results than default settings on wlan connection.
The maker of the mediaserver seems to be rather active writing/replying here
I use default settings. The only change I made was the server IP (It detected the wrong IP because my setup is a little complex).
The test movie I use was a 1080i AVC video. I don't think the MediaServer attempted to transcode it at all.
Also, although the PS3 MediaServer did not run on my Leopard, it may be because I have not updated my OS for a long time. There might be a Leopard update that I missed. The MediaServer looks promising. I'll keep it in mind.
The test movie I use was a 1080i AVC video. I don't think the MediaServer attempted to transcode it at all.
Also, although the PS3 MediaServer did not run on my Leopard, it may be because I have not updated my OS for a long time. There might be a Leopard update that I missed. The MediaServer looks promising. I'll keep it in mind.
Isn't that what the PC solution does though? Or is it decoding/transcoding? There shouldn't be much of a measurable on kyleb's PC games if the media functions are just copying a data stream to HDD.
It's not THAT difficult to split large files into 4GB chunks. Nowdays ps3 can also play back sequentially all files in directory so just rename like dfsdf1, dfsdf2,... and you are set and don't notice when clip changes while watching.
On similar subject it's not that difficult to remux mkv->mp4/vob for playback either. What is somewhat difficult is burning an avc-hd disc containin subtitles(without the need to transcode mkv). I have no idea if remux or avc-hd is valid option for xbox360 for those people who enjoy internet content.
For me it's convinience to have appropriate server running on pc and not having to worry about any details which formats work/don't work/how to enable subtitles. Also it's of great value to have the server somewhere out of sight where I don't need care what it looks like or noise it makes. Especially the .iso file format support makes my life easier as now I can digitilize all my original dvd's including subtitles and continue using ps3 as media renderer.
For mp3's I have larger internal disc on ps3 and store the mp3's localy. It's the only sensible way to get decent support for playlists on ps3(sadly... I would much prefer if I could create playlists for dlna content from ps3)
I think the big takeaway here is that both machines are generally really poor media devices - especially compared to a good old vanilla PC. All this discussion around "oh, it's easy, you just convert your video files to x format to y format and it works most of the time" is a fairly laughable solution.
Honestly, the first device to play what VLC does - in a 15mb download no less - will be the best media player. Until that happens, they both are pretty poor. MKV support, subtitle support, and a better interface for navigating both your library and the video while playing is needed.
If either party really wanted to learn how to make a good media player, they should just get an Xbox (1) with XBMC. If that handled HD media well I'd still use it. Fantastic little device, with pretty much everything just "working" with minimum fiddling. Sigh.
Honestly, the first device to play what VLC does - in a 15mb download no less - will be the best media player. Until that happens, they both are pretty poor. MKV support, subtitle support, and a better interface for navigating both your library and the video while playing is needed.
If either party really wanted to learn how to make a good media player, they should just get an Xbox (1) with XBMC. If that handled HD media well I'd still use it. Fantastic little device, with pretty much everything just "working" with minimum fiddling. Sigh.
Yes, if you copy a large video file over wireless, it can be slow. But in the first place, whether it's 360 or PS3, you won't get smooth HD playback experience over WiFi (at least not on my WiFi). So the only real option is to copy them locally to play. Transferring the movies using a USB drive is a valid option.
If you're using gigabit like joker454 and my office PS3, copying should be fast (I copy 32Gb Windows VM images rather frequently). NavNucST3's timing doesn't apply here.
Once the files are on the HDD, all the media operation becomes much more smoother (and potentially higher quality) than over a network even for a 360. I can leave the files there for sometime. One thing I like is the MPEG thumbnail files are animated in XMB (after I copy them to PS3 HDD).
For SD playback, you can still stream and fast forward over the net.
Sneakernet is always an option if your network is WiFi and your files are large.
It is indeed a shame that PS3 does not support NTFS and HFS+, this and the weak built-in folder organization are the only real short falls IMHO. But you can't run away from Sneakernet. I actually don't find Page Up or Down bothering. If the files are on the DLNA server, you can organize the files logically for it to navigate very quickly. If the files are local, there are still a few ways to group them too. I just want a quick/bulk way to update the "Album" field so I can organize them using custom groupings.
You might want to try the newer MediaServers that auto-generate thumbnails.
I have dropped the creator of PS3 MediaServer a note. Will see what he says about HD fast forwarding.
Because splitting/copying/streaming makes it possible to view those large files on ps3. Without any of those solutions ps3 wouldn't be able to show those files at all and that would become a dealbreaker feature for those who have big files and wish to view them.
Similarly is it possible to view .mkv files easily on xbox360 including subtitles or is transcoding always needed? Both xbox360 and ps3 are not really perfect mediacenters for those who have teh internets contents and don't wish to use occasionally external pc to fix/serve data. Just imagine how to obtain the before mentioned internet data on consoles(well, on ps3 you could use linux but...)
Hmm... you should be able to store any size files on the PS3. DLNA server is one of the ways to copy them to the local HDD.
The 4Gb limit is only applicable to FAT32 drives.
True.
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