Anyone using PS3 DLNA?
- Thread starter joker454
- Start date
Yes, perhaps this is the stuttering problem people have been reporting:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1988574&forum_id=440751
We have a case here too:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1143740&postcount=31
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1988574&forum_id=440751
We have a case here too:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1143740&postcount=31
Links? Seems odd if it would be totally broken as tversity for example still works like a charm when trancoding.
Great news!
I uninstalled TVersity 0.9.10.3 and installed Orb 2.01.0008 on the same old MacMini running Vista SP1. Just for reference, the MacMini only has a 1.83GHz Intel CPU with 512Mb RAM.
The installation is reasonably quick and easy. Requires a registration because it has a RemoteAccess service component.
The basic operation is reliable. It shows up on the PS3 right after installation, and was quick to come back during restart (or recovery after a crash). In this area, I feel that it is comparable to TwonkyMedia.
It is better than TwonkyMedia in terms of presentation and ease of use. The configuration screens are less geeky and clearer. The folders that show up on PS3 is also well organized. All the videos show up in their respective PC volumes/disks by default. For TwonkyMedia, you'll need to map your own virtual folder. The default is just one big "Folder".
Unfortunately, Orb wants to convert video files to MPEG 2 when streaming to PS3. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off. My Killzone trailers (Both MP4 and WMV versions) are converted to MPEG 2. The MP4-->MP2 one played fine but the WMV-->MP2 one was corrupted.
Because transcoding is applied, there is a pause (depending on your server power) before every playback. Fast forward and rewind worked to various degree (1.5x to 30x), probably because of the slow MacMini. However after a while, even the good video files will refuse to play (complained it's corrupted). Eventually Orb died. I suspect if you have a powerful PC with 1 to 2 Gb of RAM, the experience will be much better (barring the MP2 transcoding).
In this area, Tversity is better because it allows per-folder transcoding customization. It also knows about PS3's native codec support, and will not transcode MP4 and WMV files where appropriate.
TwonkyMedia just serves the files "as is". So as long as you only collect PS3 playable files, you should be fine.
I have not tried hour long videos on all 3 servers.
Orb also has other features like RemoteAccess and streaming from live TV (if you have a tuner card). I didn't test those. At this point, I'll probably try Tversity again when it goes to 1.0. The problem with Tversity is it sometimes does not show up on my PS3 (and the butt ugly UI). When transcoding, it can also suffer from similar unstable issues as Orb.
Now I am really curious about MediaTomb.
The installation is reasonably quick and easy. Requires a registration because it has a RemoteAccess service component.
The basic operation is reliable. It shows up on the PS3 right after installation, and was quick to come back during restart (or recovery after a crash). In this area, I feel that it is comparable to TwonkyMedia.
It is better than TwonkyMedia in terms of presentation and ease of use. The configuration screens are less geeky and clearer. The folders that show up on PS3 is also well organized. All the videos show up in their respective PC volumes/disks by default. For TwonkyMedia, you'll need to map your own virtual folder. The default is just one big "Folder".
Unfortunately, Orb wants to convert video files to MPEG 2 when streaming to PS3. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off. My Killzone trailers (Both MP4 and WMV versions) are converted to MPEG 2. The MP4-->MP2 one played fine but the WMV-->MP2 one was corrupted.
Because transcoding is applied, there is a pause (depending on your server power) before every playback. Fast forward and rewind worked to various degree (1.5x to 30x), probably because of the slow MacMini. However after a while, even the good video files will refuse to play (complained it's corrupted). Eventually Orb died. I suspect if you have a powerful PC with 1 to 2 Gb of RAM, the experience will be much better (barring the MP2 transcoding).
In this area, Tversity is better because it allows per-folder transcoding customization. It also knows about PS3's native codec support, and will not transcode MP4 and WMV files where appropriate.
TwonkyMedia just serves the files "as is". So as long as you only collect PS3 playable files, you should be fine.
I have not tried hour long videos on all 3 servers.
Orb also has other features like RemoteAccess and streaming from live TV (if you have a tuner card). I didn't test those. At this point, I'll probably try Tversity again when it goes to 1.0. The problem with Tversity is it sometimes does not show up on my PS3 (and the butt ugly UI). When transcoding, it can also suffer from similar unstable issues as Orb.
Now I am really curious about MediaTomb.
PlayOn
Another DLNA server: http://www.themediamall.com/playon
EDIT: I noticed that the screenshot shows video thumbnails on the DLNA server. Is this new ? I thought server-hosted videos do not display thumbnails in XMB ?
Another DLNA server: http://www.themediamall.com/playon
EDIT: I noticed that the screenshot shows video thumbnails on the DLNA server. Is this new ? I thought server-hosted videos do not display thumbnails in XMB ?
Looks pretty cool, a good way to get HULU content through my 360 and PS3. Netflix streaming will be nice as well. I've already got my PC hooked directly up to my 'TV' but it will be nice to go to those sites directly from my consoles. I wonder how you view what content is available though... I'll check it out when I get home..
Hmm interesting, thanks for the link. I don't care much about the youtube, espn, etc kinda stuff, but hopefully it will work better with streaming of my HD videos. I'm still using Twonky for now, but I've given up on its ability to stream HD videos, too much stuttering when trying to fast forward and then it stalls a long time when trying to hit play again
So I just copy HD videos to the local PS3 hdd and play them from there now. Twonky does work good enough though for music, pictures and SD video. In any case, I guess I'll give PlayOn a try.Hmmm... my Buffalo TeraStation Live (+ TwonkyMedia) seems fine streaming the E3 2007 HD video though. I need to check again.
Have been hit by a streak of bad luck. The TeraStation and my portable 320Gb HDD are both down now. Am playing my smaller library on the PS3. Time to restructure my media environment. I may upgrade the PS3 internal HDD at the same time but I really want to wait for 2.5" 500Gb
Have been hit by a streak of bad luck. The TeraStation and my portable 320Gb HDD are both down now. Am playing my smaller library on the PS3. Time to restructure my media environment. I may upgrade the PS3 internal HDD at the same time but I really want to wait for 2.5" 500Gb
Hmm interesting, thanks for the link. I don't care much about the youtube, espn, etc kinda stuff, but hopefully it will work better with streaming of my HD videos. I'm still using Twonky for now, but I've given up on its ability to stream HD videos, too much stuttering when trying to fast forward and then it stalls a long time when trying to hit play again
Did you try the new Tversity?
I think my files might be bigger than yours. I've got two types, one are home videos taken from a Sony HDV video camera, and the other files are rips of my blu-ray movies. The home movies are huge, in the 5gb to 10gb size range. For blu-ray rips I take the original m2ts file and recompress it down to VC-1 1280x720 at 4000bps average, and 8000 peak with two pass VBR, which results in files in the ~2.6gb to 3.6gb range. I still watch the originals downstairs where quality really matters, but for bedroom tv viewing, these recompressed versions still look very good, much better than DVD.
The ability to fast forward over network seems to be directly related to file size. My first blu-ray rips were much bigger, in the 8gb range, and fast forwarding on those was hopeless. The ones I do currently are smaller and it does FF better, but still not at an acceptable rate, and the long pause when going from FF to Play is just a deal breaker.
The last test case I did I took raid totally out of the picture, just to be sure it wasn't that. Instead I ran Twonky on a quad core pc and put some ~3gb video files right on the pc's drive. Then I played one via the PS3 and hit FF. I checked the PC, and its cpu meter was moving just a little, like in the 10% range, so the PC clearly wasn't the limiting factor. We have a fully gigabit network, so that shouldn't really be the factor either. I'm not sure what the limit factor is, so I gave up and just copy all HD videos locally now. Locally, the PS3 plays VC-1 files like a champ, they work real nice even at 120x FF. I do need to get a 500gb drive for the PS3 though as its out of room
-tkf- said:
I never actually tried TVersity partly because of the numerous problems I've heard from people about it, and partly because I don't really believe in transcoding. Twonky is on 24/7 and its been very stable so I've stuck with that. I suppose I should give TVersity a try though...but given the low cpu use on the quad core box, I don't think Twonky is the limiting factor here. I'm starting to wonder if the gigabit network somehow isn't enough, given that performance seems to scale to file size.
I think my files might be bigger than yours. I've got two types, one are home videos taken from a Sony HDV video camera, and the other files are rips of my blu-ray movies. The home movies are huge, in the 5gb to 10gb size range. For blu-ray rips I take the original m2ts file and recompress it down to VC-1 1280x720 at 4000bps average, and 8000 peak with two pass VBR, which results in files in the ~2.6gb to 3.6gb range. I still watch the originals downstairs where quality really matters, but for bedroom tv viewing, these recompressed versions still look very good, much better than DVD.
The ability to fast forward over network seems to be directly related to file size. My first blu-ray rips were much bigger, in the 8gb range, and fast forwarding on those was hopeless. The ones I do currently are smaller and it does FF better, but still not at an acceptable rate, and the long pause when going from FF to Play is just a deal breaker.
The last test case I did I took raid totally out of the picture, just to be sure it wasn't that. Instead I ran Twonky on a quad core pc and put some ~3gb video files right on the pc's drive. Then I played one via the PS3 and hit FF. I checked the PC, and its cpu meter was moving just a little, like in the 10% range, so the PC clearly wasn't the limiting factor. We have a fully gigabit network, so that shouldn't really be the factor either. I'm not sure what the limit factor is, so I gave up and just copy all HD videos locally now. Locally, the PS3 plays VC-1 files like a champ, they work real nice even at 120x FF. I do need to get a 500gb drive for the PS3 though as its out of room
I never actually tried TVersity partly because of the numerous problems I've heard from people about it, and partly because I don't really believe in transcoding. Twonky is on 24/7 and its been very stable so I've stuck with that. I suppose I should give TVersity a try though...but given the low cpu use on the quad core box, I don't think Twonky is the limiting factor here. I'm starting to wonder if the gigabit network somehow isn't enough, given that performance seems to scale to file size.
I tried TVersity a few times, and the version that is out now finally works to my needs. It supports some very high bitrates, i have tested it with some mpeg2 streams @40mbit and a wide selection of other weird stuff.
I am using a Quad 6600 and i disabled all kinds of transcoding.
I usually use the E3 2007 Sony Press Conference movie as a reference.
My guess is the network stack overhead. DLNA streaming is too high level.
joker454 said:The last test case I did I took raid totally out of the picture, just to be sure it wasn't that. Instead I ran Twonky on a quad core pc and put some ~3gb video files right on the pc's drive. Then I played one via the PS3 and hit FF. I checked the PC, and its cpu meter was moving just a little, like in the 10% range, so the PC clearly wasn't the limiting factor. We have a fully gigabit network, so that shouldn't really be the factor either. I'm not sure what the limit factor is, so I gave up and just copy all HD videos locally now. Locally, the PS3 plays VC-1 files like a champ, they work real nice even at 120x FF. I do need to get a 500gb drive for the PS3 though as its out of room
My guess is the network stack overhead. DLNA streaming is too high level.
Did you try Tversity?
I just tried it for a while tonight. I ran it on the q6600 quad core, kept my media on the raid box, and played everything via PS3. I had all transcoding off.
It does seem to run better than Twonky does, but it's still slow. FF'ing at 120x stalls and sputters, if you watch the time remaining you can see it's not able to skip at 2 minutes per second and instead skips a bit, stalls, etc. Likewise, hitting PLAY after FF'ing returns to playback anywhere between 2 and 5 seconds later. I'd definitely say it's more usable than Twonky though, so I may switch to it anyways and keep some less often played HD files on the raid box. For movies though, they still play way better off the PS3's local hdd so I'll stick with that until the speed issue is resolved.
Yeah FF is an issue, i think it somehow relates more to DNLA than to the Gbit connection or Tversity. The main thing for me is that it´s solid and doesn´t crash. Windows Media Player 11 used to do that for me. If i lose sync with tversity while FF. I just stop the playback, return to XMB and wait for a few seconds and start the playback again, and it works.
