FAO Linux users on PS3

[Crono]

I've not installed Linux on my system yet, and I am currently waiting for Yellow Dog 6.1 to be made available publicly on the 17th. Anyway, the primary reason I want to install it is simply to have VLC media player (or any of it's kind) on my TV so I can no-nonsense play all kinds of videos as there still appear to be many currently unsupported by the PS3's default media player.

I also wanted to be able to play HD videos, namely 720p .mkv's but I am now hearing that there can be frequent skipping/stuttering on these videos when running in Linux, as apparently it can only access half of the system's RAM. Have any of you tried and found this to be true/false? Would appreciate any feedback.

Note: this was the article I'm referring to, on cnet -

Even though the PS3 includes the gutsy cell processor, it doesn't have the minimal amount of RAM or access to the graphics chip for video playback--Yellow Dog Linux, even in the latest version, 6.0, can only see half of the 512MB of RAM inside the PS3. The reason for this is simple: Sony doesn't want third-party Linux-based games to be installed on their console and have access to the GPU, which is tied to half of the PS3's memory.

Unfortunately, this also affects video playback. Only having 256MB of memory without a functioning GPU is just not enough horsepower for many types of video, including HD quality videos. I've noticed on occasion that my videos would frequently skip or stutter if I'm an hour through a movie using VLC or the default player, Titan. If you want to watch browser-based videos, such as Hulu or YouTube, the PS3 will perform well. Otherwise, avoid the hassle and go for the alternatives: Blu-ray Discs, DLNA video streaming, or purchasing videos from the Sony Video Store.

 

[gokickrocks]

its true, at least the last time i used it (about 6 months ago)

 

[archie4oz]

The problem isnt' the lack of RAM, and the Cell is plenty powerfull enough to decode anything you can throw at it. The problem arises from the lack of optimization for the PS3, as most of linux code that runs on it is poorly optimized for the PPE let alone nothing actually leveraging any of the SPEs.

 

[inefficient]

Don't even bother unless you are an experienced Linux user.

You think the built in XMB DLNA stuff has bugs and is not perfect? VLC on PS3 has even more issues. VLC can boast supporting more file types and codecs. But that is it's single advantage. Even when VLC works, it will have a choppy frame rate with lots of tearing.

I am a huge PS3 Linux fan. But I still feel I should keep you away from it if all you want to do is play videos. It will be less of a headache to re encode the videos in something that is compatible with the PS3, than it will be to force it to run under Linux.

But if you are up for a challenge and want to learn more about linux then sure go ahead.

 

[JardeL]

I use PS3 YDL6 everyday , have watched lots of divx but not HD ... HD videos are not playable ... I dont think it is about ram because you can use RSX's Ram via PS3vram patch ... You dont need YDL6.1 for using it ... I think it is about CPU optimization , I agree with archie4oz ...

By the way , I dont think you need to be an experienced Linux user , because I m not :] ...

 

[Silent]

Personally I didn’t test it myself (also need to find an usb keyboard first) but I’ve read that some people had success with 720p movies.

http://code.google.com/p/cell-mpeg2-decoder/

 

[manux]

Anyway, the primary reason I want to install it is simply to have VLC media player (or any of it's kind) on my TV so I can no-nonsense play all kinds of videos as there still appear to be many currently unsupported by the PS3's default media player.

I would rather install ps3 media server to pc and stream the content instead.

 

[manux]

I think spu-medialib is the best bet to decode hd videos and stuff on ps3+linux smoothly.

 

[Phil]

I installed Gentoo on PS3 a few months ago, but didn't find much time to play around it sadly. Videos (especially in HD) wasn't a very good option, so I dropped that idea, sadly.

Have installed MediaTomb on my Linux server and am able to watch quite a lot of stuff and all my music. Haven't used transcoding yet, but will attempt to get that running too. Seems like the better bet IMO. Together with a PSP, you could even "remote controll" your PS3 without turning on the tv (for music that is).

 

[manux]

I installed Gentoo on PS3 a few months ago, but didn't find much time to play around it sadly. Videos (especially in HD) wasn't a very good option, so I dropped that idea, sadly.

Have installed MediaTomb on my Linux server and am able to watch quite a lot of stuff and all my music. Haven't used transcoding yet, but will attempt to get that running too. Seems like the better bet IMO. Together with a PSP, you could even "remote controll" your PS3 without turning on the tv (for music that is).

With the risk of sounding repetitive I would rather use this than mediatomb. At least if you are wanting to stream videos. With that software you get transcoding working nearly out of the box and also stuff like support for .iso images. What I also like is that ps3mediaserver actually maps your hard drive to ps3 and doesn't try to create some huge database that's borked half of the time...

 

[Crono]

The feedback is much appreciated. I will go ahead and install it (probably YDL) for the heck of it, but for now I'll look into this PS3 media server software suggested by manux (thanks). I had previously installed TVersity but I'm sure something didn't work out the way it should and it seemed to screw up my PS3's (wired) internet access.

 

[GregLee]

Linux on an ordinary PC running Mediatomb works pretty well serving videos (and music and photos) to a DirecTV HR2x DVR. I use ffmpeg and vlc to transcode. I don't see the point to using a PS3 to run Linux, unless you don't have a PC to run Linux on, of course. (But then I don't have a PS3.)

 

[patsu]

I installed YDL 6.1 last week mostly to play with Cell open source projects. The (new) ps3vram driver boosted performance by using unused VRAM as swap space or ram disk. I thought that's pretty neat and usable.

Someone is building OpenGL over the SPUs but I have not tried it yet. If Sony provides access to PS Eye and DualShock, it will be more interesting. For now, it's mostly number crunching and closed-world media processing. Assuming someone optimized the low level libraries, the SPUs should be remarkable at ffmpeg. I remember a student project encoded H.264 videos in real time.

The setup is still a little flakey since I could corrupt the wicd network manager via the GUI config tool. But overall, it works better than I expected.