PS3 an alternative to all these media players?

[aneelr]

....

Nothing beats it
.....

-Vishwa

But you will be consuming more power, than a person using a dedicated media player, a PS3 gets beaten there.

cheers.

 

[vishwa]

Internet has nothing to do with it. If you are keeping the file in PS3 then you don't need to worry about anything else. But PS3 may not play all the formats. Other option is to keep all the files in PC. Connect the PC to switch using CAT5 or CAT6 cable. (network cable). Connect the PS3 to switch the same way. Run PS3 media server on PC. it will detect your PS3. Share your folders on PC in PS3 media server. They will be visible on PS3. Now when you play these video files in PS3, PS3 media server on PC will stream the video over the network you have to PS3. The bigger/better quality rips you have the higher the data transfer between PC and PS3. So your network setup matters

 

[vishwa]

But you will be consuming more power, than a person using a dedicated media player, a PS3 gets beaten there.

cheers.

You are right . For me deciding factor was all in package of BDPlayer/games/Media server in the form of PS3.

 

[preet27]

Okay and the second part of my post about cooling unit and use of PC graphic card in this? do u have any knowledge on that aspect. Also do u think 2GB RAM would be enough to stream movies upto 8GB, or do i need a higher RAM, basically what do u think would suffice in terms of PC requirements for a smooth playback, especially in these three areas CPU, Motherboard, RAM

DO u think hard disk drive using IDE connectors will pose a problem, or do i need sata HDD for this since for SATA they say is faster than IDE

 

[sam9s]

Which media player is the best ? i searched about popcorn hour, and they say the delivery takes time, WD has it's own set of problems, Xtreamer too is no way behind WD in terms of issues, which one do u think is the better out of these, i only want to watch Full HD blue ray rips without any stutter.

Can you elaborate what set of prolems you are refering to with WD, Xtremer. Anyway......As far as shutter while watching movies goes, people should understand that its usually not the size that matters but the bitrate as well, You encode a 35GB BR with a poor bitrate of say 500kbps and try playing the file, you would be able to even play it on b/g wireless. Coming to actual tests, I was able to play full HD 1080p clips with a max bitrate of 9Mbps without any shutter on my b/g wireless.
On CAT5 Full HD 25Mbps is not a problem at all. The only time I felt shutter on CAT5 was while playing a Full BR ISO image, which is ofcourse close to around 40/45Mbps. In that scenario either you have CAT6, (wirless n may work, not tested though) or play the file from the Media Player's internal drive. I played the same ISO from my POHD's internal drive and it just pays fine...

Hope this clears few doubts.

@preet27 if playing BR rips without shutter is your only concern, I would say you can go with POHD or WD Live eyes closed. The problems you might be reading are very specific and are rare for a general scenario....

 

[sam9s]

What's this Gigabit switch ? what is it's function, and yes do share your PC settings, especially these three things motherboard processor and RAM, Vortex if you could tell does the PC graphic card play any role in this streaming, also is a cooling unit necessary, i have been trying to search for this but to no avail cos if these things don't matter then it could save me a lot of money

Thanks !!

Okay and the second part of my post about cooling unit and use of PC graphic card in this? do u have any knowledge on that aspect. Also do u think 2GB RAM would be enough to stream movies upto 8GB, or do i need a higher RAM, basically what do u think would suffice in terms of PC requirements for a smooth playback, especially in these three areas CPU, Motherboard, RAM

DO u think hard disk drive using IDE connectors will pose a problem, or do i need sata HDD for this since for SATA they say is faster than IDE

Answer to your first query.....

PC graphic card does not play any role in streaming except fot the fact that, its displaying your content. Factors that actually effect streaming the most ..

1. Network Speed (Bandwidth) :: Depends on your network adaptor (10/100/1000 Mbps). Bandwidth is the amount of data that passes through a network connection over time as measured in bits/sec

2. Medium :: Wire or Wireless. Wired ofcourse is faster and reliable as well. a CAT5 cable is usually sufficient for all HD streaming, however as I said clips/ISO image as high as 40Mbps might give a shutter (specially while streaming long distance). CAT 5e is the solution (with ofcoure you natwork adaptor with 1Gpbs). If there is any inerference, or distance is too long, we should prefer CAT6)

There are other factors like Latency, registry tweaking etc, but thats an entirly another topic of discussion,

Coming to your second query .....

Which cooling are you talking about, you do not need any cooling unless you are Overclocking the CPU or the GPU that too beyong certain limits........Streaming does not need any cooling what so ever,.....
Again RAM has little to do with streaming. 2GB ram is more than enough for any day to day activity (including streaming...... if that concerns you)

Yes HDD does in a way play role in Streaming as the media is played from the HDD. Though there is not any theoritical proof that upgrading to SATA from IDE would improve the streaming, its always advisable to have a faster HDD. Since SATA has anyhow become a defacto standard, you might as well think to gupgrade to SATA, if ofcoure your Mother board supports it.

Hope this helped.....

 

[preet27]

Thanks Sam9s really nice of you to provide all this info, i didn't get the first line though

"PC graphic card does not play any role in streaming except fot the fact that, its displaying your content. Factors that actually effect streaming the most"

I mean i can't figure out from this if it does or does not affect the streaming if i am going to use a ps3 to display the blu ray rip on my plasma HDTV, so the PC graphic card will not have to do anything here, right? it's the ps3 graphics card that will be doing the work ?

 

[teky]

"PC graphic card does not play any role in streaming except fot the fact that, its displaying your content. Factors that actually effect streaming the most"

It will not affect your streaming anyway - As you have said it's the PS3 which is working on the display.

 

[preet27]

Thanks to all of you who chipped in, especially teky and sam9s, i now have enough knowledge about all this to make an informed decision according to my needs and sources, i will get back to you with my experience of how it went and also if i run into any problems while running this

Thanks !!

 

[sam9s]

Thanks Sam9s really nice of you to provide all this info, i didn't get the first line though

"PC graphic card does not play any role in streaming except fot the fact that, its displaying your content. Factors that actually effect streaming the most"

I mean i can't figure out from this if it does or does not affect the streaming if i am going to use a ps3 to display the blu ray rip on my plasma HDTV, so the PC graphic card will not have to do anything here, right? it's the ps3 graphics card that will be doing the work ?

No it does not, what I meant was, the GPU's (PC or PS3) prime objective is to display the content on your screen,(this is the most layman explanation BTW), it does not do anything in streaming the content on network.

 

[vramak]

Here's one point for the PS3...

Instead of streaming content from a PC, you could use an external USB drive. The main problem with using a USB drive with the PS3 is that the PS3 only supports FAT32, which limits the file size to 4GB.

But this problem can be easily worked around using a feature called 'Sequential Playback' on the PS3. When you enable this feature (from the Video Settings menu) all files in one folder will be treated as one seamless file. You can play, rewind, fast forward contiguously across all the files. You'd hardly notice the changeover unless you're looking at the video's progress bar. So, this feature practically overcomes the 4GB file size limit problem. To split files into 4GB chunks, you can use the program mkv2vob which will do the job in a few minutes.

As far as I know, the only real problems with PS3 are that it doesn't support subtitles for avc encoded files. So, it's impossible to watch BR rips of foreign language films.

So, provided you spend 5 mins with mkv2vob to convert files to PS3-readable format, the PS3 still represents much more value over standalone media players. Plus it's an integrated solution.

BTW, I do agree that standalone media players make sense when you have a collection of insanely sized videos (25GB+) or if you have lots of people sharing the HT and want to have their own collection of BR rip movies.

P.S: I did this research while trying to decide if I should get USB drive or internal drive for desktop or a standalone media player like WDTV for storing movies because my PS3's 120GB was filled up. In the end, I understood my movie watching habits and found I watch only 10% of my movies more than once. So decided I'll store only the movies I love the most on the PS3 and delete the rest after watching.