Podcasts

I’m using Twonky Media’s media server to serve up mp3 podcasts, music and photos to my PS3. This works great, and Twonky version 5 is a great media server for a reasonable price. I used this a while ago and I got some errors on my PS3, but the latest version is great: Fewer errors and an easier install and setup.

However, Fast Forward in an MP3 is pretty messed up. As you can see from the following video, when you hold down fast foward, it skips and jumps and it keep stuttering and stopping so you can’t forward very fast. So, if for example, you play the first 40 minutes of of a 1:45 [one hour and 45 minute] podcast, then trying to get back to the place you were is a real pain. This feature probably works fine for a 4 minute song, but it’s not useful for a very long podcast.

Not sure if this is a problem with the PS3, or with the Twonky or the DLNA protocol.

I’ll try to contact the PS3 and Twonky support folks.

Video On Demand from Netflix

I’ve just discovered Play On which allows you to play videos from Netflix, YouTube and other places on your TV by using a PS3 or other DLNA Media Client. I’ve set up Play On on the same system where I installed Twonky and connected it to my NetFlix account. So now I can watch Instant movies from Netflix directly on my large screen TV and using my hi-fi system. My Media Server is a Win XP system running on a Compaq SR2020NX Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2GHz with 2GB memory. This is a $500 system that’s about 3 years old.

PlayOn is very easy to set up, although I had a glitch with the Media Player V11 that PlayOn required. The WMP11 installer kept reporting an error, but it turned out that it did install correctly. Once you install PlayOn, you configure it with your Netflix account, and then use a web browser to load up your Instant Queue in Netflix. To start with I loaded up a few movies, and TV series including Sanctuary, Ghost in the Shell, and a couple of other things. When you check the videos in the PS3 menu, you find the PlayOn server and the list of videos that are in the Netflix Instant list.

I’ve watched a couple of movies and the quality is very good with no noticeable sound or video artifacts. The video quality is not as good as a DVD, but it is at least as good as a SD quality Dishnet satellite broadcast. The PS3 display function reports about 4 mbps. The PlayOn software requires about 180MB of memory in two processes and takes about 50% of the CPU when the video is on pause. I’m guessing that the video is being downloaded and re-coded for the PS3.

BTW, the fast forward situation is much better with video than with music. Using PlayOn and the PS3 with Netflix, fast forward gives 10, 30, 120x fast forward and it works just fine to go back to a point deep into a movie. The PlayOn server did get stuck about 45 minutes into a movie, but turning off the PS3 and then reopening the movie fixed it up. The PS3 was reporting network errors. Not sure why. The server was working fine and the network was not having any problems that I could detect.

I’m catching up on Sanctuary and watched “In the Electric Mist” with Tommy Lee Jones this evening. When I added Sancuary, it added a folder with all the episodes.

I’m not clear on why the PS3 doesn’t support Netflix and other video sources directly, but since it doesn’t at least an inexpensive software addon, which runs on any modern computer, will allow a true video on-demand experience. PlayOn costs about $40. Since Netflix doesn’t charge for “Watching Instantly” beyond my normal subscription, I’ve got a fixed cost subscription to video on demand.

- Windy

All the Windows hype about the “Media Editions” of Windows was never very clear. Apparently the Media Edition contains the features necessary to serve various files to the other entertainment systems in the home. Music and video players can play files from your desktop harddrive via these servers. Now with a new PS3, Media Services is becoming more useful. It will be interesting to play photos and videos from a server. The PS3 only has a 40GB harddrive and the file management features of the PS3 are very primitive.

Summary

TwonkyMedia Server is the best one that I’ve found. Very reasonable price – $39.95US. It runs on both Windows [Vista x64] and Ubuntu Linux with no problem. It is very efficient using very little memory and processor time. It works just fine on my little Blue-Diamond 800MHz VIA system.

Test Cases

The test cases are modest. About 860 images – jpgs 1024×768 on the PC and 1280×1024 on the Linux box. About 250 mp3 files. The images all display on the PS3 from a USB flash key. Almost all the music files play from a data DVD when inserted into the PS3. Some show “Corrupted File” on the PS3 for an unknown reason. Most of the mp3 files play with no problems using WinAMP on a Windows PC. As of today, the PS3 is running version 2.17 of the firmware.

Update: I’ve discovered the source of some, if not all, of the Corrupted File indications.

Using MP3Tag V2.40 I’ve discovered that a few of the files had very strange meta data, and were in an unsupported format. Click on the pic above to see the full size view. Note that the highlighted files have strange bitrates and frequencies. I’m not sure whether this causes the server to trip up, or just the PS3.
After retesting Twonky and gMediaServer after cleaning out the strange files allowed Twonky to sometimes serve the files, but often it tripped up with a 2103 protocol error and basically stopped working after that. gMediaServer still would not serve any of the sanitized mp3 files.

Nero Media Home – Ultra 8

A google search for “PS3 media servers” indicates that Nero Media Home is a media server. But I suggest you don’t waste your time with it. There are several reasons:

• It is very resource intensive, shall we say, taking over 60MB of your precious ram to run the server. This burden requires an indexing service, which is a constant load on the system regardless of whether you are using the server or not.
• It’s not fast in it’s response to serving to the PS3. It takes a very long time to get the list of items to the PS3.
• It causes protocol error reports on the PS3. “DLNA Protocol Error 80710092″ whatever that is.
• The NMH crashes and hangs quite often, esp when you stop and start the server.
• It won’t serve mp3s. You get No Tracks Available on the PS3.
• Photos work somewhat, but are slow.

A Little Blue Linux Box

The little blue Linux box seemed like a good candidate for a server. It now has a wireless adapter – ZyXEL G202 and is running Ubuntu 7.10.

After a little research, gMediaServer seemed like a good server to try. 0.12.0 is built into Ubuntu 7.10. The latest version 0.13.0 supports PS3 explicitly with a profile for PS3 that sets all the media types supported by the PS3. Not sure what else the server knows about the PS3.

When started with the following command line the server serves photos to the PS3 with no problems.

gmediaserver -ieth1 -v1
--file-types='jpg,mp3'
--friendly-name='Blue-Diamond Media Server'
/home/darrell/Pictures/Fantasy_1280
/home/darrell/Music/musicfiles


When running the gmediaserver only requires 1.6MB of memory. It serves photos with no problem and much faster than the Nero system, as observed from the PS3 system. Occasionally a “DLNA protocol error 2103″ appears, but this only appears once or twice when the server starts to display images.

Music files do not work. I get “No Tracks Available” on the PS3. Since neither server will serve music files to the PS3, the problem may be in the PS3. Update: Even the sanitized mp3 files would not show up at all in the PS3.

Twonky Media Server

Twonky Media 4.4.4 is very light weight – only about 4MB of ram total for the two server processes, and has a nice web interface for configuration.

It works very well for photos, and shows music files, but the files will not play. The PS3 tosses a “800100B network error” when you try to play a track, after a very long time of waiting.

Summary

1. Nero Media Home – Ultra 8 version. Photos work. Music doesn’t show any tracks and it tosses 80710092 protocol errors. This thing is 60MB of ram [ can you believe it??] in three processes, and it keeps crashing. So dead in the water as far as I’m concerned.
2. gMediaServer 0.13.0 on Ubuntu 7.10 – 1.6MB of ram. Works great for photos. But again music does not work. Shows no tracks. Occasionally I get 2013 protocol errors.
3. Twonky Media 4.4.4 – Very nice with web config and light weight in memory – two processes of about 4MB total of memory. Photos work just fine. Music tracks show in the list but trying to play a track gets an 8001000B protocol error.

BTW, all the mp3 music files play just fine from a data DVD on the PS3 and on WinAmp on PC. And on the Linux system too BTW.

So, I conclude that the PS3 V 2.17 is broken for media services for playing Music.

Anybody prove me wrong?

• What media server are you using to play MP3 music on your PS3, and where did you get your MP3 file?
• Do we know that the PS3 is picky about it’s MP3 files?
• Why should it be pickier about the MP3 files over the net than it is from a DVD?

Update: This PS3 appears fairly picky about mp3 files, esp when reading files from a MediaServer and the protocol apparently does not recover from a bad file.