Getting your video library to work with your PS3 or Xbox 360 is fairly simple and a great way to get the videos from your computer onto the living room television, all in high definition. With the additional ability of these consoles to stream Netflix and Hulu (where available), this can make for a solid and simple home theatre setup.
While the Xbox 360 has a built-in streaming functionality with Windows Media Center, this does not work well with the file types that we use here on TehConnection. The WMC plug-in does not support Audio/Video Interleave (.avi), Xvid (.xvid), Matroska (.mkv), or many other common file types used in downloading and streaming.
Fortunately, the both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 support the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) protocol. This allows us to use any UPnP streaming software to share media with both devices. A great piece of software is the PS3 Media Server, or PS3MS. PS3MS works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and supports on-the-fly transcoding/muxing in full high definition for those files that are not of a natively supported file type.
PS3MS Configuration
- Download and install the correct version of PS3MS for your computer’s operating system.
- Run PS3MS.
- Click on the ‘Navigation/Share Settings’ tab.
- At the bottom of the pane, add your media library folder(s).
- Ensure that the ‘Enable the media library/cache’ checkbox is ticked.
- Click ‘Save’ at the top of the window.
- Click ‘Restart the HTTP server’ at the top of the window.
Easy, right? Now to get at the media using your Xbox 360.
Access Media From the Xbox 360
- On your Xbox 360, navigate to the ‘My Xbox’ channel.
- Scroll over to your ‘Video Library’ and select it.
- Your PS3MS share should appear as something similar to ‘PS3 Media Server’. Select this.
- Select your media in the appropriate folder and enjoy!
If your media will not play with an error similar to “Can’t play this content because it contains audio or video with an unsupported codec”, press B to exit the error and video.
- Press B again to exit the video information.
- Scroll up to the virtual folder called “#--TRANSCODE--#”.
- Select the folder corresponding to the media you are trying to play.
- Select the file titled “[Avisynth/MEncoder]”.
- Hit play.
- Enjoy!
Additional Options & Tips
Here are some additional options and notes worth taking a look at.
- If you run into issues with no audio or a file not playing on your Playstation 3, check our article on Cinavia for a list of films and hardware which has issues on the PS3.
- There is a significant difference between transcoding and transmuxing. Transmuxing simply changes a file between containers, while transcoding converts between encoding. No extra steps are needed to take advantage of the necessary option; PS3MS will figure it all out. Transmuxing does not require much CPU power at all. Transmuxing only demuxes the audio and video streams and remuxes them in an Xbox 360 compatible container. For example, playing the file "random_movie.mkv" through the #--TRANSCODE--# folder will cause PS3MS to pull apart the random_movie.mkv's audio and video streams, then put them back together as "random_video.avi". The Xbox 360 can then play this.
- Under the PS3MS ‘General Configuration’ tab, check on the ‘Prevent OS from sleeping while streaming’ option. This will prevent the computer from sleeping while you are watching a video (duh!).
- Under the PS3MS ‘General Configuration’ tab, check on the ‘Start minimized’ option. This will keep it all out of the way and out of mind.
- Transcoding is very CPU intensive. Unless you have a powerful machine, it is ill-advised to use the machine while it is transcoding and streaming. This can result in choppy video or artifacting. Transcoding is also unlikely to work well if you have a weak CPU. **NOTE: see the first tip concerning transmuxing.
- If PS3MS can’t find your Xbox 360, check your firewall settings to make sure it is not blocking PS3MS or the Xbox 360. Guides on how to do this can easily be found through Google.
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