Playing media files on consoles

[Marc]

So a lad at work is getting me loads of films in .mkv format. To play on my PS3 I just convert to VOB. No problem there, but what format do I need to convert to, to play an an xbox360? Anyone know? Also, neither the PS3, nor the Xbox360 seem to recognise my external hard drive (where I keep the films once converted), instead, I have to put one on a USB stick for it to recognise. is there any way I can both consoles to recognise my external hard drive to save me the pain of putting one film at a time on to the usb stick.

Cheers

 

[Moriath]

Xbox plays divx or xvid Personally I would invest in a wdtv live box at around seventy quid it will play anything you throw at it.

 

[Chilly]

raspberry pi + raspbmc = 25 quid playback device, but it'll need network access to the files

 

[Chilly]

works with 1080p mkv's

 

[Syri]

Not sure about the xbox, but the ps3 can't read NTFS drives, they have to be formatted in FAT32. If you have an external HDD in fat32, it'll be fine, but obviously you're then stuck with a 4gb limit per file.

 

[Scouse]

Consoles are wank.

Plug a PC into your telly. Get yourself a wireless keyboard and mouse. Get a console controller for consoley games.

Job. Fucking. Done.

 

[DaGaffer]

So a lad at work is getting me loads of films in .mkv format. To play on my PS3 I just convert to VOB. No problem there, but what format do I need to convert to, to play an an xbox360? Anyone know? Also, neither the PS3, nor the Xbox360 seem to recognise my external hard drive (where I keep the films once converted), instead, I have to put one on a USB stick for it to recognise. is there any way I can both consoles to recognise my external hard drive to save me the pain of putting one film at a time on to the usb stick.

Cheers

What kind of telly do you have?

 

[caLLous]

I'm looking for something like this. I was thinking of a Boxee Box but the reviews aren't great. Then I thought maybe one of those little Intel boxes (the NUC things) with some flavour of Linux on it (with Plex) connected to my (as yet unbuilt) media server. Unfortunately my TV isn't "smart" enough to stream media across a network (it can read off of USB drives flawlessly) so I need something else in between the TV and the media.

As for playing off of a console, no idea.

 

[Bigmac]

Not sure about the xbox, but the ps3 can't read NTFS drives, they have to be formatted in FAT32. If you have an external HDD in fat32, it'll be fine, but obviously you're then stuck with a 4gb limit per file.

Its exactly the same for a xbox 360. Your HDD has to be FAT32 for it to work.

 

[Ch3tan]

Ps3 media server, install on your pc. Point it to drive your .mkv files sit on, the software will pick up your ps3 /Xbox / smart tv and allow you to play the files on that device without converting.

It will show up as a media server on the console, that you can browse. I don't believe people still use expensive hardware solutions when this is free.

 

[Moriath]

Cause I don't have to have my pc running all the time just a nas drive that doesn't suck up nearly as much leccy as my pc

 

[Embattle]

Roku 3 works really well with a plex supporting NAS like Synology but that is nothing to do with original question, personally I hated streaming movies to my parents PS3 since it just refused to work properly.

 

[Ch3tan]

Cause I don't have to have my pc running all the time just a nas drive that doesn't suck up nearly as much leccy as my pc

So sick ps3 media server on the nas. Either way, for what Marc asked for, ps3 media server is the best solution, it's saves him having to convert

 

[Moriath]

Yes for ps3 it's the best solution.. But there are better solutions that don't include a ps3. Doesn't the ps3 block content with that coding thing in it... Can't remember what it's called now. Or has everyone stopped using that now?

 

[Bodhi]

I would put good money on media streaming and audio support getting added back into the PS4. Judging by the tweets coming out of Sony they underestimated how many people used it on PS3, so expect an update to add it back in.

 

[Ch3tan]

Yes for ps3 it's the best solution.. But there are better solutions that don't include a ps3. Doesn't the ps3 block content with that coding thing in it... Can't remember what it's called now. Or has everyone stopped using that now?

You didn't read my post fully, ps3 media server is not just for the ps3. It works with any dlna device.

 

[DaGaffer]

I would put good money on media streaming and audio support getting added back into the PS4. Judging by the tweets coming out of Sony they underestimated how many people used it on PS3, so expect an update to add it back in.

You see this is what I don't understand. Sony didn't have to estimate dlna usage on the PS3, they can actually measure it; which either means usage is a lot lower than we all think (but those who do use it are noisy about it), or that somebody in Sony's marketing department has seen all that usage and saw an opportunity to shove a walled-garden in the way instead. I'm fairly sure that its the latter, because taking dlna out of a product isn't just a case of not speccing it; Sony are members of the DLNA Alliance, which means in theory they're committed to enabling dlna in all the devices they sell that are capable of using the functionality. I would imagine some interesting questions are being asked by the DLNA Alliance board of Sony right now.

The reality is that its a return to stererotypical Sony proprietary thinking and its actually more typical of Sony than the relatively "open" functionality of the PS3.

 

[Lakih]

I never got PMS (PS3 Media Server) to work for HD movies so i went with a jail broken Apple TV 2 running XBMC. Movies are stored on home server which acts as a torrent bot as well. A little more work but so much better in the end (IMO).
I only use my PS3 as a blue ray player and the occasional game once in a blue moon.

 

[Moriath]

You didn't read my post fully, ps3 media server is not just for the ps3. It works with any dlna device.

. yes I did but I think there are better solutions for streaming than this if you want to consider things other than a ps3[/quote]

 

[leggy]

So sick ps3 media server on the nas. Either way, for what Marc asked for, ps3 media server is the best solution, it's saves him having to convert

Does the ps3 have native x264 support? The reason I ask is that my media server only has piddly CPU and wouldn't handle much in the way of transcoding by PS3 media server.

 

[Moriath]

Not without conversion to mp4 or via the play station server thing on a PC that converts on the fly

 

[DaGaffer]

Got to admit I always found PS3 media server to be flaky as fuck and when my PS3 went to destroyed-by-toddler heaven I never looked at it again.

As for the original question, an RPi with RaspBMC and the HDD plugged in other end would be cheaper and more effective (if a bit uglier), than fannying around with consoles and transcoding; that method would take any file format you threw at it, and I've happily run 1080p movies on it.

In fact the only reason I stopped using the RPi on my main telly was because the Videostation software on my Synology meant I could stream to the telly directly.

 

[leggy]

That's what I was getting at. If ps3 server only repackages on the fly then my mediaserver could handle it otherwise a full format transcode will melt it.

Looked online and it does appear to support X264 in a few containers.

 

[MYstIC G]

Got to admit I always found PS3 media server to be flaky as fuck and when my PS3 went to destroyed-by-toddler heaven I never looked at it again.

As for the original question, an RPi with RaspBMC and the HDD plugged in other end would be cheaper and more effective (if a bit uglier), than fannying around with consoles and transcoding; that method would take any file format you threw at it, and I've happily run 1080p movies on it.

In fact the only reason I stopped using the RPi on my main telly was because the Videostation software on my Synology meant I could stream to the telly directly.

OpenElec over RaspBMC. RasPi solution has the benefit of not needing to format change the source material. You could just throw up a network share and you're done.

 

[DaGaffer]

OpenElec over RaspBMC. RasPi solution has the benefit of not needing to format change the source material. You could just throw up a network share and you're done.

Meh, tomayto tomahto. I chose RaspBMC because the "how to" guide on XMBC.org was better-written; I've not got an axe to grind about it either way.

 

[MYstIC G]

Meh, tomayto tomahto. I chose RaspBMC because the "how to" guide on XMBC.org was better-written; I've not got an axe to grind about it either way.

Fair play it's just that's the way the comunity is leaning so that's where the wealth of information will be in the future: http://xbmc.org/platform-statistics-october/

 

[DaGaffer]

Fair play it's just that's the way the comunity is leaning so that's where the wealth of information will be in the future: http://xbmc.org/platform-statistics-october/

Hadn't seen that graph, which is a bit misleading tbh; its based on unique requests of audio metadata, so since Linux (OpenElec) is multiuse, whereas RaspBMC is pretty much single use (as a video streamer) then you're not really comparing apples and apples. Funnily enough, neither are actually ideal for my RPi; it would probably be better served by an Android or Chrome based version so I could run Netflix on it as well.

 

[MYstIC G]

Well actually XBMC based media players are capable of any playback. Both variants will do audio and video. OpenElec is a stripped down linux without all the unnecessary guff. There's a reasonably good summary on Lifehacker.

Android on Pi isn't going to get off the ground imho: http://androidpi.wikia.com/wiki/Android_Pi_Wiki

 

[Deebs]

I just got bored of using a noisy console and having transcoders running on my main pc, so I invested in the Core HT 252B running Windows 7 64bit and XBMC, just pointed the PC at a few shares on my several NASs and job done.

 

[Edmond]

Ps3 media server, install on your pc. Point it to drive your .mkv files sit on, the software will pick up your ps3 /Xbox / smart tv and allow you to play the files on that device without converting.

It will show up as a media server on the console, that you can browse. I don't believe people still use expensive hardware solutions when this is free.

Agree, there seems to be nothing i cant stream through the PS3 media server