Nick Glover

There is a lot of information out there about how to stream media from a computer to a PS3 or Xbox 360, but most of it is scattered across several web sites and doesn’t cover all the steps. Even when I found the right information, a lot of it was geared toward more experienced users, leaving me to do some experimenting until I got things right.  This guide aims to collect all the information a put it in one location with steps that are as newbie friendly as possible. With my guide, you will learn how to:

• Rip DVDs to your computer
• Rip HD DVDs  and Blu-rays to your computer
• Encode videos to a streaming-friendly format
• Stream video from your computer to your Playstation 3

Before we begin, let me say that I do not condone illegal copying of movies. This guide is intended for use only with movies that you legally own.

Why would you want to bother setting up streaming? That’s a good question. It takes a long time to rip all your movies to your computer, especially HD movies. However, there are definitely some advantages. If you have a lot of movies, they take up a lot of space in your entertainment center. If you put them all on your computer, you can put them all in a box and put them out of the way. On top of that, you will have easy access to your entire library without having to leave your couch to put in a disc.

Why bother streaming when the PS3’s internal hard drive is so easy to upgrade? Well, unless you have an extra 2.5″ hard drive sitting around, it costs money to upgrade the PS3’s hard drive. Chances are, you already have a big hard drive in your computer, so streaming doesn’t cost you anything. Also, the PS3 is kinda picky about how videos are encoded, but those limitations can be overcome by streaming, which automatically transcodes videos so that they are compatible. It is much easier to set up videos with surround sound for streaming instead of storing them on the PS3’s internal disk.

Why not use the Xbox 360? Personal preference. I’m not a fanboy, but I already use the PS3 for movies, so it just makes sense to use it for movie streaming, too. It also supports a larger variety of formats, though I could be mistaken about that.

Now that all the questions are out of the way, let’s get started. I will be using a PC with Windows 7 for this guide, but most of the steps are identical on a Mac since the software I use is compatible with both. I will try to point out the differences as they come up. The last part of the guide, the part about ripping HD movies, will not work with a Mac. The software used for that is all PC-only.

The first thing you are going to want to do is download PS3 Media Server. This utility works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it is very easy to set up and use. It’s supposed to work as a Windows service as well, but that option doesn’t seem to work very well, so I don’t bother with it. It’s easy enough to just run it when you need it or to set it to run when you log in. One thing to note is that if you rip movies that start with “the,” such as “The Matrix,” you might want to name them like this–”Matrix, The”–to keep them sorted alphabetically. After you’ve installed it, you’ll want to play with the settings a bit. Here’s how I have my settings. Under “Navigation/Share Settings:”

The most important things to set on this page are your shared folders at the bottom. Make sure to add whatever directories you want to share with the PS3. I have it set to share music, but Windows does a good enough job of that by default, so I will probably remove that directory. I don’t know if it’s really necessary to use MPlayer for thumbnails, but I changed it to that when I changed the other thumbnail settings and it seemed to work better, so I left it. I find that 120 seconds (2 minutes) is a good number because it is far enough into most movies that you’ll actually get a thumbnail that you can recognize as belonging to the movie. I also like to have the extensions and engine names hidden so that I don’t have long titles (like “The Matrix.mkv [MEncoder]“) showing up on the PS3. I find it is easier to find things when I only have to see the names.

Next, you’ll want to check the transcoding settings. I don’t think I changed much under that tab, but just in case, here are the settings that I use. Under “Common transcode settings:”

I like audio, so I made sure it was set up for maximum quality and full 5.1 channels. If you choose to do the copy stream option later when we are ripping HD DVDs, you’ll want to uncheck “Keep DTS audio in stream” unless you have a receiver that can decode 5.1 Linear PCM (which requires an HDMI input). Update: The reason the receiver needs to be able to decode Linear PCM instead of, say, the actual TrueHD or Master Audio stream is that the PS3 doesn’t fully support those codecs and has to decode them internally, so it sends them to your receiver as 5.1 Linear PCM. However, the new PS3 slim may support TrueHD and Master Audio streaming (though your receiver will still need to support those). The only other settings I might have changed are under the “MEncoder” settings:

I checked the “Enhanced mutlicore support” setting (since I have a dual-core processor), though if you hold your mouse over the option, you will notice that it may not work perfectly all the time. I haven’t had any problems with it so far, so I’m leaving it checked for now.

And that’s it! Just hit “Save” and close the window. Closing the window leaves the program running in the background (accessible from the system tray), but hitting “Quit” will actually quit the program, so you won’t be able to take advantage of streaming. If you turn on your PS3, you should see a “PS3 Media Server [your PC name]” under any of the media sections (“Video,” “Music,” and “Photo”). If you don’t, make sure that UPnP is enabled in your router’s control panel. The process for enabling that varies from router to router, but on my Netgear, it is under the “UPnP” category. You may also need to enable network sharing on your computer, as detailed here. On Windows 7, the process is mostly similar. Go to the Network and Sharing Center, as detailed in the link, click “Choose homegroup and sharing options” and check the option for “Stream my pictures, music…[etc]” under “Share media with devices.” If you still can’t get it to show up on the PS3… then I have no idea what’s wrong.

In the next installment I will show you how to rip standard DVDs to your computer and encode them so that you can stream them. Don’t worry, it’s a lot easier than it sounds.

[Continued in part 2] [Skip to part 3]