pacific707
02-29-2008, 11:00 PM
I know they are going to cover using an xbox 360 and an appleTV as a media extender on the next show. Why not add the PS3 to this?
I have looked into doing this for all 3 and hope I can be of help. This is going to be a little mac centric because I have a couple of macs and Vista Ultimate on bootcamp. So if there are better Windows solutions that I don't cover I would love to hear them.
Apple TV Best presentation and complete DVD->Storage->TV solution.
Probably the most complete solution using HandBrake you can convert almost any DVD to a .m4v file. This is a non standard file so it will only play on apple devices. The sweet thing is you can have a AC3 track for the Apple TV and an AAC stereo track for iPod or computer. Finally you can add all kinds of meta data to the file like posters and summaries that will display on the Apple TV. I even believe it has support for chapters.
The only down side is that you need to hack your Apple TV to play divx or xvid file you already have. a more easy solution is to drop them into VisualHub and convert them to an apple friendly format. And No Games :rolleyes:
Connecting Software: iTunes(Mac/Windows)
Xbox 360 #3 Probably the second best interface but no 5.1 sound
Handbrake again can make a nice file for the 360 but not with 5.1 sound. The 360 is the most lenient toward file types playing more different encodes of divx. The nice thing about the 360 is if you have a nice .jpg file to go with the movie you can display it by having it in the same folder. This file name will need to be the same as the movie other than file extension.
The down side is the interface is a little slow, there is no way to copy files to the 360's hard drive and most importantly no 5.1 support (I have not used media center and I am sure there is more capabilities there I have not explored.)
Connecting Software: Connect360(Mac), Windows natively streams? MediaCenter or Vista Ultimate (I haven't had the time to look into this much)
PS3 #2 for 5.1 sound blu-ray and ability to copy to HDD
Although not as flexible with Divx files as the 360 it can play more file types. Convert DVDs with HandBrake to mkv files with AC3 5.1 audio then run them through mkv2vob (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=131782) to output a .vob or .mts (no reencode or transcoding just remux) file the PS3 will play just fine. A couple of other really nice things is that is uses UPNP so there is a lot of programs that will allow it to stream or copy media from. One really great solution is to get someting like this drive from iomega (http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/detail.jsp;IomegaProdComSession=HI6CNfxPUv2SfhLRmH 6y4mcUxAAOCaVujV2npYUxotJl9aDe11jJ!-729179435!-1817048988!7005!7002!-1913921332!-1817048987!7005!7002?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=51400367&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=31699021&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=63191&bmUID=1204320834623). It is a NAS with UPNP on it. So you can convert all your videos and put them on your NAS then the PS3 can play them off it. There is also software from Twonky (http://www.twonkymedia.com/Products/TwonkyMedia/index.html) that can be installed on all kinds of devices. One use I enjoy is my videos from my AVCHD camcorder play this way wonderfully. The fact that it has blu-ray and flexible storage options are the biggest pluses
Interface is not that great. Listing to audio by folders is a mess compared to 360 and Apple TV. Movies are not playable on other devices. AND WHY NO IR!? I got this (http://www.nyko.com/nyko/products/?i=113) so I could use my harmony remote
Connecting Software: MediaLink(Mac), TwonkyVision(Mac,Windows,Linux)
Hope this is of some use. :)
I have looked into doing this for all 3 and hope I can be of help. This is going to be a little mac centric because I have a couple of macs and Vista Ultimate on bootcamp. So if there are better Windows solutions that I don't cover I would love to hear them.
Apple TV Best presentation and complete DVD->Storage->TV solution.
Probably the most complete solution using HandBrake you can convert almost any DVD to a .m4v file. This is a non standard file so it will only play on apple devices. The sweet thing is you can have a AC3 track for the Apple TV and an AAC stereo track for iPod or computer. Finally you can add all kinds of meta data to the file like posters and summaries that will display on the Apple TV. I even believe it has support for chapters.
The only down side is that you need to hack your Apple TV to play divx or xvid file you already have. a more easy solution is to drop them into VisualHub and convert them to an apple friendly format. And No Games :rolleyes:
Connecting Software: iTunes(Mac/Windows)
Xbox 360 #3 Probably the second best interface but no 5.1 sound
Handbrake again can make a nice file for the 360 but not with 5.1 sound. The 360 is the most lenient toward file types playing more different encodes of divx. The nice thing about the 360 is if you have a nice .jpg file to go with the movie you can display it by having it in the same folder. This file name will need to be the same as the movie other than file extension.
The down side is the interface is a little slow, there is no way to copy files to the 360's hard drive and most importantly no 5.1 support (I have not used media center and I am sure there is more capabilities there I have not explored.)
Connecting Software: Connect360(Mac), Windows natively streams? MediaCenter or Vista Ultimate (I haven't had the time to look into this much)
PS3 #2 for 5.1 sound blu-ray and ability to copy to HDD
Although not as flexible with Divx files as the 360 it can play more file types. Convert DVDs with HandBrake to mkv files with AC3 5.1 audio then run them through mkv2vob (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=131782) to output a .vob or .mts (no reencode or transcoding just remux) file the PS3 will play just fine. A couple of other really nice things is that is uses UPNP so there is a lot of programs that will allow it to stream or copy media from. One really great solution is to get someting like this drive from iomega (http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/detail.jsp;IomegaProdComSession=HI6CNfxPUv2SfhLRmH 6y4mcUxAAOCaVujV2npYUxotJl9aDe11jJ!-729179435!-1817048988!7005!7002!-1913921332!-1817048987!7005!7002?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=51400367&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=31699021&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=63191&bmUID=1204320834623). It is a NAS with UPNP on it. So you can convert all your videos and put them on your NAS then the PS3 can play them off it. There is also software from Twonky (http://www.twonkymedia.com/Products/TwonkyMedia/index.html) that can be installed on all kinds of devices. One use I enjoy is my videos from my AVCHD camcorder play this way wonderfully. The fact that it has blu-ray and flexible storage options are the biggest pluses
Interface is not that great. Listing to audio by folders is a mess compared to 360 and Apple TV. Movies are not playable on other devices. AND WHY NO IR!? I got this (http://www.nyko.com/nyko/products/?i=113) so I could use my harmony remote
Connecting Software: MediaLink(Mac), TwonkyVision(Mac,Windows,Linux)
Hope this is of some use. :)