PS3 owners... Able to answer some questions?

NeilF

NeilF

NeilF

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OK, I'm wondering if a PS3 is a solution to:-
1) Bluray player
2) Being able to watch videos AVIs (tv series/films)
3) Being able to look through our large photo collection (organised into a nice tree structure of folders)

I don't believe you can copy files to a PS3 wirelessly, so I recon if I have one of those self powered passport USB drives and simply copy my videos and photos to it from my PC, and then plug this into the PS3?

Questions:-
1) Would the above scenario work?
2) How fast/responsive/good is the photo navigation?
3) Would standard AVI (Divx, XVid etc) files playback OK? (With subtitle files too?)
4) Are files shown on a USB devices sorted (eg: into filename order)? Or are they shown in creation order (as happens on some simple devices when accessing USB)
5) Out of interest, can you delete files off a USB device using the PS3?

Anyone got any general comments about this plan? I want it to be as hassle & trouble free as possible. The last thing I want to have to do for example is convert video files etc.
 
NeilFawcett said:
OK, I'm wondering if a PS3 is a solution to:-
1) Bluray player
Yes, it is a good blu-ray player, there are slightly better standalones out there but tbh there's little in it. I very much recommend picking up an official bluray remote with it too (around £15), it's much better than the PS3 controllers for watching media

2) Being able to watch videos AVIs (tv series/films)
Yep, nearly all AVI files work, there are a couple that don't but you could use a transcoder to fix them, out of the 1000s of files i have i've discovered less than 10 that don't work

3) Being able to look through our large photo collection (organised into a nice tree structure of folders)
The filing system for files on the PS3s harddrive sucks, however if you plug in an external drive and select 'view all' it displays the exact file structure that is present on the external harddrive

I don't believe you can copy files to a PS3 wirelessly, so I recon if I have one of those self powered passport USB drives and simply copy my videos and photos to it from my PC, and then plug this into the PS3?

Questions:-
1) Would the above scenario work?
Yes it would, the external drive has to be formatted as FAT32 though. I use a 1tb external for that very purpose and it's perfect aside from the fact FAT32 does not store files larger than 4gig so high definition videos sometimes have to be split into smaller files. You can actually copy files to the PS3 over a network using a media server or HTTP server however as i previously stated the file system for the PS3s internal harddrive isn't great so i would recommend an external for large collections of files that are less than 4gig in size each

2) How fast/responsive/good is the photo navigation?
From a media server, quite slow, from an external harddrive, pretty fast, not as fast as a PC but it's more than functional imo

3) Would standard AVI (Divx, XVid etc) files playback OK? (With subtitle files too?)
I don't know about subtitle files i'm afraid, but as i said above out of my huge collection of 'home movies' only a handful don't work, they're really old too

4) Are files shown on a USB devices sorted (eg: into filename order)? Or are they shown in creation order (as happens on some simple devices when accessing USB)
Also as stated above, if you point the PS3 at the external drive, press triangle and then select 'view all' it will display the contents of the USB device exactly as they are organized. So your chosen file structure will remain intact.
Click to expand...

Any more questions don't hesitate to ask.
 
Last edited:
NeilFawcett said:
OK, I'm wondering if a PS3 is a solution to:-
1) Bluray player
2) Being able to watch videos AVIs (tv series/films)
3) Being able to look through our large photo collection (organised into a nice tree structure of folders)
Click to expand...

Yes to all three. It's supposed to be one of the best Blu-ray players on the market, and watching videos, playing music and looking at photos is pretty accessible. If you want to view them from an external hard-drive or flash drive it's really just a case of plugging it in and selecting 'View All' from the specific function you want. If you want to share files over your network from a PC, it's done through Windows Media Player. Any files that you can access over your network can, as far as I'm aware, be copied across it to the PS3's HDD.

NeilFawcett said:
Questions:-
1) Would the above scenario work?
2) How fast/responsive/good is the photo navigation?
3) Would standard AVI (Divx, XVid etc) files playback OK? (With subtitle files too?)
4) Are files shown on a USB devices sorted (eg: into filename order)? Or are they shown in creation order (as happens on some simple devices when accessing USB)
5) Out of interest, can you delete files off a USB device using the PS3?
Click to expand...

1) As above
2) From an external HDD/flash drive, it should be pretty quick. Over a network will be a bit slower as it'll have to load everything, wired is better than wireless in that respect but it's not awful either way.
3) Yep should do, MKV files will usually work after using MKV2VOB on them, takes a minute or so usually.
4) If you select 'View All' you basically view the device as if you were looking at it on your PC, so folder structure etc will be preserved. Usually it'll be sorted by name, but you should be able to sort it by date too.
5) Yep, can't delete files over a network though.
 
If you create the following folder structure on the root of your USB drive and add the relevant files to each folder, you dont need to press triangle to see the contents of each folder:

Pictures
Video
Music
 
1) As a Bluray player the PS3 does a very good job, its used in some US mags as the standard BR player they use to rate picture quality. The only few Downsides to it being used as a BD player is that it can be a bit noisier than some BD players, although not that loud, and its audio is not as good as some other players with repsect to formats it outputs and connections.

2)The PS3 is Divx certified and plays all avis ive thrown at it, others have problems with some AVIs coded with older codecs. Some file formats eg mkv wont play on the PS3 unless you have software that will decode on the fly.

3) Photos can be stored in different folders that you can organise yourself, there is also a pretty good photo viewer that can even sort by age, smiling, group size etc.

If you use ps3mediaserver you can copy files via wifi onto the PS3, you can also browse any folder on your PS3 and copy videos/photos that way. You can also use a usb drive/Hdd aslong as its fat32 and files are no bigger than 4GB, you can aslo copy and delete fropm the USB drive via the PS3.
 
UKDTweak said:
If you create the following folder structure on the root of your USB drive and add the relevant files to each folder, you dont need to press triangle to see the contents of each folder:

Pictures
Video
Music
Click to expand...

Not necessarily true, see if only supports one sub-folder after the first using that method. So for example if you had:

Pictures/Tim

It would work, but if you had

Pictures/Tim/2009

The files within the 2009 folder would not be viewable unless you selected the 'view all' function. God knows why they implemented it that way as the PS3 is clearly able to see the files if it needs to.
 
i share my films/avis through my network from pc to ps3 using windows media player. its easy to setup and i have access to all my stuff and in the correct file structure as shown on my pc.

for 99% of the avi files, it will be fine. you can also set it up to play your high res .mkv stuff but this requires conversion (which is very quick)... i know its not something you'd wanna you, but its useful to know :D

edit- there was a thread in a few days ago where someone found a prog to use to watch avi's WITH sub files on the ps3... can't remember what it was called though.
 
Streeteh said:
Also as stated above, if you point the PS3 at the external drive, press triangle and then select 'view all' it will display the contents of the USB device exactly as they are organized. So your chosen file structure will remain intact.
Click to expand...

Sorry, regarding the order of files...

With some devices I've encounted, the files are shown in the order in which you put the files on the device, which sucks! So if you copy files A, B and C on there in the following order:-
B
C
A

...that's the order they are listed in when viewing them. When all logic dictates they should be shown in alphabetical order:-
A
B
C

Does the PS3 sort them (alphabetically) into a logical order, or just show them in creation order (which is painful)?

Thanks :)
 
UKDTweak said:
If memory serves, you can alter the view to change the order things appear in, from date to album name etc...
Click to expand...

So you can show things (by default) just in alphabetical order?

ps: The one thing I wouldn't be putting on there is music. I have a lovely Squeeze box to handle that :)
 
NeilFawcett said:
So you can show things (by default) just in alphabetical order?

ps: The one thing I wouldn't be putting on there is music. I have a lovely Squeeze box to handle that :)
Click to expand...

I've just hooked up my external harddrive to look and by default my videos sort alphabetically by folder name. So it appears as:

A
B
C
etc.

Don't see why the same shouldn't apply to your photos etc.
 
ojste said:
edit- there was a thread in a few days ago where someone found a prog to use to watch avi's WITH sub files on the ps3... can't remember what it was called though.
Click to expand...

Really? It would be great if you could tell me what program this was. I have a lot of Anime with fan subs I'd like to stream to my big tv. :)
 
Robert1986 said:
Really? It would be great if you could tell me what program this was. I have a lot of Anime with fan subs I'd like to stream to my big tv. :)
Click to expand...

here it is: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17990094

aint tried it myself though :o


OP this link will be useful to you i think, firmware 2.60 which was released a few months back includes software specially for photos. video of it is here:

http://playstation.joystiq.com/2009/01/20/firmware-2-60-brings-photo-gallery-divx-3-11/

you dont have to use the software of course but its there :D
 
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