PlayOn Plugin Installation Tutorial

I produced a PlayOn plugin installation tutorial video in April and have it on YouTube, and had not had a chance to post it here yet. You can see it below:

If you like the video, please do comment!

PS3MediaServer

I just found out about this little gem on the PlayOn Plugins website through a post asking what others are using for software.  Just in case you're interested in trying something new it's Java based, so will run on any platform, and it does say "DLNA" compliant so effectively it should work with any DLNA compliant device (XBox and Media Consuming Devices) but I don't know any of that for sure, and with it being named "ps3mediaserver" it's obviously coded to work on that platform the best, play at your own risk.

The features sound impressive, and are all about high end streaming:

• Ready to launch and play. No codec packs to install. No folder configuration and pre-parsing or this kind of annoying thing. All your folders are directly browsed by the PS3, there's an automatic refresh also.
  
• Real-time video transcoding of MKV/FLV/OGM/AVI, etc.
  
• Direct streaming of DTS / DTS-HD core to the receiver
  
• Remux H264/MPEG2 video and all audio tracks to AC3/DTS/LPCM in real time with tsMuxer when H264 is PS3/Level4.1 compliant
  
• Full seeking support when transcoding
  
• DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder
  
• OGG/FLAC/MPC/APE audio transcoding
  
• Thumbnail generation for Videos
  
• You can choose with a virtual folder system your audio/subtitle language on the PS3!
  
• Simple streaming of formats PS3 natively supports: MP3/JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF, all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG)
  
• Display camera RAWs thumbnails (Canon / Nikon, etc.)
  
• ZIP/RAR files as browsable folders
  
• Support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb
  
• Internet TV / Web Radio support with VLC, MEncoder or MPlayer
  
• Podcasts audio/ Video feeds support
  
• Basic Xbox360 support
  
• FLAC 96kHz/24bits/5.1 support
  
• Windows Only: DVR-MS remuxer and AviSynth alternative transcoder support

I am going to give it a shot just for sheets n giggles.

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

PlayOn!

Okay, I thought I had the perfect setup until just recently a friend of mine from work suggested PlayOn.  He said he had heard about that it can stream Hulu and Youtube and Netflix (three things my setup below is sorely missing).  So I gave it a try, I am on the Netflix and PlayOn trial right now, and I have to say... it's freaking awesome.

First off it streams off the net fairly well, I have better luck with my PS3 than my XBox 360.  On the XBox I have to start a stream 2 or 3 times for it to finally catch, but after it has caught it works pretty good.  It very well could be my ISP rather than PlayOn here but I really don't have this problem with the PS3.  The software is just kicking off the ground, so I am sure it will just get better over time.

But what really put it at the top of my list is the following.  A couple days ago I contacted PlayOn's API Developer support because I was interested in using their API and writing a file aggregator where it would allow me to do what Mediatomb is currently doing, feed video from my Ubuntu box.  Since C# and DotNet is what I use at work, it looked like it was going to be a snap. They sent me to a site http://www.playonplugins.com which is a bunch of like minded media geeks with C# skills, and after a few posts there, it seems one of the moderators named "human" whipped out a fileshare plugin that was perfect using OPML so essentially it could handle multiple file paths or shares.  This saved me a few hours of work and let me get back to killing things in COD4. ;-)  On the page that you downoad the plugin I put instructions for making it work on a UNC share so I could have it read from my Ubuntu box over the network, so you can go check that out.

Now PlayOn with that plugin does everything!  They also have a few other plugins you can grab from the site above that are very interesting.  For the adults it has a plugin for you, which I won't go into depth here  you can go there and check out for yourself. ;-)   There is also an OPML aggregator plugin that you can just drop an OPML feed in a directory and it will stream that content.  People are sharing OPML files and feeds through the site as well, even has it's own section of the board for that.  There is one for the Food Network, HGTV, The Onion and a handful of others that really makes this PlayOn amazing for pulling together all your online video feeds as well as now your own local file share.

I think in a few more days my trial runs out, but this will be the software I purchase as I want to support their development efforts.  I like the idea of something so easy and extendable, and the only issue I have is now I need to upgrade my Ubuntu box with more powerful CPU's so I can run this software on a VirtualBox XP machine instead of my main gaming rig. ;-)

MediaTomb, pyTivo and Handbrake

I have finally found a solution that works for me (and the wife!)!!! Only took me about a year of trying various software packages, hardware solutions and reading for hours on end.

Honestly your own mileage may vary as it depends on what you need in your own system. I am kind of picky with my media, I want it as small as possible but as close to HD as I possibly can get since I am spoiled watching blue ray movies.

I will include links to anything I use, or any technologies I talk about to help others to configure their systems and also as somewhere I can keep all this info if I ever lose it. ;-)

Here is my current setup:

I have a Unix server in my house running Ubuntu, this server has Mediatomb running on it, and pyTivo. Whenever I buy a DVD (soon will put a BlueRay player in my box so I can rip those too) I place it in the drive, and use Handbrake to convert it to the listed preset "PS3" (MP4) format and put it on my media server. This way when the kids want to watch it, they don't scratch the disk, or the two year old doesn't use it as a flying saucer and destroy the movie. I can pack the movie away in a box, and stick it in the garage. :-) It seems the preset I talk about above is a really good mix of having AC3 full surround audio, with good quality video, for a small footprint on the hard drive.

The media server has two one terabyte drives using Ubuntu's built in Raid mechanisms configured as a mirrored set. So 1 usable terabyte but I wanted redundancy so I won't lose all this hard work. ;-) This has become a central storage of all my media in the house, all kids DVD's are located on this computer, all our DVD's, our home movies made HD video camera, photos and MP3's from iTunes.

I then have 3 regular analog TV's in the house, each one has a Tivo on it (PVR) that allows for network access. I don't have a PVR from Comcast, DirectTV or even my own cable company Advanced Cable Communications because they don't allow the network capabilities. This way I not only share programs recorded on one with the others but it also can download programs from my media server through pyTivo. The Tivo is REALLY easy to use and I have the same problem most guys do, if it's not easy to use.. the wife will complain until I replace it or make it easy, and life will not be pleasant until such time. This setup makes for marriage tranquility. :-) Once I get HD cable, which I haven't cause my cable company has been a PITA on upgrading my line to support it, I will get an HD Tivo for the living room so I can support streaming HD content to it as well.

I then have a big screen 52 inch Sony KDL-52W3000 LCD in the living room that has a PS3 on it. PS3 serves the media from the media server in HD to the TV. It handles the wide aspect ratios and such, and also can handle the higher quality stuff. Not only that but the PS3 does a superb job of upscaling anything that might be of low quality (some of the DVD's I own are rather old and not that great) so playing it through the PS3 actually makes the picture look a lot better.

I also have my 7.1 surround system connected to the 52 inch listed above, although right now it's a 4.0 setup. :-) I don't have the mid channel or the sub yet for it, have to save up since I bought a nice system and I had to buy it in parts. My reciever is a Denon 1909 and I paid a lot less than the listed price on their site. For speakers I am using the Klipsch Reference Series currently with 4 RSX-4 models, next purchase will be an RCX-4 and probably will get an RPW-10 sub. This will bring me to 5.1 and then I can look at picking up a couple more RSX-4 models to fill it out to 7.1. Also noted that I didn't pay anywhere near list for those speakers either, I paid a lot less than half the listed price on some going out of business sales.

Hope this helps someone in their decisions, I am always open for discussions about your system setup, drop a comment and I will be happy to answer you back! Would love to hear about other setups that still facilitate the same functionality.

Handbrake and Mediatomb

Haven't updated in a while, so figured I would give you the latest and greatest...

Oh man, I have to say the latest upgrade to Handbrake has helped me to replace all the software from before. Now I no longer run a Windows machine in my Virtual Box to be able to DVDShrink and then AutoGK the video into the format I want. I just use one tool, Handbrake.

They now have a Linux GUI as well as presets for "PS3" which is great in quality and has a relatively small file size, usually 1.8 gigs for a normal movie (90 mins). Because of these two things it has made it much easier, and you don't have to be a complete media geek to use it anymore. The PS3 loves it and plays it fine, so I think I have found the magic formula I was looking for, now I just have to figure a way to get the right command line so I can automated the thing, just drop a disk in and crunch away. If anyone has done this or has ideas would love to hear them.

Mediatomb is still doing great for me from a DLNA streaming server although it's really showing its age. I read some of the functionalities of the newer version of say ORB or TVersity, and Mediatomb cannot compare. But I read the next version they are working on for Mediatomb will have these functions and more, we will see when it comes out. It's still a little flaky in that sometimes it will make my PS3 say "Unsupported Data" or some other type of error, and I have to delete the Mediatomb database and recreate it and it seems to fix the issue.

I don't want to run ORB or TVersity on a Windows virtual box, they both require some good amounts of CPU since they transcode most things although I read that Orb has modified their code now to not transcode things that go to devices that support the media it's being sent. Okay rambling now, so I will close it off with I have found something else called Galleon for my Tivo's that looks really promising, I will post more about that next time.

AutoGK - Xvid - DivX - Matroska - Conversion fun!

So I been working away slowly trying various things, and I have found that after using a handful of tools for converting my videos so that they work 100% on my PS3 I use the Auto Gordian Knot (AutoGK). It seems this tool is rather old at least the main application is, being that the latest stable release was on December 2005 and there is a beta that was worked on apparently November 2007.

The location of this nifty little tool is here: http://www.autogk.me.uk/

It's by far the easiest to use and the most straight forward, not to mention the only one I can get to work 100% on everything that's not corrupted that I throw at it. I have tried the tool from DivX and a few other various free conversion tools out there and none of them compare so far.

Only problem I have so far is that I have to convert the DVD first using DVDShrink (so as to create one VOB file) then after doing that based on the tutorial I have in this blog, I use this tool AutoGK to convert the VOBs to Xvid AVIs.

I set the AutoGK to use 100% quality, use source audio (AC3) and use Xvid codec with AVI as the container. The quality is not quite as good as the VOB's themselves, but it's nearly half the size even at 100% quality and it fast forwards, scene jumps and even works with the new "Scene Search" feature that was added in the 2.50 system update on the PS3.

If anyone has any other tools that just work out of the box, and aren't that expensive please add those to the post and I will post them later with my findings after playing with them for a while. I would really like to get a good HD conversion software to create really nice high def content perhaps in the Matroska (MKV/MKA) container.

Note: I do see that on the Matroska web page there is listed as the "best" Matroska editing software listed as AVI-Mux GUI but I notice all it does is combine files and does not do any converting which sucks.

More info on the Streaming Stuff!

More woes on the streaming front!!

No matter what I do VOBs are definitely a problem with the PS3. The Xbox 360 won’t play them unless they are transcoded as they are streamed, but I haven’t been able to get TVersity to do this properly either.

I have also tested various codecs, re-encoding my videos and doing just about anything and everything I can to find the best setting or codec and what's the worst. It takes a rather long time to do this and I have still not come to a conclusion that I can be comfortable with yet, I only have a few hours here and there every night to devote so I think this hunt will take me a little longer yet.

I can say I have re-encoded my videos to Divx and XVid AVI's and the PS3 loves those, eats them for breakfast. It will fast forward, play, pause and play later (days later) at the same spot I had them paused. All of this while never once skipping a beat, pausing forever (locked video) or jumping a bit and audio getting out of sync. There is a loss of quality here though (I could probably squeeze more out if I tweaked the encoding options on the software I have), but I can perceive the loss of quality and it bugs the crap out of me. Not only that but re-encoding these videos takes many hours.

A few people I know have the same problem. It seems uncompressed VOBs are really the issue. If I compress the VOBs, even if I just say "Automatic" but don't set a limit, there are absolutely no problems with those VOBs.

I have heard talk about the Apple TV device being pretty decent after you mod it. I will get details and post here on both the Apple TV and the mod package to apply. I understand the modded device apparently will play formats directly over the network, no need for a DLNA streaming server or to transcode.

I am thinking about the same, but for nearly $200 for the device, I could put another $100 and get a PS3 if only it would handle everything.

I also really want to keep my VOBs uncompressed; they look the BEST this way. I have tested compressed and uncompressed VOBs and I can tell the difference, at least in my setup. I have a KDL-52W3000 52” Sony Bravia which I love. Some of the people I know cannot tell the difference or it does not matter to them, or perhaps their setup hides it better, but for me I really can tell the difference. Not only this but in the future I want to be able to stream high def content and if my setup cannot even handle normal DVD uncompressed VOBs I think I am in trouble when I go to HD content. Note: Everything I have tried so far is does not include any HD or Blue Ray content.

Back to the grind of trying to find a good solution for me.. any comments are appreciated.

VOB's the evil SOB's.

Well it seems most of the content problems I have are with VOB's. TVersity seems to be the best at streaming the biggest variety of content at the moment, and has the least problems. It's also the lightest weight streamer / transcoder (takes up less CPU and RAM than others I have found). Only problem is it doesn't work all that well with XBox 360. Okay so I can't get it to work AT ALL. :-/

It does work great for a PS3 and instead of buying a slingbox been discussing with co-workers just buying a PS3 for each room instead of a slingbox like equivalent. Divx or Xvid seems to be best. I am thinking about compressing a VOB to see if that works a bit better, just to see if it's the full MPEG2 format of the VOB choking the PS3. I am also going to hopefully get a VOB from a co-worker that works fine on his system. His name is Burt, he's given me great advice and a good person to bounce ideas off.

Reason I know this is the problem is I copied VOB's to the PS3 and they also exhibit the same weird behavior as they do when being streamed to the DLNA, albiet not quite as bad. Upon forwarding and reversing kind of freezes up now and again and during playback it will freeze on a frame for a few seconds. The VOB on the hard drive of the PS3 never freezes completely, but through some of the streamers it will. This is something it does not do with any AVI files with Divx or Xvid. It's almost like the PS3 is made to work better with those two formats than any other formats it supports.

Converting my videos to that format would suck big time though as it takes a better part of an evening to do one DVD. If anyone has some information on this or can shed some light, just comment on this post and I will add it to the main blog at some point.

More homework yet to do! More to come!

Cidero Explained

Okay, when I wrote the post before I didn't know what Cidero really was other than my ability to use it as a "view" into my DLNA servers that are serving my content to the network. Here is the official blurb from their website and URL below:

Cidero
http://www.cidero.com/

It's 3 components, listed below:

1. Media Controller
A growing number of UPnP A/V-compatible MediaServer and MediaRenderer devices are becoming available for the networked home. To date, control of these devices is most commonly accomplished via a UPnP control point embedded within a MediaRenderer device and driven by an infrared remote. In some situations, such as browsing large media collections, the infrared remote control-based UI can be inconvenient, and when a PC is available, a PC-based remote control capability can be preferable. The Cidero UPnP Media Controller is a Java-based, cross-platform solution that addresses this need, providing support for browsing and playback of digital music, photos and movies.

2. Internet Radio Server
This UPnP media server application parses a directory tree of ASCII-based XML radio station meta data files and exports the radio station data to interested UPnP control points. A default radio station database of 60-plus popular (shout cast-only at the moment) Internet radio stations is supplied with the server. Users may stations by simply creating new station files, using existing files as a template. The exported server browse tree reflects the structure of the station database directory tree, allowing users to modify the server's browse tree if desired by simply adding to or modifying the database directory tree on disk.

3. UPnP Bridge
The UPnP bridge software allows non-UPnP devices, to be used in a UPnP network, and extends the UPnP capabilities of others. Support for bridging of the Prismiq Media Player is currently implemented, with support for things like IR-controllable devices planned for the future.


I mostly use number 1 above and it works great for checking your DLNA servers to see if you are getting all the meta data and the files themselves to a generic consumer. Great for debugging!

p.s. For myself I saved a copy of the installer at my main website's root dir.

What I have done to this point.

I am going to start blogging about everything I do, and the tools that I use as well as links to various places that might be of interest. I might also do some tutorials or some other documentation here for anyone interested in media streaming (DLNA specifically) and things of that nature. I will probably just rant about various things here at some point also, thus this thing could have anything on it!

I currently have a couple Ubuntu 8.04 boxes (The Hardy Heron), one of them has VirtualBox on it and I run three MS operating systems on them. Two Windows 2003 servers, one with IIS and the other with SQL 2005 with the full suite of tools. I am a developer and this is my test lab if you will that allows me to program and play in the world I have a career in.

I have tried all the "Major" DLNA streaming software out there from TVersity, Twonky, MediaTomb and ORB (the major 4 if you will) and all of them I have had various problems with. Each having it's own set of idiosyncrasies. I will outline my experiences and what I have done in the coming posts, perhaps I will post one for each streaming software and give you my thoughts on each and also then what kind of hardware and what I have done with the house to facilitate what I have in my house.

I do know one thing, that I believe my PS3 is what my major problem is with. I have moved content directly to the PS3 and it acts almost the same was as the streaming software and servers I have. I have followed TVersities comments (the best documented anywhere, just have to sift through the forums to get the info) and there is a tool there called Cidero which I will also post about just to have some information on that particular piece of software on the blog and in my history so I can refer back to it at some point. That tool lets you connect to a DLNA server and basically "surf it" and create a play list that you can then open I believe with a DLNA player (I think Windows Media would do this? Not sure, haven't gone that far.) But this tool from Cidero can surf every aspect of all the media of all the major DLNA servers listed above without a problem (Pictures, Music and Movies). But on the PS3 on some it works with Movies but not Music or Pictures, and on some it works on Music but not the other.

I tend to think the whole DLNA is still in it's infancy and really things are not done shaking out with having a really solid DLNA server or DLNA consuming device that is easy to use for the whole family and just "works" out of the box if you will. If I can find the right combinations of things, I will be posting that on this blog all my trials and tribulations on this subject.

If anyone has interesting media streaming blogs or anything of that nature, please put them in the comments or e-mail me I would love to hear about them.

Okay enough blabbing for now! More posts to come.