PS3 | Glenn Ward

IPTV – The 4OD Player and ITV join iPlayer on your Playstation 3

I’m always watching 4OD on my laptop as I never seem to be in at the tme shows I like to watch are on. For a while now the PS3 has had the BBC iPlayer in the video section of its main menu but after the latest OS update Sony had introduced the 4OD Player (read more) and the ITV player (read more), brilliant! there’s not much you can’t do now on your games console and like most technology shifts at the moment there is no need to upgrade your hardware just your software.

We have also installed an internet enabled TV, the Panasonic Viera in one of the meeting rooms at work and am currently testing with some of the Apps, will keep you posted! isn’t it funny how television moved onto the PC and then back to the TV, just more conveniently!!

Digitizing your DVD / Film collection, software, settings, exports, codecs, file size etc

The other day a colleague, Ryan Garner! you may have heard him on Simon Mayos drive talking about iPad sales (tech expert) no big deal! said he was thinking about digitizing his DVD collection. It got me thinking, it’s about that time that hard drives are so big and compression routines so efficient that we all should start to think about having our films as files. I have a few DVDs as digital downloads and a few I have converted for my iPhone but with 160gb of ps3 hard drive sitting there doing nothing why haven’t I taken the iPod mentality with my DVDs and got them all on a hard drive. So it’s testing time.

I started by looking at the old iPod exports I had done a few years ago but I was after something that wouldn’t look to degraded on a 40″ TV. I remembered having a download available with my x-men origins DVD I bought recently and so download it to look at the file. It was slightly bigger at 8 x but still what would this look like on a 1080 tv, I was optimistic as it looked pretty good in full screen on the MacBook. So the next step was to play it from the PlayStation. No transfer need, see Media Streaming from an Apple computer to a PS3 using MediaLink…. No worries, here to help!

So, next to look at some software, exports settings and codecs. My preferred DVD ripping software is Handbrake on the mac but have a search on Softpedia or Download.com if you are using a PC for alternatives. Handbrake has a few export presets so I tried a few to compare results. When these exports are played back on laptop there isn’t much in the quality although the files sizes can differ dramatically. I exported another targeting the file size to around 700 mb, this produces a very low bitrate and a noticeable reduction in quality. I next produced an export with a targeted bitrate. Many video files on my laptop had a bitrate of around 1500 so I thought it would be interesting to see what file size this produced. The results were a medium size file, approximate 2 gig and a good quality. The test would be though which files I could play through the TV and still be happy with the quality. My opinion is that if you are after DVD quality videos you need to target the 4 to 5 gig file size with minimum compression. If you are happy to notice slight pixelation in your image and funnily enough this occurs on the flat chunks of colour then go-ahead and start reducing the bitrate.

There Is other software and codecs that do the same sort of job, DIVX has a very good compression routine and produces small file sizes in high quality, just make sure you check what file extensions your devices can playback before you compress your entire collection.

Record / Screen Capture what you do on your XBox or PS3 as video footage

Ok, I’ve been doing a bit of usability testing recently and thought I’d push the boundaries of what I can record and offer as video output. In theory anything with a video out I can record, so there was no problem with most mobile phone devices so I thought i’d rig up and record my gaming.

Here’s the xBox and ps3 setup. I used an Apple MacBook Pro to record the video with a Formac Studio analogue to digital converter. It meant that I could take a digital signal to the computer and still run the xBox into the TV and keep playing a game.

Couple of things about the ps3, sometimes, on some tv’s you’ll have trouble with the analogue inputs so you have to go into the playstation menu while you are in your usual setup and then select analogue and restart. Not going to talk you through the setup it’s pretty self explainitory although here it is

And here is some sample footage.

Playstation 3 – Playing Video Files and Movies on your PS3

In the past I have exported my DVD’s to play on my iPod or laptop while I am out of the country or out and about to save carrying them all around with me. I wanted explore ways to play these on the television.

Using the PS3 plug the hard drive into the USB port. On the Playstation scroll over to the Movie symbol then scroll down and locate your USB Device next press Triangle NOT the Cross and choose Display All you should now be able to see all the files on your device. Navigate to your video and hit X.

If you want to know how to the same on your Xbox 360 the See Here
and if you want to learn how to stream your media from your Macbook Pro to your PS3 See Here

Playstation 3 – Performing your PS3 update from an external portable device

I have my PS3 quite away from the modem and as a result it continually drops the downloads during update to the system and to games. I finally read up on how to do the update by downloading the update from the Sony PS3 site, creating a folder on the external drive called PS3 (case sensitive) and within that another called UPDATE, (again case sensitive) drop the update file in this folder and connect it to your PS3′s USB port. Using the PS3 menu screen navigate to the left and up to Software Update, follow the prompts and your update will be done in a fraction of the time!

Also, check out how I streamed my iTunes library from my Mavbook to play on my Playstation 3 Click Here

Media Streaming, MacBook Pro, PS3, Xbox 360, MediaLink, iTunes Part 1

I grew tired of having loads of tech, loads of tunes, loads of software but still limited by not being in the right place or not having a lead long enough, so I set about improving my technical life. I started with my music, I have a 2.1 surround sound system plugged into my TV with an iPhone dock in it yet I hardly ever dock the iPhone and only have access to 8 gigs of music…

MacBook Pro (iTunes) to PS3
I downoaded Media Link and installed it on the Mac. Once installed go to your system preferences, register your software then under the iTunes tab make sure you are sharing your library. Use your settings here to share anything else you wish to make available. Go onto your PS3 and scroll left to the music icon, scroll down to search for media servers. Your Null River Media Link icon should appear in the menu system. Scroll down to your music and browse the folders as you would your playlist, providing the music is in a exognisable format for your ps3 you should hear tunage.

MacBook Pro to Xbox 360
I then set about doing the same for the xbox and soon gave up, Mac, Microsoft! Bad combination

iPhone to MacBook Pro (iTunes)
Apple have made a nifty little app that doesn’t ship with the iPhone software. It’s a handy little WiFi remote control available on the app store it gives you full access to you iTunes library as long as you are withing range and you HD is not asleep. Very easy to set up and most importantly FREE.

iPhone to Macbook Pro (full operating system)

Given the nature of my job a high proportion of my time is spent video editing which means I struggle to work from home or on location like many others. As an experiment I decided to play with remote desktop. I have worked for a company in the past that tapped into the company server using remote access and in turn could remote desktop to any one of the PCs as long as it was on. Security is extremely high on the company network so I began testing to see if I could log onto my laptop at home from my iPhone. I began by setting up a logmein.com account and installing the relevant software locally on the MacBook. Logmein also a produce a tidy little app called logmein ignition which provides a seamless iPhone interface to operate Mac OSX. Before I invested the £17.99 I tested the theory by merely using safari on the phone (didn’t work) I also wanted to know what kind of speeds we would be looking at. When I attempted through a Firefox browser logmein required the installation of further software and an active x control in Internet explorer. The connection from work to home on the first test went well. As you can imagine there is no delay on programs loading at the remote end but the refresh speed locally was slow. I am presuming the wireless connection a distance away from the router does not help. I am slightly reluctant to test the logmein ignition app on the iPhone as I don’t think it will be able to handle the tasks I need to perform over wifi but especially over the 3G network ( I wonder if an iPhone 3G S would help)

MobileMe
The subscription has put me off the MobileMe software. I really don’t know whether it would improve my efficiency that much that I can justify paying the recurring price tag. But, I am rubbish with dates and having a work calender and a home calender does not help. Often the email I need for some information on a particular task will be on my laptop at home.

Part 2 coming when I am considerably richer and invest in a home entertainment system.