So every time they announce any kind of new PS3 bundle at all, it makes me pull my hair a little bit, because it's invariably a better price or a bigger hard drive, or both, compared to the one I shelled out for. This time, it's 160 gigs for $499 -- which means it's twice as big as the one that I paid that same amount for not all that long ago, though I can't for the life of me remember exactly when I bought the PS3.
I digress, however. Sony says this new PS3 with the hulk-sized storage capacity has a twofold purpose -- first, fit more downloadable games. Second, to better leverage the console as the all-important "Media Hub."
We hear Sony talk about this a lot, right? PlayStation 3's a veritable entertainment center! Now, I'm one of those staid types who very rarely uses any of my next-gen consoles to do much more than play games, whether disc or digital. All my music is on my computer. I use iTunes so that I can put my music on my iPhone, and I buy most of my music in iTunes -- often, I do this even when I already own the disc, because it's rather a pain to move music around that you didn't buy through iTunes. I used to have so many MP3s that it was more trouble than it was worth to move them when I bought a new computer, and moving CDs into iTunes repeatedly? Like, forget it, man, I'm a busy chick.
My new laptop, while being very awesome, has shit for speakers, and when cleaning house on the past weekend, I realized I can't hear the songs if I leave the room. That's when I noticed my PS3 gleaming at me, looking for all the world so much like a media hub that I remembered the words of Jack and Kaz and decided to use my PS3 for my Family Entertainment Center.
I spoke out loud to the PS3 and asked it what I need to do to evolve it from a mere game console into a media hub. Needless to say, it did not answer. So I managed to figure out, after maybe fifteen minutes of messing around on the internet, how to get the PS3 to recognize my new laptop -- which has, like, four days of music on it or something ridiculous -- as a "media server." I began to get excited. I had my Media Server and my Media Hub and they were talking to each other (I am not hardware-savvy, mind).
This is when I find out that the PS3 arbitrarily divvied my collection up into folders called F01, F02 and F03, and inside them were a list of tracks with names like NOPHXLT or whatever. Apparently, it was able to recognize and play only about five tracks out of my entire music collection (aside from the twelve abysmal WMA tracks that come with Windows Media Player 11).
I looked at my gleaming PS3, glittering like the future, and I said to it, "I can't believe I'm about to use you as a glorified iPod dock." But I did, after seeing some message board threads that said such a thing would work. In fact, the message board threads I found made it seem to me like more people simply just docked their music players rather than try to set up a media server. I plugged my iPhone into the USB. The PS3 does not know what an iPhone is. I still have my iPod, so I tried that. This time, the PS3 could play fewer tracks than before -- and, implausibly, different ones, from what I can tell.
It's not the console's fault, I know. It's the iTunes media format. But, I mean -- really, I can't even dock my iPod? How am I supposed to use PS3 as a media hub? I'm trying, Jack and Kaz, I really am. Come on, Apple, I'm not trying to copy the music, I just want to stream it. And I bought it, I swear, I did.
After attempting several different strategies over the course of an hour to make sure it really was the file format and not just me Doing It Wrong, here's what I did. I bought nice speakers for my laptop and I downloaded Symphony of the Night on PlayStation Network. I've now purchased that game more times than I have any other title ever, and I own it for every platform for which it's ever been available.
So as of now, my PC is still my media hub; my new speakers are pretty sweet. And my PS3 is still squarely a game machine. Oh, well.
Also, Microsoft would never-never cut a deal with Apple to let iTunes play on Xbox 360s. Sony should. Is this a naive wish on my part? Am I crazy in thinking that the overwhelming majority of digital music users use iTunes, or at the very least, a stunningly significant portion of them? Do people really buy MP3s from websites and play them in Windows Media Player, more people than use iTunes?
30 comments:
I haven't quite figured out how to properly get my "media" onto my PS3 either, aside from the obvious USB thumb drive method. AVI files play pretty well, provided they are encoded in a certain way.
Were most of your songs not MP3 files? I know music bought through iTunes is stored in a proprietary format. I have yet to test my music collection compatibility.
That's clearly what you get -- and deserve -- for buying a windows based computer.
my mac streams my iTunes library flawlessly to the PS3, divided by artist/album/however the eff I feel like.
lesson learned, I hope.
Actually, you can plug an ipod straight into the 360 and stream music from it. Not sure if the PS3 does that, though I don't see why it wouldn't.
To be honest, for awhile I just ripped a bunch of cds to my 360 and used that to listen to music, since I have my teevee hooked up to some very nice speakers. The 360 is decent as a media player. It's actually a little nicer than WMP, to be honest, though that's not saying much.
Also, lorand: apple computers are nice but you cannot deny that they are overpriced for what you get. I was shopping around for a music production computer this summer and VERY quickly realized that, whatever benefits I'd get with buying a mac, I could build my own, far more powerful PC, for a fraction of the cost. And speaking of cost, there are other certain, uh *cough* financial advantages in terms of getting software for a PC.
So while I agree that Apples are "better" they are very rarely the more cost effective option.
Every time I feel that price drop pain, I just remind myself: It doesn't have the Emotion Engine and PS2 compatibility. Then I huddle in the corner crying, clutching my copy of Shadow of the Colossus close to my chest.
Your poll has three options, but surely I'm not the only one who uses their PS3 as a DVD player but not CD player? I'd bet that's the most common option for PS3 owners; I'm sure as heck not buying a second Blu-Ray player at these prices.
Finally, lorand: anti-Microsoft trolling on SVGL? Seriously, dude? Like, maybe the problem is using iTunes for your media library. Don't start facile platform wars, this isn't Endgadget or IGN or something.
After I post this I'm gonna go connect my iPod to my PS3 and see what happens. I'm intrigued. Maybe they'll go BOOM. That would be sad.
I completely agree that the stage is set for Sony and Apple to sort something out here and give both an edge over their competition... but is the Walkman not an issue? Sony are still pushing the name onto its mp3 players and I doubt they'd work with iTunes, right? So isn't their a conflict of interests? I am not sure at all, just wondering.
DRM is FAIL
I haven't tried playing music on the PS3 yet, largely because Pandora, my iPhone and a cable is about all I need to bebop through the night.
Video-wise, though, the PS3 is a dream. Upscales DVD's wonderfully, we stream content we've torrented to the Mac via MediaLink and of course Blu-Ray. Not to mention the occasional download from the PSN video store.
TVersity says "Hi!"
Oh and yeah - Sony *should* make deals with Apple, but that doesn't Apple would. Apple still has that AppleTV out there, after all.
Like "anonymous" said, use TVersity!!
I use it and everything works fine.
Also I'm not hip and cool enough to own an iPhone or iPod, so I use my psp as an mps player, therfor never have a problem listening to all my music on my PS3.
Don't you use iTunes Plus? I buy an assload of music from the iTunes store, and I've only got one or two albums that aren't available in Plus format. Everything that is plays fine on my PS3.
I'll third-time's-a-charm it and say the answer is a single word: tversity.
It's good for music and movies. Its only drawback compared to my dearly departed Xbox Media Center setup is subtitle support for videos -- neither X360 or PS3 will read in soft subtitles (.srt, etc.), and I haven't found a transcode setting that doesn't buffer constantly throughout the movie.
But!
As of a recent firmware version, if you use AVIAddXSubs to package soft subs into a new .avi file (without baking them into the video file itself), the PS3 can read them.
Slap it on yr laptop and I can help you work out the config if you need it!
I hope this misfortune has taught you the pitfalls of being an honest consumer and the benefits of piracy.
I consciously do not use iTunes, for buying music or playing it, and I actually own a Mac. Mp3, while not the best format quality-wise (although certain bitrates are better than Apple's AAC), is the most portable format for playing in anything (I refuse to be tied down by Apple or Microsoft products on principle). I just systematically rip every CD I buy onto my PC's shared drive.
It probably won't help you, but my setup with me PS3 is thus: I have an Ubuntu Linux desktop computer with a MediaTomb server running on it. There are some PS3-specific configuration options you have to activate in the XML config file to enable certain audio and video formats. There's a web-based configuration page where you can set up which directories to point to, and how often the database is updated for when you add new stuff. Then on the command line I just type "sudo mediatomb -d" and it's running in the background. On the PS3 the files appear correctly named, and there are a few handy sorting methods in addition to replicating the actual directory path on the PC itself, so there's no chance of getting lost there. ID3 tags show up well, too.
Now, most people aren't going to be running Linux, and setting the thing up is a little tricky, but now that it's done I have to say I use my PS3 far more often as a media device than a gaming machine (partly due to the fact that, since buying the thing, I've only been able to afford two games). It just so happens that most of my video files are the right encoding to be playable, and in really high quality. I also have several hundred (possibly more than 1000) hours of music, and the main visualization on the PS3 is very soothing, especially on a widescreen LCD.
I've heard TVersity is a really good Windows solution, but I don't know much about it for a fact. I will say that either way, once you make the time investment, using the PS3 as a media box is worth it.
I was able to copy files from my iPod (free from some bank giveaway, BTW) to my PS3 without much issue, although I couldn't get it to stream. I remember there was some weird thing where you have to triangle-select the device and then pick an option from that screen, but it's nothing a couple seconds of poking around didn't solve. Then again, they were all DRM-free MP3s I'd ripped from my CDs, so it's possible that Apple's overzealous DRM protections are what's stopping you.
I futzed with TVersity a bit but never got much to come of it. Given the hearty recommendations here, maybe I'll give it another go.
I don't do much with music, but I use iTunes to d/l video podcasts and stream most of them to the PS3 with no effort at all. There are a few where the high-def versions for some reason won't play, and for those I boot up... vote 4! TVersity.
And I use my PS3 as a blu-ray player constantly.
Media is the reason I finally bought an xbox360. I don't like having my PC hooked up to my TV, so I like streaming movies and music. It works great and it is stupidly easy to set up in a windows environment. Also, it uses IR for the remote rather than Bluetooth so Harmony remotes still work.
I rip all of the CDs and DVDs I buy onto my computer so I have this huge repository of media to be streamed to my Xbox. Plus, if you use the media center extender you get Tivo functions, internet radio, Internet TV, etc. NBC had a great media center plug in that fueled my addiction to the olympics by downloading any and every sport I wanted onto my hard drive.
I don't have an iPod, and I don't have iTunes. Even if I did, I would still just rip all of my CDs into mp3 format anyways. The only music I ever downloaded from the internet was from Amazon's DRM free mp3 store.
Welcome to my biggest problem with all of my "media hubs." I'm so fucking tech-saavy that I may as well be a cyborg, and yet I can't get my media center PC (complete with dedicated 500GB media drive) to communicate properly with either my Xbox 360 or PS3.
It has no problem streaming audio to my iPhone -- thanks to Apple making everything totally idiot proof -- and yet despite literal hours of testing workarounds and reconfiguring my home network, I can't figure out the fucking media hubs.
The one time I managed to get my 360 to speak to my computer it only found something like 1/3 of my 40GB of music, and all of that was seemingly at random, since all of my files are in completely DRM-free MP3 format.
If they're going to push this "media hub" idea they need to take some cues from Apple and make this shit either less draconian in its approach to DRM or simply less confusing in the entire system's implementation.
I refuse to use iTunes. I HATE thier file formatting both for the file type, and they way its stored (as you found) on the ipod/phone.
As lastgunslinger said mp3 ftw
Grrr Apple
`kormyen
If it's any consolation, I'm a software engineering major and even I can't figure out this stuff sometimes. I gave up after several attempts to stream media onto my Xbox, long live the PC media hub!
Another crystal clear case of having a choice between freedom and convenience and having your decision come back to bite you.
You rebuy your CDs with iTunes, you gain convenience and lose freedom. It totally baffles me that people give so much trust to computing services where if these were door to door salesmen they'd be slamming the door pronto.
Of course its that is easy for me to say, I'm am hardware savvy so I can make my own conveniences whenever I need.
This is why Apple and its useless proprietary file formats are pure crap. Before anyone cries "pirate!" at me, I buy all my music legally, but I do it from Amazon's store, which sells standard-issue, compatible-with-everything, DRM-free mp3s. I've never had a problem getting my files to play on anything-- my 360, my portable media player (an Archos), CD players that can decode mp3s (such as my boombox, car stereo, etc), anything.
As far as media hubbage goes, I copy things from my external hard drive. Not quite as seamless as wireless, but with less of the hang-ups. Plug it in, hit Copy on whatever folder or file you want, and you're done. I've got all my DivX movies, a few albums...and I circulate them out when I run low on space (I've got about 12 gigs free now). The 360 is much easier to get talking to a computer (even a Mac like mine) but at the same time, it reads dick for file formats (no AVI other than dual-channel audio!). One problem you will run into invariably is that the m4a iTunes download format isn't read by...anything, really. And that's just sad.
FLAC>all.
For those who are unaware - the 360 DOES support AAC files. All you have to do is go to the marketplace and look around for the "Optional Ipod Support" file. I'm not sure exactly where it would be now after they've redesigned the marketplace, but try Game Store>All Games>then anything to do with System or Community that you can find. It's been out since near launch.
For all those going on about how great MP3 is, well its not. The first big mix up is that AAC is proprietary and MP3 isn't, the reality of the matter is its the other way around. To make a device play MP3s you need to pay a fee whereas making a device play back AAC is free, no doubt why the Wii only plays AAC and not MP3 anymore.
Then there is the quality issue, AAC leaves MP3 for dead.
As for DRM, well Apple puts the DRM on top of a regular AAC file, much like many before them put DRM around MP3 files. The DRM is separate to the music itself.
So before you run out your yet again to cry freedom at least know what you are fighting for.
There's a fair bit of misinformation floating around on this issue.
Anonymous above me pretty much has it correct. AAC is not only superior in quality to MP3 (it was designed specifically to improve upon MP3), but it is NOT proprietary. Contrary to popular belief, it's not an Apple format. It's actually completely free to use and doesn't require fees like MP3, which is why everyone uses it now (Wii, PS3, iTunes all use it by default).
The problem isn't the file format itself - after all, your PS3 shares the same format. It's more likely the music you bought is DRMed and isn't copying over to the PS3 properly (maybe the PS3 has to sort it into it's own little system to play it properly and the DRM isn't letting it? I can't say for sure). Anything on iTunes Plus (DRM-free) should work fine. The rest? I have no idea.
As for the PS3 sorting the files into arbitrary folders...yeah, I'm not exactly sure why it does that, but my iPod does it too. The idea is that you use the organiser software software (like iTunes or whatever Sony's equivalent is) to organise it all, and if you do that, it sorts out just fine. I'm not sure what the reason for this is, but it works if you use it the required software. Of course, it's annoying when you use a computer that doesn't have those programs installed.
I own a Xbox 360, and it's media center functions require that the PC you wish to stream the video/audio from is running Windows Media Center. Why would your PC be running Windows Media Center if you weren't already using this PC as a Media Center? What's the point?
As for iTunes, then I hope that I will never ever have to install that garbage on my PC again. I have somewhere around 40 gigabyte worth of MP3, which is a lot of songs, and I'd guess that maybe 70% of it is copied from discs and the remaining 30 is warez that are still waiting for me to acquire the disc.
I don't use a laptop for this kind of thing, so the trouble of moving them is something that comes up maybe once every 3 years, when I upgrade my PC.
iTunes, does everone use it? I have to admit out of a rather large group of people I know maybe 2 who use iTunes to buy music with. Why? I would guess mainly because digital distribution has not quite penetrated our market. Another reason could be me hating on iTunes at every moment someone gives me an opening :p
Hell, I even use Rockbox on my iPod, which was the most disappointing gadget I ever bought, untill I installed Rockbox. The travesty that is Apple computers and their complete lack of respect for the enduser in their interface development is not something that I stand for.
On the "anonymous" post about the differences / history between AAC and mp3:
That's very enlightening and all, but it doesn't change the basic fact: mp3 is compatible with damn near everything. AAC is compatible with damn near nothing that doesn't begin with a lower-case "i". Hence, mp3 wins.
All I did was explore inside the docked ipod and i found my music files, then just copied the entire music folder onto the ps3
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