[Gllug] Is linux a good bet for HTPC

[damion.yates at gmail.com]

On Wed, 4 May 2011, Iain Conochie wrote:

> <snip>
> > > Does MythTV present itself as a "Media Server" in PS3 speak? How
> > > do you
> > > 
> > > configure the playstation to "see" the linux machine?
> > 
> > If you have access to a PS 3 and just want to try it out with
> > recorded Freeview SD television, then you can get MythTV running on
> > reasonably low-end hardware. The only thing you're actually doing
> > when recording Freeview is dumping the television stream to the hard
> > disk so very little CPU time is actually used. As I recall, I had a
> > PIII 1GHz and an internal PCI Freeview card recording television and
> > then serving it to a PS 3.

> Nah - I have a NAS server with many DivX movies on it and it would be
> cool to be able to play them via the PS3 on our TV. I noticed that the
> PS3 has the option to find Media Servers but I figured this was some
> M$ thing.

To be honest I didn't know you could get a NAS that didn't provide a
DLNA media server (part of uPnP)!  The PS3 can't play as many weird
formats as a well (iffy licensed) compiled linux ffmpeg/vlc can, but it
certainly covers almost all the formats I throw at it, including most
mpeg2 transport streams including most HD stuff (BBC HD changed theirs a
while back sadly), program streams, DivX, xvid, avc/mpeg4/h26x.

I have PlayTV which is a usb freeview decoder you plug in to the PS3 and
some pretty slick PVR software.  It supports HD in the rest of Europe,
but the UK chose a different standard which I believe has
affected/annoyed everyone who purchased older pci/usb freeview decoders
for their PC/mac or who have older PVRs.  PlayTV happily lets you save
recordings off to fat32 drives, and I copy stuff I want to keep to the
NAS and for later playback from the PS3, because the NAS is a larger
archive than the 320GB disk in the PS3.

You can get PlayTV for £35 from Amazon with free postage.  Sony might be
almost as evil as Apple, but the PS3 is truly a marvellous home
entertainment device.  I know many people who never play games on it,
just use it for watching BluRays and media server playback.  In fact
I've given them out to several relatives, along with the webcam so my
kids can trivially VC with grandparents from the comfort of our couches.
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