How to Stream Video, Music, and Pictures to a Playstation 3

Hello this is porkchop here, sorry for not writing anything for awhile, I have been busy, but now I am back!

Streaming media from a computer to a TV is great and there are many reasons why. With the ability to stream movies, you can basically say goodbye to bluray discs and DVDs, everything is stored on your computer, discs can easily get damaged by finger prints. You can organize everything, into folders and sub-folders, make a virtual movie, music, and pictures library that is easy to navigate. Hard drive’s have gone down in price and are a lot larger, and also its easy to expand hard drive space by just buying a portable hard drive. Internet connections are now getting a lot faster, there is now fiber optics which can transmit video across the Internet at better speeds than before. You can watch movies now without leaving the house and get a better selection than what pay per view is showing. You can use your TV as a photo album, displaying all your pictures on the TV, no more finger prints, or accidents happen to pictures. You can access your music and play it from your computer to the TV or surround sound system, no need for Ipod docking stations.

As you can see there are many advantages of streaming data from your computer to a PS3 and it will be the way of the future. Also streaming is a lot more environmental friendly, you will cut down on disc waste. There are many services now that let you download, movies and music, such as iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes

This is the best way of streaming media to the PS3 in my opinion, remember that this will work for most people, but in some cases it will not depending on how your computer is setup, for example if you do not have file sharing on, it will probably not work, or if the router is blocking it or a firewall, you will have to investigate on how you can get it to work.

Download PS3 Media Server http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/ Make sure to pick the correct one, and Install it.
Once you have installed it open it up and let it run
Connect the Ethernet cable from the router to the Ps3, do not use wireless, it is unreliable for streaming and you might run into problems. Also you need a router for this to work.
Make sure the PS3 is on and the PS3 Media server is running. On the PS3 go under settings –> menu —> Network Settings —> Media server connection – Enable (this is important without this enabled it will not work, I think PS3’s come with it enabled on default but I don’t remember)
On the PS3 go to video and search for media servers. This should take a few moments and if it finds PS3 Media server it will show up on the list.
If it does not appear, double check that PS3 Media server is running and that media server connection is enabled, and if it still does not find it, then you have a problem, something is blocking the computer from the PS3, this can be many things, it can be the router, a port is blocking it, it can be the firewall on the computer which is mostly the case just turn it off when you want to stream, or it can be a setting on the computer, file and printer sharing could be turned off, if you can’t access your files from a secondary PC in your house than most likely file sharing is off on the network, which will stop it from working. So as you can see there are a couple reasons why it will not work, and you will have to try out all the methods but once you figure it out, it is worth it.
Another thing to note is that when you want to say see a picture, navigate to the pictures menu on the PS3 and if you want to watch a video, navigate to the video section or else it will not appear. You also will see that you can access your entire hard drive – this is normal

That is in my opinion the best way to stream media to the PS3 from the computer, I noticed from recently upgrading to Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit that Windows 7 media player has appeared automatically on my PS3, which is also another way of doing it, without any software but just codecs you will have to download manually. To use Windows 7 built in streaming from media player, go to control panel —> Network and Internet —>Network and sharing center—–>on the left below control panel home select change advanced share settings——>select turn on file and printer sharing (this has to be on for PS3 Media server to work) ——->hit the back button arrow—–>under change your network settings, select choose homegroup or sharing options tick anything you want to share, make sure that stream my pictures, music, and videos to all devices on my home network is ticked—–>right below click on Choose media streaming options——>Make sure show devices on drop down menu is selected to all networks, select allow all then OK.

Another option to stream media to the Ps3 is TVersity http://tversity.com/ but I’m not a big fan of it since its application is a little heavy on CPU load, its more fancy looking, but as you know the more fancy the application is the more resources it takes to run and the streaming suffers especially if you are doing this on an older computer.

To stream, depending on what you want to stream, pictures no problem, but if video, and you have a single core PC, the video might skip and be choppy, so this will not work that well on slower PC’s. The way this works is the video is being played on the computer, and being sent to the PS3 through the ethernet cable, just like TV service, but you could use the copy function on the PS3 to copy the media to the PS3 hard drive and play it from there if it works.

So there you got it, now you can have your own digital library media center, there is no need to buy a media center, use the PS3 as a media server, and I even suggest to people who are in the market for bluray players to go ahead and buy a PS3 instead of a standalone Bluray player, even if you are not going to game, since the PS3 is a computer, and it can do amazing things, remember Web-TV? well the PS3 has a web browser, and pair it with a wireless keyboard and mouse (Ps3 has USB inputs), and you have a second computer to browse the Internet on!