What is the more capable console as HTPC (streaming)...Xbox360 or PS3

B

bigshooter

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 26, 2005
Messages
112
I'm trying to make up my mind on whether to buy a 360 or PS3 mainly for streaming content. I have Vista Ultimate so I could always go the 360 media center extender route, but it seems like a big mess to have to go to one blade for one type of media and another blade for another type of media. From what I've heard though, the Xbox does play the videos fairly well. I have a lot of 1080p WMV content, but the majority of the stuff I'm going to playback is in MKV format.

The PS3 is probably a bigger work in progress from what I've seen in regards to streaming, but the bluray player makes up for it. The fact that you can run Linux on it may make things easier and open up codec support to natively play mkv files.

Has anyone used either of these in a mainly HTPC fashion? I might game a little bit, but the console will mainly be for streaming media. I know I'll end up transcoding stuff on the fly just to watch it, but I'm using a 2.0ghz core2duo laptop right now and it can barely play back some of the 1080p x264 encoded mkv files that I have. I'm guessing a console which is meant to hook up to a hidef tv should be better than my laptop connected over vga and 2channel analog audio going to my receiver.

Anyways, any suggestions would be helpful. Please leave noise, cooling, games, and bluray out though. I am aware of all of those, I really just need experiences on how streaming and/or playing local content works. If anyone has used Yellow Dog Linux as an alternative to playing media through the PS3 software I would be interested in that too.

Thanks
 
but the majority of the stuff I'm going to playback is in MKV format.
Click to expand...
Unknowingly you just answered your own question: none of them.

The 360 doesn't play MKV files and, from what I understand, the PS3 is hit or miss with them.

Either way, you should be building an HTPC if you want HTPC features rather then hope and pray that some of your files will work with the half asses implementation that MS of Sony choose to allow you to play.
 
PS3

there is a very simple application that one can use, its called MKV2VOB

takes me an hour or less(sometimes 5 minutes) for ANY mkv to be transcoded to the playable ps3 format(and I am running on a fairly slow system). from there you can use a ps3 streaming app or run apache (xampp) and drop the file into a specific folder, then just use your ps3's internet browser to access the apache server which will redirect you to the folder that contains the playable video file

from there you can choice to save it or watch it via streaming feature in the new ps3 firmware

search xampp on the official playstation forum for more info about that route

I have all mine saved on my upgraded ps3 drive, but as I will get another hard drive for my media pc I will just stream them.
 
couldn't you install linux on the ps3 and use that as a media streamer with support for any and all codecs you want?
 
I remember reading that the linux install does not have complete access to the video hardware thus making it hard to play HD video.

disclaimer: don't have a ps3 with linux on it to test.
 
We use a 360 to stream divx videos from our server and other PC's.
 
I've had both for dedicated media playback and overall the pros and cons are as follows:

I kept the PS3 - and very pleased


XBOX 360

Pros

Nice GUI - using MyMovies and it looks superb

Cons

Not as good PQ as PS3 (even through HDMI)
VERY NOISEY (I had a Falcon chipset one too)


PS3

Pros

Quiet (40gb version)
Superb PQ

Cons

Lack of media formats it supports
 
What are you streaming? DVD's ?

The 360 works fine for this if you know the tricks.

1. Rip with HandBrake using the Xbox 360 profile. Use the default H.264 Video.
2. Rename the resultant .mp4 file to .AVI. Yeah, it works :)
3. Serve to XBox. I use WHS. I haven't tried MP11, but since all the software is free it's surely worth a try.
 
I have both the PS3 and the 360 in unmodified states.

The 360 is WAY better in interfacing with Windows Media Center. Like no comparison. It stands to reason that it would be though ---- since they are both made by microsoft. Getting the PS3 to work with WMC doesn't even seem to work. I can get it to see random shared folders, but working as an extender I can't get to work --- as it is supposed to. The 360 will also play more types of video files than the PS3 in my exp.

If your purpose is in fact working with Vista and Windows media center the 360 is FAR better.

I've actually found that neither works as well as a HTPC though.

Don't even think about running linux on the PS3, there's not enough RAM nor processor power to run it well. I've not tried it myself, but one of my friends who is a linux, unix and MAC fanboy as well as a PS3 fanboy says that he loaded it up, tried it for a while and concluded it is worthless and advised me not to try it. That's coming from a guy who HATEs windows and loves linux, unix, and MAC. (he also loves the PS3)....He's removed it from his console or is going to because it's no good. It's just a novelty feature.

I strongly recommend either the 360 or building your own HTPC.

You might even consider one of these HP slimlines

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1298300
 
problem is PQ is not that hot from a 360 for media playback ... so it depends what you want

faff and superb picture quality (PS3)

ease of use and average picture quality (360)

Mark.
 
^

That's subjective. The upconverting of a DVD is better on the PS3 than the 360, but I think if you compared streaming video there'd be no difference between the two consoles.

AVS forum, and google search can confirm that there are people that prefer both consoles "look better" status. Some like the 360 some like the PS3...there's no winner here and it'd be impossible to notice any kind of difference unless you had them side by side for pretty much anything - games and all.
 
well I had both (I had at one point 2 360s one for gaming and one for media playback(different rooms) and a PS3 ...

360 output looked rather soft and colours weren't too accurate

you are also limited on 360 on how to stream high quality video material to it ... to preserve 5.1 the only option really was .ms or whatever its called or WMV encoded - which you have to pay for the software for (if you want 5.1 etc)

vs PS3 which will playback VOB container H264 + AC3 audio - which for streaming is perfect :) do the upscaling on the PC before hand - and you have a superb output ... better than the 2K (pounds !) - DVD player I had before (Toshiba SD-9500)

YMMV
 
the big difference anyway is a 360 is far too noisey for un-obtrustive media playback in the domestic living room !

even if you have a decent 5.1 setup like I do ... you'll hear it whining away in quiet passages ! very annoying
 
It depends on what you use.

H.264 looks damned fine actually on my 50" DLP streamed from WHS.



Buckster said:
problem is PQ is not that hot from a 360 for media playback ... so it depends what you want

faff and superb picture quality (PS3)

ease of use and average picture quality (360)

Mark.
Click to expand...
 
can you get H264 and 5.1 surround (AC3) with a 360 ?

if you can I missed a trick ?!
 
Yep, the AC3 thing is a challange. I ripped The Bourne Ultimatum last night and used H.264 and AC3.

It will not play in the XBox at all.

However, and this is odd, when played in MP11 there is audio, but no VIDEO. I don't get that one.

I re-ripped in H.264 and 2-channel AAC and it plays fine on both (after renaming the resultant .mp4 to .AVI).

It sounds like there is dolby-surround info in the AAC, which makes sense as Dolby Surround can be transported via 2-channel stereo. That's how it was done for years before 5.1 came out.

Not sure if we can actually get 5.1 on the XBox, but I'm still working on it :)

I remain astonished at how damned good H.264 at a 2000k rate streamed over wireless to the XBox 360 looks.
 
h.264 does not work with any 5.1 on the xbox. If you want 5.1 AC3 then you need to use divx or xvid.
 
TechLarry said:
I don't think they look nearly as good do they?
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter if thats the only choice you have (another "alternative" is encoding them as WMV Pro files to retain the 5.1 data but you have to pay for the encoder to do that and WMV looks like garbage).
 
Wow, I didn't think this thread would get as many responses as it did...

I think I'm going to follow most people's advice (not necessarily from this thread) and build a real htpc in a small case. If I can get an Nvidia 8200 mobo and low power AMD proc, or wait for the intel version to be released then I can add a low power dual core proc to it. Between the fast dual core proc (do most decoders take full use of more than two?) and possible hardware acceleration for h.264 I think I should be ok.

Since the only current game that I want to play is halo3, and the only other games that I can think of that I would get would be street fighter 4 (multiplatform), GT5 and FFXIII (PS3 only) I might as well build something that can do what I want instead of spending a ton of time trying to encode media into a format that I can stream and then buy a ps3 later.

In the meantime I hope I can tweak my laptop enough to play 1080p H.264 content. Thanks for all the repsonses, but go ahead and keep responding... having a single console to play games and playback all media would be the best way to go. The HTPC route may be the best way to go, but I'm guessing I'm going to have issues to work out with that as well.
 
does the PS3 play DVD ripped to vobs?

that is the main drawback of the Xbox360 for me.. I have my entire DVD collection ripped to my HTPC and the fact that the Xbox360 won't "Extend" the dvd_library out of the VMC is a let down....

i'v heard of all sorts of work arounds (ENcode / rename etc.. etc..) but until that gets worked out i'd just stick with an HTPC, its so much easier just to stick with what works.

and then if you want to do some gaming, just get the Xbox360 wireless receiver for the PC and install games and use yhour HTPC as a console.. :)
 
H-street said:
does the PS3 play DVD ripped to vobs?

that is the main drawback of the Xbox360 for me.. I have my entire DVD collection ripped to my HTPC and the fact that the Xbox360 won't "Extend" the dvd_library out of the VMC is a let down....

i'v heard of all sorts of work arounds (ENcode / rename etc.. etc..) but until that gets worked out i'd just stick with an HTPC, its so much easier just to stick with what works.
Click to expand...
http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2008/04/24/1603393.aspx
and then if you want to do some gaming, just get the Xbox360 wireless receiver for the PC and install games and use yhour HTPC as a console.. :)
Click to expand...
Thats exactly what I do (with emulators) and I love the setup.
 
For the concert DVD's, I'm fine with H.264 and 2-channel AAC. I HATE music in 5.1 anyway.

I've yet to see a concert where the drummer is behind you on the left, and the bass player behind you on the right :)

And I don't give a crap about audience noise. The audience is a bunch of annoying little bastaads anyway LOL

CrimandEvil said:
It doesn't matter if thats the only choice you have (another "alternative" is encoding them as WMV Pro files to retain the 5.1 data but you have to pay for the encoder to do that and WMV looks like garbage).
Click to expand...
 
If you're going to be playing a lot of MKV content, then you need an HTPC. Sure, there are plenty of hacks to get things working on a 360 or PS3, but honestly I have found that it's just simply too annoying to have to convert everything. I have a very, very large collection of movies I've ripped to MKV and I definitely do not want to convert them to WMV with 5.1 or (if I had a PS3) have to remux them into any even more nonstandard formats. It's just- in my opinion- not worth the hassle. I built my HTPC (E8400, 4gb RAM, 8400gs, Asus P5E-VM HDMI) for around $600, which sure is a lot more than I could get a 360 or PS3 for, but it I can play everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) with pretty much no problems whatsoever, plus MythTV looks amazing on it.
 
mpeg4v3 said:
I built my HTPC (E8400, 4gb RAM, 8400gs, Asus P5E-VM HDMI) for around $600, which sure is a lot more than I could get a 360 or PS3 for, but it I can play everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) with pretty much no problems whatsoever, plus MythTV looks amazing on it.
Click to expand...

With the release of AMD's 780G chipset, you can build an HTPC for significantly less money and still be able to play every single format out there with little or no problems:
AMD Athlon64 X2 4400+ CPU - $61
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G mATX Motherboard - $90
Super Talent T800UX2GC5 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM - $38
Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $85
Samsung SH-203B 20X DVD±R SATA DVD Burner - $30
Antec NSK2480 mATX case with Antec Earthwatts 380W PSU - $89
-----
Total: $393 Plus tax and shipping

But yeah, DIY HTPC is the best route.
 
Yes, an AMD solution will definitely be cheaper and will be able to play back everything in Windows, especially assuming you use CoreAVC. I was using Linux, which means no CoreAVC and hacked in multithreaded support for h264 so I definitely needed a more powerful processor, but before this I had an old S939 X2 3800+ @ 2.4ghz and it handled 1080p with CoreAVC fine.
 
why does everyone hate the ps3?

it does divx and xvid no problem

mkv's like i stated ealier arent a problem, just changing the container doesnt take long, I just did No Country For Old Men 1080p 8GB to vob and it only took me 2 minutes

using xampp isnt hard either... at least i hope everyone here is able to understand it....
 
Ckamc said:
why does everyone hate the ps3?

it does divx and xvid no problem

mkv's like i stated ealier arent a problem, just changing the container doesnt take long, I just did No Country For Old Men 1080p 8GB to vob and it only took me 2 minutes

using xampp isnt hard either... at least i hope everyone here is able to understand it....
Click to expand...

No one is hating on it, don't be obtuse, but having to change the container for one movie is one thing. Having to change the container for several dozen is another issue entirely. Thats a pain in the ass for something that should just play the damn file in the first place without me having to muck around with it.

What everyone here is saying is to build an HTPC since that will give the OP exactly what he wants since both consoles are a huge letdown in the supported video codec area. Fanboy all you want but it's not going to change the fact that either console doesn't support MKVs.
 
SC385 said:
there is actually a way to use coreavc in linux. I don't know anything about it other than it exists but maybe you could make head or tails of it. http://code.google.com/p/coreavc-for-linux/
Click to expand...

yeah, I spent days, if not weeks, if not centuries trying to get that to work correctly and could never quite get it to compile successfully or register the codec successfully or what... so I ended up just patching mplayer with a multithreaded h264 decoding patch that has worked fine for me with no fuss.

Ckamc said:
why does everyone hate the ps3?

it does divx and xvid no problem

mkv's like i stated ealier arent a problem, just changing the container doesnt take long, I just did No Country For Old Men 1080p 8GB to vob and it only took me 2 minutes

using xampp isnt hard either... at least i hope everyone here is able to understand it....
Click to expand...

the thing, it may take two minutes for no country and for many other movies, but chances are he'll eventually run into movies that take longer or may not even work. the best part about a dedicated htpc is its convenience. you spend a bit setting it up once, then bam, it will work fine from then on. no need to convert anything or jump through any hoops- just click the file and it plays. it may just sound like laziness, but honestly there are times when I just want to lay down and watch something without any hassle attached.
 
What are you using to rip to MKV. What are the video and audio codecs?

mpeg4v3 said:
If you're going to be playing a lot of MKV content, then you need an HTPC. Sure, there are plenty of hacks to get things working on a 360 or PS3, but honestly I have found that it's just simply too annoying to have to convert everything. I have a very, very large collection of movies I've ripped to MKV and I definitely do not want to convert them to WMV with 5.1 or (if I had a PS3) have to remux them into any even more nonstandard formats. It's just- in my opinion- not worth the hassle. I built my HTPC (E8400, 4gb RAM, 8400gs, Asus P5E-VM HDMI) for around $600, which sure is a lot more than I could get a 360 or PS3 for, but it I can play everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) with pretty much no problems whatsoever, plus MythTV looks amazing on it.
Click to expand...
 
With the exception of Vista Premium/Ultimate (which is assumed), what other software would be required?

Danny Bui said:
With the release of AMD's 780G chipset, you can build an HTPC for significantly less money and still be able to play every single format out there with little or no problems:
AMD Athlon64 X2 4400+ CPU - $61
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G mATX Motherboard - $90
Super Talent T800UX2GC5 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM - $38
Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $85
Samsung SH-203B 20X DVD±R SATA DVD Burner - $30
Antec NSK2480 mATX case with Antec Earthwatts 380W PSU - $89
-----
Total: $393 Plus tax and shipping

But yeah, DIY HTPC is the best route.
Click to expand...
 
MKV files are a piece of cake using MKV2VOB. The newest versions allow you to utilize the x.264 codec and output them to a .mpg file. Quality looks splendid on my 50" Samsung Plasma.

I utilize Tversity right now for streaming my content. But there is also Twonkyvision and ORB even does well. You just need a fast enough PC if you want to do transcoding of the video on the fly. ie. MKV streaming with Tversity. You need a LOT of horsepower to do that. So it is simpler to convert it.
 
If you look at my sig you will see the 4 year old machine I am using to stream my video files and recorded tv. I stream to 2 360's, a ps3, and an original xbox from the same machine without a problem. Heck the pc isnt even hooked up to a monitor, it's shoved in a closet and I just access it remotely. Believe it or not the best software I have found to stream H.264 vids, WMV, and all the other 360 compatible formats is the ZUNE software, and I don't even own a zune! It works soooo much better than Windows Media connect and you can specify exactly which folders/files you want to share and what 360's may or may not have access to it. Heck my neighbor next door even has acess to them from his 360 wirelessly and he says it always works great. As far as PS3, I use TVersity and I am sharing the same exact files I have specified for 360 via the Zune software and so far they work great without conflicts. I can use TVersity for 360 as well, but with the Zune Software you have more control over your 360s IMHO. I'm running MCE2005 and use that to stream recorded tv to the 360's and the older xbox. The original xbox does not support vista, otherwise I would have upgraded by now. I simply use handbrake and use the PS3 setting for both (360&PS3) and I never ever have to mess with changing the extension to avi, I just leave it at mp4 and it always works great. The PS3 setting in the Handbrake software is of better picture quality and it works perfect with both of my 360's as well. I cannot tell a difference when streaming ripped dvd's to either the 360 or the ps3. They are all hooked up via hdmi so that might have something to do with it. If I had to choose one over the other I would go ps3 because you can store these ripped mp4 from handbrake directly to its hard drive and the bluray is a huuuuuuuuuuge plus, but I would definitely miss the Windows Media Center function in the xbox's.
 
Depends if you have Media Centre or not IMO and how many feautures in media centre u use... and have applied to your home entertainment use otherwise for me the PS3 everytime
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top