PS3mediaserver

[NLS]

Fair enough.

 

 

[Biggy2872]

I know you like it Tom, but I am sure you can see that if you add media capabilities to unRAID, they should be as generic as possible.

 

I can think of 20 million reasons why PS3 should be at the TOP of the list for media streaming support 

 

I politely disagree...

 

If you were to install a webpage based streamer (especially one that could export low quality flv version of videos, like orb, although orb isn't for linux) then you could stream to Wiis(47 million reasons, with Opera installed), network computers, iphones (via wifi).. and so much more.  Anything with a web browser.

 

Cheers,

Matt

[bubbaQ]

Lets not forget, that 20 million units sold != 20 million homes using them as media players.  That's kind of like saying there are 100 million fax broadcasters out there because 100 million copies of MS Windows shipped with fax broadcasting software.

 

Whereas, real media streamers (PCH, Tivx, etc) and HTPC do equate to 100% use as media players.

[NLS]

I rest my case.

The one time I decided not to argue Tom's decisions, others took over.

 

 

[limetech]

I rest my case.

 

Haha - just when I was starting to warm-up to you again... 

 

Of course 20MM sold doesn't mean 20MM being used as media servers - but that's one huge user base!  Also a big selling point of PS3 was (is) the Blu-ray player - in fact a good argument can be made that PS3 killed HD-DVD.  So there's a very large subset of the PS3 users who watch all their DVD and Blu-ray exclusively using PS3.  It wouldn't be that much of a leap for many of them to make use of a server.

 

Anyway my interest in PS3 is three fold:

1) sick and tired of tinkering with my own Vista-based HTPC - it's just tedious now and I admit, Vista beat me!  90% of it's use these days anyway is strictly watching video.

2) of course generating interest in unRAID with the PS3 community.

3) as a good 'test case' for developing a general plug-in architecture.

[bill_in_socal]

Tom - I would like to add my vote for any PS3 media server integration you might consider for unRAID. 

 

After some research, I recently bought a PS3 expressly for viewing Blu Ray and DVD's.  It is well reviewed as a Blu Ray player and is supported better than anything out there.  It works beautifully.

 

The guys at serverelements have released NASLite M2 which supports the PS3. I have not tried it yet, as I have no intention of running yet another box just to stream media. 

[SuperPerry]

Not to worry. Your priority are more important than streaming radios. How's the recovery going? I hope everything will be fine.

A spare took care of the first failure. The second was handled by copying the data out and rebuilding the array without it. My old true image backups can sit on the cache drive for now.

@Romir; Glad to hear everything works out for you and knowing that unRaid works when you need it the most.

 

For folks that wants "generic media server" TwonkyMedia is good and easy to install on unRaid and it works well.

 

PS3 users need PS3MS because of transcoding feature of it (PS3 limitation in streaming on some media containers). Blu-Ray player + media streamer (PS3MS) + game console + partime PC =PS3; for the price and size will beat any HTPC. I don't play games myself, I bought PS3 to play Blu-Ray and stream media, even after knowing its limitations.

 

I am glad to hear that Tom is showing an interest with PS3MS.

[SSD]

3) as a good 'test case' for developing a general plug-in architecture.

 

This comment seems to have gone unnoticed.  This sounds VERY positive IMO!!

[Biggy2872]

3) as a good 'test case' for developing a general plug-in architecture.

 

This comment seems to have gone unnoticed.  This sounds VERY positive IMO!!

 

It did not go unnoticed by me... although I refrained from talking about it in fear of jinxing it.  Now that you have broken the ice on that one  ...

 

I agree, this seems like a very possitive sign and I look forward to seeing what may come out of this (and other) test cases.

 

Cheers,

Matt

[NLS]

Of course it didn't go unnoticed.

 

But with Tom you know... this may well mean "some time in the 21st century".

 

 

[jimwhite]

Of course it didn't go unnoticed.

 

But with Tom you know... this may well mean "some time in the 21st century".

 

 

 

There's the jinx....  :'(

[NLS]

Ah thanks!

 

I don't believe in such things. If Tom is gonna make it next month, then he's gonna make it next month anyway.

If not, it's not that I jinxed it.

 

[PsyVision]

I am currently trying to get this going with an Xbox 360, think I just need to do the symlink/copying of mplayer/ffmpeg to the correct folder and it should work.

 

I couldn't get the packages for mencoder from the link posted earlier and so I hunted them down myself and have put them here:

 

http://www.delimits.net/richard/ps3ms/mencoder.zip

 

Along with the modified PMS.sh and PMS.conf:

 

http://www.delimits.net/richard/ps3ms/PMS.sh

http://www.delimits.net/richard/ps3ms/PMS.conf

 

I only have 27 packages + 2 for ffmpeg/mplayer whereas Romir had 34 so not sure if i'm missing something yet.

[stottle]

I saw a video about PlayTo from the Win7 beta thread at AVSforum, which looked interesting.  That got me to search for DLNA for unRAID, which led to this thread.  How does that compare to ps3mediaserver?

 

From the description, it looked like ps3mediaserver just exposes the directory structure, while playto (or WMP12/WinMCE, not sure) actually expose a query-interface to the files, including tags, which means the data needs to be processed.  My first thought is that since unRAID automatically runs code when files are added to the server (the parity check), it might be possible to automatically add meta-data to a dlna server running on unRAID.  Am I dreaming?  Does ps3mediaserver already do something like this?

[limetech]

I saw a video about PlayTo from the Win7 beta thread at AVSforum, which looked interesting.

Interesting that in order to watch the video, M$ wants you to download/install their "Silverlight" player - whatevertheheck that is... They just couldn't use Flash player which is already on 99.99% of any user's computer that is used to watch web video - how typically M$.

 

That got me to search for DLNA for unRAID, which led to this thread.  How does that compare to ps3mediaserver?

 

From the description, it looked like ps3mediaserver just exposes the directory structure, while playto (or WMP12/WinMCE, not sure) actually expose a query-interface to the files, including tags, which means the data needs to be processed.  My first thought is that since unRAID automatically runs code when files are added to the server (the parity check), it might be possible to automatically add meta-data to a dlna server running on unRAID.  Am I dreaming?  Does ps3mediaserver already do something like this?

 

Yes ps3ms exposes the directory structure, but also has a "media library" where this kind of tagging could be implemented (though currently it's very rudimentary).

 

I am thinking about how unRAID might improve upon this.  It wouldn't have anything to do with parity generation, but tags could be defined when files are created (and tags later modified).  What I'm thinking is you could have an actual directory called 'Movies', but then unRAID would automatically create some related pseudo-directories: 'Movies - Action', 'Movies - Drama', 'Movies - Last Added', 'Movies - Kid Safe', etc.  These would not be "real" directories that exist in the file systems, but generated and managed by the current User Share code.  (Like to work on this but people would rather have a prettier GUI first...  :'(

 

[btlupin]

Not necessarily a prettier gui (which is hard to do well, some of the examples are gaudy) but a bit more info - total free space, show GB instead of bytes, percentage instead of absolute values.

 

Roland

[stottle]

 

I am thinking about how unRAID might improve upon this.  It wouldn't have anything to do with parity generation, but tags could be defined when files are created (and tags later modified).  What I'm thinking is you could have an actual directory called 'Movies', but then unRAID would automatically create some related pseudo-directories: 'Movies - Action', 'Movies - Drama', 'Movies - Last Added', 'Movies - Kid Safe', etc.  These would not be "real" directories that exist in the file systems, but generated and managed by the current User Share code.  (Like to work on this but people would rather have a prettier GUI first...  :'(

 

I used to do some Meedio (www.meedios.com) development and I really like how they set up the metadata.  Since the program is so plugin based (there are hundreds of plugins dealing with all sorts of data), they made a pretty simple way to import different types of files into custom database tables.  Then creating the types of pseudo directories is a simple table query.  If the date added is included, 'Movies - Last Added' is easy, as are the genres and kids movies - but it is driven by the tags in the data, not defined in advance.  Along these lines, I was thinking a user could define directory and/or file extension filters to process added/updated files differently (mp3 vs. flac vs. dvd vs. jpg etc.).  All the software I've seen (Meedio and JRiver Media Center in particular) do this type of thing by re-running imports periodically or having "watched " directories, from the client side - and things would break if networked media wasn't available for some reason.  Having unRAID do this automatically, and on the server end, seems like it would be big for unRAID.

[SSD]

Like to work on this but people would rather have a prettier GUI first...  :'(

 

Ahem ... SOME people would rather have a prettier GUI first. 

 

(btlupin - have you looked at unmenu and the myMain plugin.  All of this info is available and configurable to create a personalized main view of your array.)

 

My (very unofficial) research is pointing to a strong preference on the part of users to have ONE 24x7 server running in their home. 

 

The ability of unRAID to support running things other than just the file server component may yield a better ROI than updating the GUI.

 

Tom, you sit in the big chair and get to make these decisions.  ;D

[NAS]

Sounds like a big vote/poll could yield some intersting results if worded corectly

[agw]

I just hope we can differentiate 'pretty' from 'functional'.  I've been actively watching all of this GUI talk recently because I am one of the 'rookies' that would love to see the core unRaid GUI get a facelift.  And I am very encouraged by all of the recent activity in this regard. 

 

But my interest has little to do with the look / feel of the interface.  In fact, I like the Google-esque simplicity of what we have - I just think it's limited in functionality and user-friendliness.  I do use unmenu and myMain, and those have been a big improvement over the stock interface in my opinion.  They just provide a more complete picture of what's going on with the system and allow simpletons like myself an easier way of keeping an eye on things.  But I considered it a big win on my part getting those two working - it took a lot of trolling through the forums to get to the point where I was confident enough that I could do it without incident.  And I consider myself fairly computer savvy (in Windows anyway). 

 

The end game for the unRaid GUI should be to free itself from the command line, go script editing, etc . . . except in the most sever troubleshooting / help modes when the forum Heros and Lime support can instruct.  Those are just intimidating environments for the average user that is comfortable in a point-and-click environment. 

 

When I can click my way around, access a Help menu, etc and truly manage my system, addons, additional functionality, etc - without typing arcane linux commands at the command prompt or editing the go script . . . then my unRaid vs WHS decision will become much simpler.  And I would expect to finally be able to recommend unRaid to friends and relatives that are compiling equally large piles of digital photos, videos, music, etc.  Sometimes I wonder if Tom really appreciates how close he is to hitting a home run. 

 

So I hope that we don't get hung up on 'pretty'.  As I'm sure you can remember from high school - pretty is great for a little while, but if it eventually runs out of substance then it just become time to move on . . .

[limetech]

Please let's try and stay on topic, no more GUI discussion in this thread please (mea culpa since I brought it up - sorry).

[DigitalDivide]

I haven't been around in a long time and finally come back to see this thread.  Awsome!  I have to say I am getting sick and tired of my HTPC and Meedio.  I have about 500 full DVD movies on my Unraid server.  All my movies are in video_ts/vob format and so I have no choice buy to keep my HTPC.  I would love to get rid of it.  I hope this would work in the format my movies are currently in so that I don't have to redo all my movies into another format.  I was even looking into getting Popcorn Hour.  I would love to get the PS3mediaserver working. 

[magistratee]

Hey all.  I just found this and wanted to try it out.  I got it working and it streamed/transcoded nicely for anything except 1080p videos which may be due to the fact that I only have a Celeron 430 and 1GB of RAM.  Of course the FF and RW functions don't work well because it is a stream and for some reason the PMS gets killed.  I am playing with the PMS.conf file through the windows version and such for lower settings or such.

 

My question is when I install this on telnet:

Install

cd /boot/custom/usr/share/packages
installpkg jre-6u11-i586-1.tgz
cd /boot/custom/usr/share/packages/mencoder
installpkg *.tgz
cd /boot/custom/usr/share/packages/pms
./PMS.sh

 

I can't close my telnet or else the server will close.  Is there a way I can run this so that I don't need to have my telnet open in order to use this?  In other words can I run this in the background.

 

 

[Romir]

As suggested by Joe. L try:

echo "./PMS.sh" | at now + 1 minute

 

I haven't rebooted with it yet, but it does work through telnet and it doesn't take over the screen.

 

I'm going to look into how an underclocked 1.8ghz AMD 5050e holds up, and look into compiling mencoder with multi-threading and no gui.

 

I only tested one file at 1080p, but my 1.86ghz 2mb e6300 transcoded it fine at 'best' with over a 100mbps bit rate. Since it wasn't the extra 60mhz it must have been the larger cache or the gigabytes of system memory.

[stottle]

Anyone know what the security risks for UPnP are?  Looking at the wiki, it says that UPnP isn't very secure.  I imagine the threat might be pretty minimal for a wired network, but what about a wireless one?  Are there newer versions that require authentication, or do they all allow any device to join?

 

Brett