Streaming Video on Console
The PlayStation 3 comes with a Blu-ray player, a Web browser, a music player, a photo viewer, and plenty of other features that remind us that it's no mere PlayStation 2. The Xbox 360, sans Blu-ray and Web browsing, has fewer multimedia options, but players seem to get by with Netflix streaming and Xbox Live online features. However, for all their robustness, the consoles are rather unrefined when it comes to video support. The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have their quirks when it comes to playing various video codecs and container files. Both consoles can play videos, but not all video files are compatible out of the box. Videos that play easily on the PC or Mac go unsupported on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It's also not as easy to find, download, and install a codec on the console as it is on the PC. New codecs might come bundled with new firmware updates or as downloadable content, but they don't come often enough to count as reliable support.
Developers recognized this video compatibility problem and created programs such as TVersity, XBMC, PS3 Media Server, and many more free and not-so-free programs to help console owners play videos on their systems. All of these programs are able to transcode video on the fly so, at least in theory, you won't have any problems with video compatibility. PS3 Media Server is the best pure video player of the bunch, whereas the others offer some unique features worth exploring. TVersity, a Windows-based program, lets users stream video content to just about any device, anywhere, and has a lot of preloaded video streams from the Internet that make it easy for novices to get started. XBMC acts more as a dedicated media viewer, with its own onscreen graphical user interface, and can stream video content as well. All of these programs require a computer and a home network to run. You might want to consider upgrading your processor if you want to transcode high-definition videos.
TVersity
Streams It'll go anywhere Transcoding
TVersity lets you take your videos and streams with you anywhere you can access the Internet, but we were content to find out how well it works in the confines of a home network for our console testing. The program will easily feed consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, other PCs, network-enabled video devices such as Roku boxes, DirecTV receivers, the Sony PSP, and even the iPhone. It even recognizes which devices are hooked up and scales the video content up or down according to the device being used. In addition to serving files from your hard drive, TVersity can port in streams from YouTube, NPR, and many other Web sites. A single, moderately powerful PC can feed multiple devices across the home simultaneously. Computer horsepower comes into play when you have to transcode large, high-quality files quickly.
Provided that you have a console and a Windows-based PC, TVersity makes streaming video dead simple. It was easy to install and configure on our test PC. We pointed the program at our video, music, and pictures folders, and then we selected a few online video streams that the TVersity interface had preloaded. The streams featured new content from various Web sites, including HD feeds and old TV shows such as MacGyver and the original Star Trek. Our PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 both found their new networked friend without any extra effort. On the PlayStation 3, the TVersity server icon appeared in all of the media-related crossbar selections, including videos, music, and photos. We didn't encounter any problems when we had our PS3 connected to our network with a wired cable, but switching to Wi-Fi brought about a 7351 DLNA error that we safely ignored to no ill effect. We saw similar kinds of errors from time to time, but rebooting the console or simply pressing "next" seemed to remedy the issue. The Xbox 360 identified our TVersity server just as quickly as the PS3 and had zero hiccups connecting to it.
PS3's Video Layout Xbox 360's Video Layout MacGyver! PS3 TVersity Xbox 360 TVersity
Nearly all of the video files that we threw at the PS3 worked with TVersity, and the Xbox 360 worked just as well after downloading a codec pack through Xbox Live. The program automatically transcoded files that normally wouldn't function on either of the consoles, turning them into viewable videos. The vast majority of content worked, although we encountered issues with high-bit-rate MKV files. You will have to tweak the TVersity settings to solve some rare video-incompatibility problems, so expect to spend some time on Google and in the TVersity settings menu to get everything running just right. Both consoles had issues with fast-forwarding and rewinding on a few files, but we had great success with the PS3's scene-search feature on most videos. High-definition feeds and videos looked great, although they didn't work well via 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. It's really more of a wireless bandwidth issue than any fault of the program. The videos played perfectly after we switched to a wired network.
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