Update: Go here for instructions on how to stream MP4 and M4V video files to the Playstation 3 from Windows Vista and XP.
Update 2: We have tested Media Streaming capabilities with Windows 7. Streaming just got a lot easier!
When I woke up this morning, I spotted a PR release from Sony regarding their upcoming 1.8 firmware update. The thing that stood out about this update was that it would allow streaming media to a PSP over the internet. I wrote about that immediately, but until the next firmware arrives for the PSP, we won’t be able to check it out.
The 1.8 firmware arrived for me about an hour ago (being Thursday afternoon in Hong Kong, I guess they are rolling the updates based on local time). I left the firmware to install, and went back to work on some other things.
Then this popped up:

Huh? A new media device on my network? Could it be that the PS3’s new support for DLNA works in Vista too?
I ran over to my PS3, and sure enough, there it was. I have Vista set to share my media to the network, so I can watch and listen to it on my HTPC and XBOX 360. Well it turns out I have another choice, and the PS3 supports streaming media from Windows Vista now! A bit of digging around, and I found that Vista supports DLNA after all… I guess I wouldn’t have been shocked had I known this, because it was mentioned in the PR yesterday. Oh well…
If you’re curious, here is what the streaming media interface looks like on the PS3. The more I use the XMB interface, the more I like it. It definitely feels snappier than the clunky XBOX 360 Dashboard. The PS3 uses 175 watts while playing music.
Oh, one thing I have to mention: The Playstation 3 does NOT play lossless WMA files. That screws it up for me, as I have me entire music library backed up in lossless WMA. Hopefully a future update will remedy this.

It even has the Windows logo!

You can list your media by artist, album, composer, etc

This is what it looks like when you play a song

You can even copy media over to the PS3 hard drive

Vista will not run on the PS3.
Thanks Carl – What about XPpro – or no windows OS on PS3 ?
[...] I am downloading the 1.82 firmware – I’ll update this once I know the details of this release. Hopefully it’s as fun as the last one! [...]
Hey guys sup?
My PS3 works fine and eveything and i have WMP11 but when i go to my ps3 i can see all the songs but for some reason they wont play…XD
if anyone knows what to do msg or email me at [email protected]
Thx!
Vista and XP are never likely to run on the PS3 as it does not run on an x86 architecture. You should try and embrace the linux, its not ready yet IMHO but its deffinately the future
Well, the running order issue looks to be resolved by update 1.90, thankfully.
I still have to play my songs via the ‘playlists’ option, but at least they are in the correct order now!
do you think if we installed windows as an operating system on the ps3 that it would be more streaming friendly when it comes to video, has anyone installed any other operating systems yet?
NEED HELP! i want to stream movies from my computer to my ps3, it’s wireless and i have no problems streaming music or mpeg-2s, i read the ps3 can play mp4’s also and i’ve converted some avi’s to mp4 and it still doesnt recognize the stream, does anyone know what to do and/or have an option for a program to convert the videos to the right video type? avi’s dont work either, and the mp4s aren’t showing up, thanks!
Ok guys – someone will know the answer to this.
I was thinking of getting a wifi hard drive, then thought why not use the PS3.
So my question is this, can a external usb2 hard drive be attached to the PS3 with Media on eg Music vids etc which can then be streamed to PC or downloaded to from the PC over Wifi. Making the PS£ the media center and a backup utility?
Sorry if its a stupid question but it seems most people are using the PC as a media center & streaming to the PS3
Cheers
John
VLC
Can someone please post a guide how to stream a movie with VLC to the ps3 please? I tried million different ways, looked on the net and can’t make it work.
Thank you in advance.
Why will my ps3 only recognise my music if there are less than 10000 songs in the wmp 11 watch folder?!
I can get pics and music to stream to my PS3…why can’t I get video. I’ve tried to stream mpeg-4 video files as well as WMV files to. I have Vista and Windows MP11???
every body try nero media server excellent interface easy to set up it will even convert onfly movies as streaming. im using nero 7 ultra just updated and watching films converted to mpeg2 from dvi
[...] to see the PS2 keep Sony going while the PS3 sits on life support as they add more and more cool features and price drops. All that stuff is great, but WE NEED [...]
[...] first, it did not support DLNA, but we broke the story when DLNA-supporting firmware was released, allowing multimedia to be streamed from Vista to the Playstation 3. All the major codecs are supported by Playstation 3; MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Motion JPEG (commonly found [...]
ive been looking around the net about this whole media server deal with the ps3 and i have windows vista followed some of the steps up to the point that in the media sharing window the ps3 does not show up as an unknown device or at all for that matter would it be because its plugged into a router and how on earth would i go about getting this to work?
I have a ps3 and can not for the life of me get the ps3 to see the windows server. I have vista operating system. I have followed the steps as described. When i set it up on my laptop using xp it works fine. I think it has somthing to do with vistas permissions. Any help would be great.. Thanks!!!
well it turns out odly if the interent is down that is going into the router the server shows up but soon as the internet is on it dispeares from the ps3 any ideas?
I just bought PS3 and I have a wireless network. I cannot find my media server both on my pc and PS3. I tried Wmp 11 and nero media home but both dont work.
Please someone help!!!!
Thanks
My ps3 plays games and videos fine everythings fine except one thiung
There are these little white lines starting at the bottom and moving up then repeating its really annoying how do i solve it?
Ray
I have mine set up and just set up one for my father this weekend…be sre to go into WMP 11 and tell it to share the library…you go under wmp 11 , library, then media sharing, allow it to share wiht your sony ps3 device which should show up…hope this helps…
Does anyone have a definitive setup procedure yet?
I have a PS3, and a desktop running Vista Ultimate. Both machines are connected wirelessly at present. I also have a USB2 external drive connected to the Vista desktop.
1. I’ve allowed the PS3, via Vista, to share media with the computer.
2. I’ve set sharing of all media on the Vista machine.
3. I can see every media folder on the desktop (including the ext drive), but I always get an error that I can’t see any tracks within them, as Aethelstan did. However for me it doesn’t matter if it’s music, photos, or videos.
4. My friend has the whole setup working perfectly, except his machine runs 2003 Server and Nero MediaHome.
My guess is that Vista doesn’t have read permissions set on the files by default, just the folders. But I’ve tried adjusting the NTFS disk permissions on Vista and it makes no difference. Has anyone else solved this problem?
Spud
Spud:
I long ago gave up worrying about viewing music files via the straight ‘folders’ option.
Just create playlists for all your CDs in WMP, and then use the ‘playlists’ item from the music menu.
My wish now is that the PS3 would play files from ITunes, since I’ve got a nice new iPod and don’t use WMP anymore!!
wmp11 and nero are sharing the files to ps3 but as soon as I try to play anything my pc(Dell optiplex 270) shuts down and I get a blue screen error. Please help, very frustrated……Thanks in advance, eddie.
My ps3 and wmp11 do not see each other. However my wmp11 will detect other devices in my apartment building and my ps3 will detect other WMP11 servers. I can even ping the two, but they won’t see each other. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated because it is driving me MAD. I am using XP and both are using wireless connections to the internet. Thanks
any way to play games while listening to the playlists made or any music besides the games soundtrack????
Any ideas if Sony will have a TV Show/Movie download service a la XBOX Live/Apple TV?
Seems like this is the biggest component that it’s missing…and it’s making me think about buying an XBOX 360.
Does streaming music mean coming from subscription services like Zune or is it only for actual songs downloaded to your hard drive?
All you guys with the WMP11 issues, stuff microsoft! use nero media server, worked instantly and is extremely good, i have yet to find out if it will stream 5.1 audio
I get a Aigo iSonic MP3 sunglasses, but I don’t know how to transform music on it… (i know with the firmware, but I don+t know which and where can I get it) so.. if who know that… please send me a answer on my email ( [email protected] )
thank you :)
can any 1 help i got my ps3 hooked up to my pc and can find every thing wirelessly but every time i go to play 1 of the files weither it be music or videos i get a media server error “80710028″ yet i can view pics……any ideas??
yeah, check your router firewall leebaz!
Since everyone is so nice in providing help I thought I would pass along a little piece of info for the Itunes folks. (Itunes play lists to PS3) Keep reading past my Xbox ramble
I just bought a Xbox (which will be going back shortly). I was disappointed that they will not be adding a blue ray player and that u have to have a wmc pc in order to play much of the video content. Long story short … it’s going back in less that 30 days.
What I did learn from my Xbox experiance is you can get Itunes playlists to import into WMP via and application called “Music Bridge”. It will do much more than import playlists but thats all I wanted it to do and it worked great + free.
Since many of you have managed to get the PS3 to talk to WMP11 you should be able to get the Itunes play lists to work as well!
I hope this helps! Maybe some one can help me out if I run into issues when I buy my PS3.
http://www.download.com/MusicBridge/3000-2141_4-10530687.html
Most modern PCs especially those that run vista already have MCE… except they dont call it that any more. It is just integrated into the experience. Too bad you are returning your 360 as most of the good games will be coming for that system and not the ps3..
360 was designed to stream content over a network and does a much better job than the ps3. IMHO.
Not that I want to turn this into a console bashing forum, but I do think it’s interesting from the perspective of people who want the PS3 / Xbox for entertainment and media extender capabilities. Since I’ve only had the Xbox to date I can’t comment on how good (or bad) the PS3 is in this regard.
A few Items I didn’t like about the Xbox.
- No Blue Ray, and no plans to add it.
- SD movies look bad on the Xbox. Once they figured out HDDVD was doomed they should have made the DVD drive at least up-converting.
- Seems to have issues with the sound on some 5.1 movies.
- Loud! Man that disk drive and fan are annoying.
- Can’t run xbox MC without a WMC PC. This just seemed like a ploy to get everyone to upgrade to Vista.
- Doesn’t play many of the video formats (.vob, avi, divx, etc …)
- Number of on-line HD movies downloads is limited to about 5 newer releases (CAN site).
- Can’t turn off visualizations (this was just plain dumb).
- No internet browser.
Considering it was Microsoft who developed this system I thought it would be better at many of these items. Like I said I am more interested in the media extender capabilities so I can’t really comment on game play.
The two things Xbox did very well:
1. The sound on my mp3 collection sounded excellent through the digital connection.
2. It connects to my computer without a hitch.
I have my hopes pinned on the PS3 to make up the difference, even though I know the PS3 does do a number of the above items either. I’m just hoping I don’t have the PC connection issues many have expressed on this thread.
Although I agree with most of your comments about the media capabilities of the 360, lets not forget the fact that they have had streaming over the network since day one, a feature that Sony recently implemented. Also, the streaming is not as glitch free as on the 360.
I do however admit that the 360 is LOUD compared to the ps3.
In my experience, the PS3 streams more reliably than the 360. But I guess it depends on what type of files you’re using.
Has anyone had any luck having the WMP playlists work on the PS3?
I have managed to connect my PS3 to WMP (Works perfectly fine). PS3 doesn’t see the WMP Playlists, sees all the music just no playlist. Has anyone managed to get this to work?
Sorry I blew it!
Playlist were there the whole time. I was just a little too impatient with the connection as it took a little longer than I expected to load.
Anyone who wants to have Itunes play list work on ps3 use Music Bridge. This will have no affect on protected files.
I am fast becoming a PS3 fanboy. I had my doubts, but I’m fast seeing the light. They just need a few extra file types supported for video and this will be a kick ass media extender.
Do they have to be regular MP3s or can they be of the subscription variety? You know, songs downloaded off Napster?
As long as they are free of DRM limitations, they’ll play.
i bought a sony viao laptop which has its sound card disabled i am a web designer and want to create music and stream it online though my website but as i have vista i am having problems doing this i donl;t know wheather it is sony or vista that is not letting me use the mixer device on my sound card can anyone help me please
thanks
Melissa
how can i get photos on my ps3???
how can i get photos on my playstation 3??
i have a ps3 and a vista notebook, how do i transfer videos, i can do pictures and music but not videos?
I have now downloaded Nero MediaHome 4 and it works great even for iTunes playlists, I did have problems to begin with though, the PS3 kept showing an error message every few minutes saying DLNA Protocol error 2110 but I solved it by changing the router settings under LAN> Advanced> and enabling UPnP and Multicast Streams
I tried and tried to get WMP11 with Vista Business to stream to PS3. Worked sometimes, then not at all.
Downloaded and installed Tversity…wow! what a difference. I can see all my pictures, listen to all my music (except for protected WMA files from Rhapsody) and watch my SD videos. Can’t watch HD video files probably because the file size is so large that the wireless network I have can’t keep up with the streaming video file.
Otherwise, Tversity is perfect!
[...] users, that means they can stream video from Windows Media Player 11. You can read a bit more Windows streaming to Playstation 3 on one of our previous [...]
Hi there I just bought a new laptop and thought this would be a good time to build up a collection of films to watch and (HOPEFULLY) be able to stream to the ps3…
Although on certain films the video jumps and pauses, like when a utube video hasn’t loaded properly can anybody help??? I have a sky Sagem f@st router…
Does anybody know what my best options are to have seamless streaming??
Please please get back to me, its soooo frustrating
I know that the thread is old, AND most people use PS3 Media Server now… but I’ve written a small tool that can get you to create playlists (Specifically random playback) for your PS3 connected to Windows Media Server.
I am looking for more people to test it out before I publicly release it. Send me an e-mail if you are interested.
Icephoenix231
at
yahoo
you know the rest.