Hi folks! I have written a howto for PMS (Java PS3 Media Server) in German language some weeks ago. Obviously there has nobody written an English Howto yet because I got a lot of traffic from translate.google.com since doing this forum entry. Well, I tried to read the google online translation German to English and almost had to throw up. It seems that there’s a lot of interest for this topic, so I try to translate my German PMS Howto as a real life babelfish by myself.
O.k. so let’s start the ultimate complete idiots guide to PMS 
First of all you have to know that there are a lot of streaming servers available which can be used to communicate with a Playstation 3. Here is a small selection: Windows Media Player, Twonky Media, TVersity and MediaTomb.Windows Media Player works well out of the box but isn’t able to transcode or remux and has poor performance at a huge media database. Twonky media is not for free, so it was no choice for me. Twonky media has its advantage in supporting a lot of different streaming clients, even NAS systems. TVersity is an average media server and has some advantages in streaming internet content. But this advanced feature isn’t included in the free version. Mediatomb is often used on open source operating and embedded systems. You can customize it extremely if you’re a experienced shellscript guru. So it’s not a good choice for beginners.
Java PS3 Media Server, often called PS3 Media server or PMS, is available for Windows, Linux and MacOsX. A prerequisite is the installation of Java Runtime Environment (JRE) because PMS is programmed in Java. Some features require installation of additional software.
PMS is extremely optimized for use with Playstation 3. But you can also use XBOX360 or Popcorn Hour as streaming clients. PMS most stunning feature is transcoding and muxing.
transcoding, muxing?!?
PS3 supports different audio and video codecs and container formats, depending on installed firmware version. Doing an upgrade to the latest version of system software is an advantage for playing multimedia files.
PS3 supported formats: audio, video, photos (links to Sony)
When you try to play a multimedia file on your PS3 and the format is not supported you get a “data corrupted” message. PMS is able to help in this case. PMS is able to change the container format online if it’s not supported (e.g. mkv). PMS extracts the audio and video stream and puts it into a supported m2ts-container. This is called muxing. If the video codec isn’t supported PMS can convert the video stream to PS3 compatible mpg2. This procedure costs a lot of CPU power and is called transcoding. These technologies make it possible that PMS can stream almost every multimedia file to PS3.
Some guys use mkv2vob and connect usb hard drives with converted files to PS3. This is the stone age way of playing multimedia files on PS3. With PMS there is no need for converting files anymore. If it’s necessary PMS does this for you – online…
There’s also a possibility to stream web content like Youtube and Picasa. That’s experimental and not the main focus of the developers at the moment.
Links to official PMS sites:
P.S.
chapter 2 coming soon…
Hi,
I have a question in regards to this bit:
“Some guys use mkv2vob and connect usb hard drives with converted files to PS3. This is the stone age way of playing multimedia files on PS3. With PMS there is no need for converting files anymore. If it’s necessary PMS does this for you – online…”
I wish to play mkv format on my ps3 via streaming, currently using windows media centre so will be using ps3mediaserver…. but it says if required PMS converts for you online? Does this mean it connects via internet to convert so using more bandwidth or does this occur on the local computer and then streams to ps3 in compatible format?
@Drew
If a mkv video contains a PS3 compatible audio and video codec PMS changes the container from mkv to m2ts on the fly. This is done because mkv container format isn’t compatible with PS3, but m2ts is… This is done by using an engine called tsmuxer.
If a mkv video contains a non compatible audio and video codec PMS converts the codecs to compatble ones (e.g. MPEG2/AC3) and also changes the container from mkv to m2ts on the fly. This is done by using an engine called mencoder.
All these actions are done on your PC and don’t require Internet access. Converting to MPG2 takes more network bandwith because mkv videos usually use h264 video codec with higher compression rate.
I have Windows XP and my WiFi is connected to my PS3.
When I start PMS, it says no renderers were found and always comes up with the red X.
@David
http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3507&p=32731#p34933