One media streaming dilemma that still faces some Xbox 360 and PS3 users is the ability to stream content from another device, such as a desktop or laptop computer. If you have home movies, pictures or photos, a collection of MP3s, or other content that you have downloaded to your computer, it is a pain to have to copy that content to your game console. For Windows users, they can connect their Xbox 360 to their Windows computers without much difficulty. For the rest of us, there are third-party tools. One in particular that I have been using lately is PS3 Media Server.

PS3 Media Server

Despite the name, PS3 Media Server can actually stream to a number of UPnP-capable devices, including the Xbox 360, Android phones and tablets, XBMC, iPad, and Sony Bravia Internet TVs. It is also cross-platform and free and open source, with builds available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It is written in Java and can stream supported content formats directly or even transcode incompatible content before streaming.

Installation and Setup

The Windows and Mac versions comes with .exe and .dmg files respectively. The installation process should be familiar to you. For Linux, there are no distribution-specific packages, so you will need to download the .tgz file and extract the contents. You can copy the extracted files wherever you want and then just execute the PMS.sh file. As it is platform-independent, you might be able to get it to work with other Unix-like OSes, such as FreeBSD, as long as Java is installed and working.

After startup, the first screen will show you a detection process where PMS will look for a PlayStation 3 on your network. If it finds one, it will show a picture of one at the top and immediately make itself available to it. Regardless, it will continue searching for additional devices. If it finds an Xbox 360, it will display a picture of one on the bottom half of the window.

Your content will now be ready to stream, but you still need to tell PMS where the content is. To do this, click the “Navigation/Share Settings” tab. At the bottom is a section called “Shared folders”. Click the folder icon with the big plus emblem and select the folders you want to add to your streaming library. Once you have selected the folders you want, you will notice that the top middle button labeled “Restart HTTP Server” has become available. Click it to refresh your new shares.

There are many other features you can configure, such as image thumbnails, network features, and transcoding settings. To support transcoding, you will need to make sure you have Mplayer/MEncoder and/or FFMPEG installed. If you intend to stream HD movies while transcoding them, you will need a powerful computer. My laptop was unable to do it without stuttering through it. Without transcoding, everything streams fine.

At your game console, you should go through the normal process of attaching media streamers and playing content. On the Xbox 360 for example, it will detect your PS3 Media Server and play content from it as if it were a Windows machine. If you have trouble connecting, always go back and check the “Status” tab on PMS, and if necessary, restart it. You should now be able to enjoy your computer’s content from your living room anytime you want it.

PS3 Media Server

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Fortunately, I can run Boxee from any computer, but rather than buying a dedicated box just for that, I can use my Eee PC, which has HDMI output. Many laptop manufacturers are adding HDMI out connectors to their devices specifically for this purpose, so that customers can display their content on big screen televisions.

If you happen to be one of those people and have chosen Linux for your laptop or computer with HDMI out, this brief tutorial should help you get video and sound working.

Initial Preparation

Generally speaking, if your computer or laptop has an HDMI connector, it will play fullscreen HD videos. All you need to do is configure Linux to use it. From my experience, current versions of most Linux distributions will treat an HDMI output just like a VGA out, needing very little configuration. It should auto-detect your external screen, even if it does not immediately display anything. You can use a tool like XRandR, Disper, or nvidia-settings to easily setup the resolution settings you want.

For example, your XRandR or Disper string may look like this:

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --mode 1280x720 --right-of DVI-0

or

disper -S -r 1280x720

Audio Setup

HDMI video was the easy part. Unfortunately, various Linux audio systems view an HDMI audio output in different ways. If you are using Ubuntu or another distribution that uses Pulseaudio, you should use the Pulseaudio Volume Control program. To use it:

1. Press Alt+F2, type “pavucontrol”, and press Enter

2. Once the control window opens, click on the “Configuration” tab

By default, the Profile will be something like “Analog Stereo Duplex”. “Analog” refers to your device’s normal speakers.

3. Click the drop-down menu

4. Select “Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output” from the list.

Now all audio will be routed through the TV’s speakers.

In KDE, any players that use Phonon, such as Dragon Player or Amarok, use KDE’s configuration settings, and you can select the HDMI output from there as well. To do this:

1. Open System Settings

2. Click on “Multimedia”

3. Click the “Phonon” side tab

4. For Music, Video, and any other output you want, select “Internal Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI)” and click the “Prefer” button until HDMI is at the top.

No Pulseaudio or Phonon

If you only need to turn on HDMI audio for a particular application, such as XBMC, simply configure the individual application to use the HDMI output.

For other applications that do not have built-in digital playback support, you will need to configure Alsa manually. Boxee, for example, should work just like XBMC, but there appears to be a bug that prevents digital output. The first thing you need to do is find out which device number your HDMI out is using. From a terminal, type:

aplay -L

Look for devices with “hw” in front, and one of them should include HDMI that looks similar to this:

hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3
HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI

As you can see in this example, my audio card is “NVidia”, and the device number is “3″. Assuming you only have one card, the card number will be 0.

Next, create a text file in your home directory called “asoundrc-hdmi”, and include the following (replacing “hw:0,3″ with your actual device number):

pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
ipc_key_add_uid false
ipc_perm 0660
slave{
pcm "hw:0,3"
rate 48000
channels 2
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_time 0
buffer_size 4096
}
}
 
pcm. !default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

Save the file. If you already have a default .asoundrc file, you should back it up and copy the asoundrc-hdmi to .asoundrc

mv .asoundrc asoundrc-backup
cp asoundrc-hdmi .asoundrc

If you want to switch to this setting every time your media program starts, you could create a script:

#!/bin/bash
mv /home/user/asoundrc-hdmi /home/user/.asoundrc
sleep 3
/opt/boxee/Boxee&
wait
mv /home/user/.asoundrc /home/user/asoundrc-hdmi

HD Playback

If you have a low-powered device (i.e. Atom Dual Core 330 processor and Nvidia ION graphics) that is advertised as supporting HD playback but does not seem to play HD videos well, you may need to configure VDPAU support. Using your package manager, install the “libvdpau1″package. Then, in your video player, select vdpau output rather than “xv”. This should give you hardware accelerated HD video support. In Boxee, go to “Settings -> Media -> Advanced” and check “Enable hardware assisted decoding when possible”. The default “Render method” should be VDPAU.

For Adobe Flash, you can download the new Flash player 10.2 Beta which supports hardware accelerated playback. Now all of your HDMI video and audio should run smoothly, and you did not have to purchase a media center box to get it.

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Getting Boxee

The Boxee website provides Ubuntu packages from their download site, so that’s what we’ll be using for this guide. It’s a .deb file, which can be installed with

sudo dpkg -i boxee-filename.deb  #replace with the proper file name

or simply double clicking the deb file.

Note: While waiting for Boxee to download, you’ll be asked to do a (free) registration at the Boxee website. You’ll need that login when Boxee loads up for the first time.

It’s likely you’ll encounter a hitch in the install, as the average Ubuntu installation does not contain some of the things that Boxee needs. You can install them with your package manager of choice. Aptitude users can go with:

sudo aptitude install libcurl4-openssl-dev libglew1.5 liblzo2-2 libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-gfx1.2-4 python2.4 python-sqlite libfaad-dev libmad0 libtre4 libxmlrpc-c3 libfaac0 xsel libenca0 libmms0

Once installed, you can find it in Gnome’s menu under Sound & Video or run it manually with the command

/opt/boxee/run-boxee-desktop

Controls

The first thing you’ll want to know about is control. Since Boxee is intended to work on a set top box as well as your home PC, the controls have to be very simple to be remote-friendly. With a mouse, you can select items with the normal left click, but right-click is treated as a Back button. If you intend to back out of whatever area you’re in, you just right click a few times.

The keyboard shortcuts, as stated by Boxee, are:

• Arrow keys - Navigate menus
• Enter - Select item
• Win+F - Toggle fullscreen/windowed mode
• “S” - Exit
• Esc or Backspace – Cancel/Go back
• “H” - Retirn to home screen

Streaming Video

If you choose TV Shows from the Home screen, you’ll be taken to the TV section, which at first may not show much at first. You’ll see a yellow tab on the left, and if you mouse over it, you’ll be given more options. Choose TV Show Library and you’ll get a listing of all kinds of shows available on demand.

Adding Local Media

Chances are, you’ve already got some music and videos that you want Boxee to be able to play. To add them, go from the Home screen, click the gear shaped icon in the upper left. In here you’ll find Boxee’s settings. For now, the one we want is Media.

Choose Local Sources and Add New Source. From here you can browse to the location of your files. When you’ve found the first location (you can add more later to separate music from videos, etc) click Add Source.

From now on, that location will be available from the Files section of the Home screen.

Apps

It seems everything these days has custom apps for web content, and Boxee is no exception. In the App Library you’ll find everything from NPR to Fail Blog. Particularly useful are the music apps for sites like Last.fm and Pandora.

Have you tried out Boxee? What’s your take on this?

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This tutorial teaches you how to install and configure FUPPES on Ubuntu Hardy-32bits

Install the dependencies

The following are some of the optional dependencies that allow you to transcode audio and video on the fly.

In your terminal,

sudo apt-get install lame liblame-dev libflac-dev libvorbis-dev ffmpeg libavformat-dev libmpcdec-dev twolame faad imagemagick

Update: If you are using Ubuntu Intrepid, the liblame-dev has been replaced by libmp3lame-dev. Thanks to Tuna for reminding.

Installing FUPPES

Download FUPPES (from GetDeb) to your desktop.

Double click the deb file to install FUPPES.

Configuring FUPPES

In your terminal, type

fuppes

follow by pressing the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C to quit the application. We are not going to run the application now. The purpose of this running and quitting is for FUPPES to generate the fuppes.cfg file.

Now, go to your Home folder (Places -> Home Folder). Press Ctrl+ H to display all the hidden folders. Navigate to .fuppes folder

Open fuppes.cfg with text editor.

Search for

<network>
<!–empty = automatic detection–>
<interface/>
<!–empty or 0 = random port–>
<http_port/>
<!–list of ip addresses allowed to access fuppes. if empty all ips are allowed–>
<allowed_ips>
<!–<ip>192.168.0.1</ip>–>
</allowed_ips>
</network>

and replace with

<network>
<!–empty = automatic detection–>
<interface>YOUR-IP-ADDRESS</interface>
<!–empty or 0 = random port–>
<http_port>5080</http_port>
<!–list of ip addresses allowed to access fuppes. if empty all ips are allowed–>
<allowed_ips>
<!–<ip>192.168.0.1</ip>–>
</allowed_ips>
</network>

Remember to change YOUR-IP-ADDRESS to your own IP address. Alternatively, you can use your network interface, such as wlan0 or eth0 such as the interface name.

Save and exit.

Back to your terminal, run FUPPES again by typing

fuppes

Open your browser and navigate to http://your-ip-address:5080. You should see the FUPPES main screen

On the left, click Configuration.

In the Add objects field, specify the path to the media folder that you want to share. Click Submit Query.

Once you are done adding your media folder, click Options on the left. Click rebuild database

You are now good to go.

Testing it out

Since XBMC has the ability to stream media over a network via a uPnP, we will use it to test out the FUPPES configuration. Follow this tutorial to install XBMC.

Open your XBMC (Applications -> Sound & Videos -> XBMC Media Center)

On the left, click on Music follow by Add Source

Click Browse and scroll down to uPnP Device

If your FUPPES is successful, you will see the entry on the list. You might have to try a few times to get XBMC to detect the media server.

You can then click OK to add the source and enjoy the music in the XBMC player. If you have .flac files, it will be transcoded to .mp3 when you play it in XBMC.

Configure FUPPES to start everytime you boot up

Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions. In the Startup Programs tab, click Add. Enter the following detail:

Click OK.

Done. FUPPES will start automatically the next time you boot up.

Accessing FUPPES from PS3 and Xbox 360

I don’t have a PS3 and Xbox 360 to test. Here are some resources for your reference

Fuppes wiki – Microsoft Xbox 360

Fuppes wiki – Playstation 3

Fuppes wiki – Device specific setting

Enjoy!

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XBMC Media Center is an award winning open source media center application for Xbox, Linux, Mac and Windows. Calling it a media center is really understating its capability since it is in fact an ultimate hub that supports almost every audio/video format and codecs available. It also comes with slick interface and include features such as playlist playback, picture viewing, audio visualizations and so on.

Installing XBMC Media Center in Ubuntu Hardy

Open your terminal. Type

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines to the end of the file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ubuntu hardy main

Save and close the file.

Update the repository

sudo apt-get update

Install xbmc

sudo apt-get install xbmc

Open XBMC via Applications -> Sound & Video -> XBMC Media Center

Watching video

To watch video, click on the video button, follow by Add sources to locate your video directory

Listening to song

Image viewing

XBMC setting page

Extending the functionality of XBMC

XBMC allows you to extend its functionality via the use of plugins and scripts. There is a whole library of scripts at XBMCScripts.com.

To install XBMC scripts:

1. Find and download the scripts (in zip format) you want from XBMCScripts.com
2. Extract the zip file to your desktop
3. Open Nautilus (Places->Home Folder)
4. Press Ctrl + H to show hidden files.
5. Navigate to /.xbmc/scripts/My Scripts
6. Copy and paste the script folder over.

In XBMC main menu, click on the Scripts button to access your scripts.

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