I want to install YDL on my PS3 but...

[enginedown]

I have been researching this for a while but it's hard to find straight-forward answers to a few specific things. Basically the only reasons I want to try this is so I can 1) Access my NTFS 1TB external on my PS3, 2) play MKV videos from my external on my PS3, and 3) play FLAC music files from my external on my PS3.

Is all of this possible? If so, is it going to take someone who has absolutely no experience with Linux a long time to figure out how to set it up?

Thank you so much for your help!

[ppietro]

I have been researching this for a while but it's hard to find straight-forward answers to a few specific things. Basically the only reasons I want to try this is so I can 1) Access my NTFS 1TB external on my PS3, 2) play MKV videos from my external on my PS3, and 3) play FLAC music files from my external on my PS3.

Is all of this possible? If so, is it going to take someone who has absolutely no experience with Linux a long time to figure out how to set it up?

Thank you so much for your help!

(BIG NOTE: These are my opinions only - I am not an employee of Sony, nor of Fixstars (TerraSoft). Nothing I say here should be considered an official anything in any way. )

If I remember correctly, NTFS isn't enabled by default in the standard kernel. MKV will work - but not at HD resolutions and it requires some custom configuration to get started. FLAC - again - might take some extra setup.

If you have no experience with Linux, and little experience with computers, setting up this stuff might be confusing. Also - if you're not very patient, this is probably not right for you.

On the other hand - if you dig computers, find Windows too confining, and like the voyage of discovery almost more than the destination - then welcome aboard.

I know this sounds fairly negative - but I'm trying to set some expectations before you jump in and get frustrated. Linux is not a "hand-holding" OS yet - it's very powerful - but with that power comes added complexity.

As a side note - if you had videos in a different container - AVI, MP4, WMV, etc. - and your external was a Network Attached Storage (NAS) that supported DLNA - you could have used the streaming playback feature of the PS3 GameOS to play your videos directly. The standard PS3 GameOS can auto-detect media servers via DLNA and makes a decent front end playback machine.

Cheers,
Paul

[Janx]

i concur with pietro. I'm a newbie to YDL (still downloding, 53%), but I have some XP on linux, networking, media sharing.

The OP mentions a bunch of "weird" media formats. I suppose there's reasons for it, but I advise converting to MP4, .h264 for videos (or some other commonly supported format that both Windows, and PS3 likes). The same idea for music. MP3 is the standard for un-secured music. Rip at the right rate, and it works. If you can hear a quality difference, you don't have enough hearing damage, turn it up.

Google up Videora, that guy's got free converters for any video format to something PS3 likes.

There's other solutions, but you can enable the Media Center feature in Media Player in windows to share your music. TVersity's another solution. Google's your friend. So is ps3-hacks.com All of these solutions are legal. Use the DLNA feature like pietro says.

You can get formatfat32.exe to reformat your USB drive, so you can plug in directly to the PS3. That's handy for backing up the PS3 anyway. I had to do that with my 250GB USB (had to back it up, so I could reformat from NTFS). Fat32 isn't awesome, but there's no serious problem with it for holding my media files, backing up my PS3.


trying to linux to do ntfs (not impossible), and running wierd media formats isn't for the faint hearted. Granted, if you're into weird formats, your probably already pretty technical.

Personally, I advise on standardizing on media formats that most of your devices can use (which I assume are PS3, Windows). In my case, I got iPhone, PSP, PS3, windows, xbox 360 to keep happy. MP4 h264 for videos (rename to .avi to trick Media Player into streaming), and MP3 for music, and FAT32 solves the problem.

I'm planning on YDL for the PS3, because it turns the PS3 into a computer, when I might need it (say my Windows box dies, I still have a computer ala PS3).