If you have a Playstation 3, or even an Xbox 360, you should take a look at the PS3 Media Server. I have tried using Windows Media Center to serve video content, and while it does work, the video formats seem very limited. The PS3 Media Server seems to support just about any type of video that I would want to use; such as MPG, MP4, MKV, M2TS, and VOB.

I was most impressed by how backing up a movie DVD at 100% quality (around 7 GB), I was still able to stream to my PS3 and the video quality looked as if the DVD were playing in the PS3. In testing, I was able to play Blu-Ray video as well, although the video did jump around a bit on some clips; it could have been a bad backup. Both my computer and the PS3 were wired on a 1GB network.

There are some problems:

  • Seeking does not work the best, specifically from the Xbox 360.
  • DVDs are typically split into roughly 1GB VOB files. If there are many of these, it may be difficult to find the desired VOB that contains the movie. Usually, the movie is the largest one. You can use the command below to combine the VOBs into one file…which then can be renamed to something.mpg.
copy /b file1.vob + file2.vob + file3.vob new.vob

So, if you would like to keep your DVD collection in good condition and have the space to store your movies on your computer, give the PS3 Media Server a try. You can backup your DVDs to your computer using a tool like DVDShrink, then play them over your network. No more searching for the disc to watch a movie.

Disclaimer: You should only backup media that you own. Do not illegally copy movies or music.

You can download the PS3 Media Server from google.