Sony PS3: All in One Media & Entertainment Center

The Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) has proven time and again to be the best home media center, giving consumers more bang for their buck than any other electronic device on the market. It is the rising star of current generation consoles, not just for its gaming capablities, but as a great high definition blu ray player and media server, all rolled into one fantastic package.

Back in the 90s, Sony released the Sony Playstation 2 to much fanfare, touting it as a revolutionary device that would become the center of your living room. Sadly, the PS2 fell short of those lofty goals. It had a clunky web browser, rudimentary CD/DVD and didn’t support digital video or audio formats. Sony eventually focused their attention on the consoles only real strength: video games. A wise move on their part, as the Sony PS2 went on to become the best-selling video game console in history. The fact that you can still buy a brand new PS2 console off the shelf at any electronics retailer is testament to the devices longevity and mass appeal.

Fast-forward to the early naughties and the long anticipated release of the Sony Playstation 3 and subsequent Sony PS3 Slim a few years later. This time, Sony would get it right.

Forget about building that HTPC! In a few easy steps you will learn how to make PS3 a stand alone media server that is worthy of being the king of your home media center setup.

The PS3 supports a wide range of digital video, audio and picture formats, with support for newer and more obscure formats constantly being added via regular system ps3 updates from Sony and admirably handles virtually any digital file you throw at it via Disc, HDD or Streaming.

The PS3 Slim comes in two choices (for now!): Sony PS3 250GB or Sony PS3 320GB, plenty of space to store your digital music, videos and pictures. Or, if you’re a file hoarder, you can attach an external HDD via the front USB ports but please keep in mind that the PS3 does not natively support drives formatted in NTFS. You can however easily format an external HDD in FAT32 using any number of free software tools available on the internet such as SwissKnife or Easy Partition Manager. FAT32 does have an individual file size limit of 4GB so those uncompressed DVD and High-Def rips are out of the question.

If your entire digital media collection resides on your PC and you have no desire to burn discs or transfer everything over to another HDD, not to worry, a solution is at hand.

PS3 Media Server is a free downloadable program that is easy to set up and use, and really is the ultimate ps3 media server by far.

The PS3 media server setup is quick and easy. Download, install and launch the program on your desktop (no additional software is required to be installed on the PS3). The default settings should be fine. All you have to do is click on the Navigation/Share Settings tab at the top and under Shared Folders, specify the folders on your PC that you would like to be accessible for your PS3. Please note that all your folders will be accessible if you leave this box blank.

Now switch on your PS3, go to Video and scroll up. You will see a large green icon resembling a PLAY button. Press X and your folders will now appear. Find the video you want to watch and press X to select. The same applies for Music and Photo files.

PS3 media center also allows the PS3 to download media content straight from the computer to the PS3 harddrive. You just find the video (or other media file) that you want, hit the trangle button and select Copy. The software does the rest.