This how-to

• is up to date
• can be improved by anyone
• is for everyone who wants to use the ps3 as a mediacenter
• is for everyone who wants to look at movies at ps3 without lags/skips
• explains how to setup a linux on PS3 with the fastest possible video playing that’s possible until now.
• mentions every ressource needed to accomplish this task

That includes:

• How to install patched mplayer on gentoo
• How to install freevo

ToDo:

• Update Kernel
• Get controller working in freevo wirelessly
• HowTo Install patched x11 modul
• Make ps3gentoo or gentoo ebuild’s of patched mplayer, libspe2 etc avaiable

This how-to explains the not-yet-so-easy-way to get the linux mediacenter working.

• plays every format (not just mpeg, and some divx and xvid)
• plays subtitles
• great connectivity (smb, nfs, sftp, http, you name it)
• full control (free, open source)
• costumizeable

The biggest problem is, that the PS3 is too slow to play movies. BUT, you say, HOW can such a numbercruncher be slow at playing movies?

First, Sony does allow direct access to the graphic cpu, only to graphic output. This means that even such simple things as scaling an image or color conversation has to be done in software. This leads us to the second problem: the slow ass cpu. Sony advertises with “two 3,2ghz cpus” or something, but in reality, it feels like an Athlon with 1Ghz. This means, even heavy compiler optimized mplayer/xine/whatever are not capable of playing many movies smoothly and without lag.

The solution to this problem is to offload those simple, but computally expensive things to the seven SPUs, which are especially designed for those things, and with their help we can provide smooth video playing. We’re using the spu-medialib for this task. All this has nothing todo with the RSX hack which worked on pre 2.10 versions.

shortcomings:

• no support for x264 yet, which means big .mkv movies are still unwatchable
• mplayer does not really support every realmedia file out there
• no flash (?)

1. get a linux up and running
2. install cell development tools
3. install some very usefull libraries
4. patch and install mplayer to use spu’s with spu-medialib
5. patch and install freevo