Network Topology

[pawnslinger]

Okay, I am still struggling to gain access to my PS3. I am running PMS on my desktop that is connected to a bridge (sharing the connection with my wife's computer and a bluray player), the bridge is a D-Link Dap-1522, it talks to my router, a D-Link Dir-825. My PS3 and Tivo share another bridge, Dap-1522, in the living room... and in turn, it talks also to my router. This all works and every device has good access to the internet. I stream Netflix, Hulu, etc, from all connected devices. But I cannot connect PMS on my desktop to the PS3. As an experiment, I disconnected the PS3 from the bridge, and just setup the PS3's wireless connectivity. This WORKS! Once the PS3 is out from behind the bridge, it all works. Except the PS3 wireless is slow and the video stutters horribly. I have the bridges setup on the 5ghz wireless-n band, and everything is good and fast... but PMS can't connect if the bridge is used with the PS3. Everything shares the same subnet mask. It is all one big lan with a common DHCP in the main router.

Any ideas? I am about to give-up. I don't know what to try next.

[Val Killmore]

So your serving PC is on one bridge, and your client PS3 is on another bridge ?
With the router acting as a go between ?

Is there any way to get one of those other computers directly connected to one of the gigabit ports on the same bridge as the PS3 ? Even a laptop ?

Have you tried going into the DAP's GUI and rebooting the device with the PS3 off ? Once rebooted, turn on PS3. I have had to do this with my Xbox 360 tied to my DAP-1522 before (even to talk to a PC connected to the same DAP-1522)

I suggest going over this post of tips for connectivity.

[pawnslinger]

Actually there is not much of a way to get things rearranged. The only thing I can think of is trying a wireless-n adapter for my desktop, instead of using the bridge. But the bridge has worked so well, that I hate to do it. Right now, I am just leaning toward buying some flash drives and using them to playback directly on the ps3, instead of using a server.

The really odd thing is that my wife's computer, which shares the bridge with mine, can see the ps3 and serve files to it. Her computer runs Windows 7 and I am using Vista. If her computer can do it, mine should be able to... they share the same network topology. I am not likely to upgrade to Windows 7 and her computer has very little disc space.

[pawnslinger]

One of the interesting things is that I have just described a small part of my lan. I actually use 4 DAP-1522's... one in the den for another Tivo/bluray, and another in my son's room for all of his stuff. The Dap-1522's are all dedicated to the 5ghz band wireless-n, we have an assortment of phones and tablets using the 2.4 ghz 'g' band. We actually have too many devices, we used to do mac filtering, but the table in the router ran out of space. I never knew I was going to be a network admin, it was never my intention.

Surprisingly, it all works pretty well. Before we found the current router/bridge equipment, we had tried lots of different hardware and configurations. The network seems to have a life of its own now, and I can't imagine any major revisions (until much better equipment becomes available).

[Val Killmore]

If her computer is visible, why not install PMS on her PC, and share your network folders ?

At least until you can sort out why your PC is not visible.

But streaming via PMS over a double wireless bridge, regardless if it's "N" or not, might be tricky and troublesome. In my experience PMS likes to have nice open highways to run on, and the less wireless involved the better. I know you might say "well everything else works" . But streaming with PMS over wireless can be tricky, especially if you involve transcoding.

[pawnslinger]

In order to use her computer, we have to be able to share between us, and that seems about as hard as getting my computer to see the ps3. As for the open highway for pms... everything is wireless in our lan. Nothing is direct connected to the router. It either goes thru a Dap-1522 or directly wireless to the router. When I had a cable repair guy out to the house, he complained that I had no pc directly plugged into the router!! Nothing even close. We used to have a NAS, but the router it was attached to at the time died (we are hard on equipment), The D-Link stuff has held up best, so far. Before we had the 5ghz band, it was a tough slog... but for us, the Dap-1522s on the 5ghz band have been a miracle... really. They are a bit tricky to setup, every time we add one (as we did a couple of weeks ago), it takes us a lot of pain to get it going. But once setup, they just work. This media server stuff has been the biggest problem so far.

[pawnslinger]

Oh, I forgot... no transcoding required. All of our media has been pre-transcoded for iPad consumption. That runs over the media server pretty well. All transcoding disabled, and it looks surprisingly good on our TVs. Most of the stuff is around 4000 kbps. If I have to use the 'g' band for it, that will be a problem. But over the 'n' 5ghz band it works pretty well. Now I admit if more than a couple of streamers in the house crank up Netflix or Hulu, well, then it all grinds to a stuttering halt. Especially for anyone trying to use the 2 ghz band, that gets really congested. Since the ps3 is using the 2 ghz band (at the moment) it is very tight. But even using the 2 ghz band the pms to ps3 hookup works pretty good. If I could get it on the 5 ghz band, I feel it would work great.

[pawnslinger]

If her computer is visible, why not install PMS on her PC, and share your network folders ?

At least until you can sort out why your PC is not visible.

But streaming via PMS over a double wireless bridge, regardless if it's "N" or not, might be tricky and troublesome. In my experience PMS likes to have nice open highways to run on, and the less wireless involved the better. I know you might say "well everything else works" . But streaming with PMS over wireless can be tricky, especially if you involve transcoding.

Okay, I got this setup. And, for the most part, it works well. I had to change permissions on some of the files, and re-setup PMS... but that didn't take too much effort. Most of the videos play fine, a few stutter a little, but not as bad as when using the 2 ghz band. I don't know a lot about media sharing with the PS3, but it seems like the PS3 does buffer the stream, as it stutters less if I pause the playback for a little bit. Or am I just dreaming?

[Val Killmore]

If her computer is visible, why not install PMS on her PC, and share your network folders ?

At least until you can sort out why your PC is not visible.

But streaming via PMS over a double wireless bridge, regardless if it's "N" or not, might be tricky and troublesome. In my experience PMS likes to have nice open highways to run on, and the less wireless involved the better. I know you might say "well everything else works" . But streaming with PMS over wireless can be tricky, especially if you involve transcoding.

Okay, I got this setup. And, for the most part, it works well. I had to change permissions on some of the files, and re-setup PMS... but that didn't take too much effort. Most of the videos play fine, a few stutter a little, but not as bad as when using the 2 ghz band. I don't know a lot about media sharing with the PS3, but it seems like the PS3 does buffer the stream, as it stutters less if I pause the playback for a little bit. Or am I just dreaming?

I am not sure about whether the PS3 caches.

Now, I am assuming all your files are native to the PS3 as you stated in iPad ready format. So I assume mp4 or m4v


Try this:
- Make sure 'switch to tsmuxer' is enabled under MEncoder settings
- Enter : mp4,m4v into the "force transcode for the following extensions"

Save settings and restart PMS.

Now, your mp4's and m4v files should be forced to transcode. If the video specs are PS3 compliant as you say, tsMuxer will take over. This will give you a buffer but also keep your bandwidth usage down by muxing the video rather than transcode. AAC audio should be re-encoded to AC3.

You may lose your ability to FF or RW, but you should be able to use "Go To" function and hopefully have stutter free streaming. In effect, you are presenting a buffer to the PS3, with as little altering to the file as possible......ie no full video transcode. Verify by hitting triangle and going to the info icon. Check that the video codec is coming thru as : AVC . Then you know tsMuxer is working.

Can't hurt to try

If you don't like this method, simply delete the mp4 and m4v values from the "Force transcode......" box, save settings and restart PMS.

[pawnslinger]

I work fast... that is, I have already fixed the problem. I ran a video conversion on the stuttering files to bring down the bitrate to around 4000 kbps. Most of the files were already between 2000 and 3000 anyhow, there was no real need for a few of them to be so high. Thru trial and error, I discovered 4000 was the magic number. Anything above 4400 was really bad, but 4000-4100 played fine. The funny thing is that at first I thought it was the source of the material that was the problem, but it was the length. Longer material had been encoded with a lower bitrate to keep file size down. So shorter material had bitrates around 5000... but that was really unnecessary, these old eyes can't tell the difference. A younger guy with better eyes and a bigger screen would probably want the maximum bitrate, and go with a direct cable to get it. But I am a happy, nearly blind, camper that is alright with the lower bitrate.