Jeff Whalen . Web Designer

Every since I started building a digital library of music, movies, and photos on my mac. I have been looking for a way to seamlessly share that content with my HD TV. I’ve search high and low on my quest to access this content, but to no avail. I couldn’t find anything that would work the way I wanted it to. The Apple TV is a nice piece of equipment, but it lacks true HD. Its only capable of running 720p content. I thought about a Mac Mini but it lacks power, and its slower than my Macbook!

I also wanted my content to stay in one place. I didn’t want to have to sync the content with other components and have there hard drives filled with content that already existed elsewhere. I wanted to stream it, and most of all I wanted to stream 1080p videos.

Streaming the content would give me the flexibility to ultimately have full control over the content from a home server and stream that content to any computer, or game console in the house.

So, I decided to purchase a PS3 for my media hub in the living room connected to the HD TV. The reason for the PS3 and not any other console or computer, was because it fit the bill. Its could support full 1080p content, and with its own built in wireless card, and I could stream my content wirelessly to it without a problem (or, so I thought). It also had a blu-ray player built in so I thought that in its self should make this a great media center.

Streaming the content from my Mac
We need to run a UPNP server on the computer that has the content, so the PS3 can access the files you want to share. Their are a few software choices out there, but I find that the PS3 Media Server is the best option. (and its FREE!) I highly recommend using the latest beta, its available through the forum. It has a lot more functionality then the public release. Anyway, once the UPNP server is setup on your computer and your sharing your content. You just have to make sure your PS3 on the same network as the computer, and the UPNP server should show up on your PS3. I did run into a few problems with my connect speed though, it turns out that the wireless card is only 802.11 G. Streaming music worked great on the G card, as well as standard DVDs, but adding in an HD movie, and G just couldn’t cut it. I could wire in the PS3 to the router, but since I’m in an apartment right now, running cabling just isn’t going to work. It had to be wireless, and since I have been running an 802.11 N network for over a year now, and wanted to be able to use the N network to its fullest potential. Apple had just recently upgraded their Airport Express to N. So I picked one up, and wired it to the PS3. It worked perfectly, I’m now getting full 1080p content streaming wirelessly to the PS3 from my Mac!

The connection goes as follows:
Macbook running UPNP server wired to Airport Extreme using gigabit ethernet. Hard drive with all content, connected to the Extreme and shared with Macbook, and all computers on network. PS3 wired to Airport Express, and Express wirelessly joining the Extreme’s N network.