Khoji On Tech (and more)

For a long time I was frustrated that I couldn’t access the media files on my Mac with my PlayStation 3, which has everything needed to be a great multimedia center, in addition to being one of the best BluRay players around (and incidentally allowing you to play some pretty good video games as well). Recently I discovered Nullriver MediaLink, which comes close to making Apple’s own AppleTV unnecessary. With one small but important restriction, MediaLink is a perfect solution for accessing all the media on your Mac on your TV. At just $20, it’s worth every penny and more.

The restriction? MediaLink can’t (yet) play anything with Apple’s copy protection on it, which means all movies, TV series and videos bought in the iTunes Store, in addition to any iTunes tracks you still haven’t converted to non-DRM. This is currently where the AppleTV still has a major advantage, but I’ve corresponded with Nullriver and they indicated that they’re working on a solution. My guess would be they want to somehow make it possible to register the PS3 as one of the up to five “computers” that are allowed to play your iTunes protected content. If and when they manage that, MediaLink is going to be the kickass solution for PS3/Mac integration.

How it works

MediaLink is a small piece of software that installs itself as a preference pane in your OS X System Preferences. Installation is a breeze, the only stumbling block is if you have any other software that is already acting as a media server in any way. You will then get a rather cryptic message saying that the ports that MediaLink needs are in use, without any further information. In my case it was EyeTV — as soon as I turned the streaming features of EyeTV off MediaLink’s ports opened up, but it took a while to figure it out because I set up EyeTV months ago and never bothered to use its streaming features because they were useless for me, so I had forgotten about it. Some more information in the MediaLink setup screens would be helpful here.

By default MediaLink shares your iLife folders and a couple of other folders with your PS3, but you can configure it very easily by adding individual folders or even entire volumes/drives. You then get an additional green icon in the PS3 menus that show your Mac as a media server, with the computer’s name. You then just browse the foldes with the PS3 controller and select the images, music tracks, movies, playlists etc.

This worked perfectly right away for me, even via the PS3’s g-only WiFi connection. This is fast enough to play even DVDs ripped to the hard disk, provided that the Mac is connected to the network via a LAN cable, so that the only WiFi connection is between the PS3 and the access point. If MediaLink is on a Mac that’s connected to a g-network via WiFi you’ll have problems, the two-way wireless link will cause video stuttering. I haven’t tried any HD content yet but I imagine it might be necessary to have a direct network cable connection to the PS3 for that. Unfortunately, the PS3 doesn’t support fast n-WiFi and it would need a hardware upgrade to do so.

What it plays

Basically, MediaLink plays pretty much everything you need, including unaltered EyeTV recordings straight from the EyeTV folder, which look terrific. As explained above, the only major restriction is it won’t play any DRMed content, and instead of showing the tracks and saying it can’t play them it simply doesn’t show them at all, which can be a little confusing at first. Hopefully the update for DRMed content is coming soon, that would be great.

Supported formats:

Now instead of burning to DVD before watching a recorded movie I just compress out the advertising and then I can select it direcly with the PS3, generally without any copying or conversion. MediaLink also accesses your entire iTunes music library (except DRMed tracks) and playlists, all your iPhoto images, Aperture images, images in normal folders and a wide variety of video tracks. I’ve found a few video formats it doesn’t play, but then it’s just a question of running them through VisualHub or Handbrake.

Downsides

There  are a few small annoyances:

With the exception of the DRM issue, all these points are really pretty irrelevant compared to the benefits, however. At just $20 getting MediaLink is a no-brainer if you have  a PS3 and want to access the media on your Mac on your TV. Just get it.