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introduction.html

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	<h1>Introduction</h1>

<p>The PS3 Media Server (or PMS for short) is a program that
		streams media like video, audio or images from your computer or the
		web to a device like a console or a TV.</p>

<p>This might sound simple, but it is in fact a complex matter.
		There are dozens of media formats in the world, and your console or TV
		only understands a couple of them. PMS allows you to browse media on
		your favorite viewing device without having to worry about the details
		of what you are viewing. PMS takes care of retrieving the media (from
		file, network or web) and translating it to the best format that your
		device understands.</p>

<h2>Media renderers</h2>

<p>
		PMS is a <a
			href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance">DLNA</a>
		compliant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPnP">UPnP</a> Media
		Server. It was originally written to support the PlayStation 3.
		However, other viewing devices support the same standards as the
		PlayStation 3 and PMS has been expanded to support a range of them,
		including Xbox 360 and various Samsung and Sony televisions.
	</p>

<h2>Alternatives</h2>

<p>There are several streaming servers available which can be used
		to communicate with a your viewing device. Here is a small selection:</p>
	<ul>
		<li><a
			href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/11/default.aspx">Windows
				Media Player</a>
		</li>
		<li><a href="http://www.twonkyvision.com/">Twonky Media</a></li>
		<li><a href="http://tversity.com/">TVersity</a></li>
		<li><a href="http://mediatomb.cc/">MediaTomb</a></li>
	</ul>

<p>Windows Media Player works well out of the box but isn't able to
		transcode or remux and has poor performance with a huge media database.
		Twonky media is not for free. Twonky media has its advantages in
		supporting a lot of different streaming clients, even NAS systems.
		TVersity is an average media server and has some advantages in
		streaming Internet content. But this advanced feature is not included
		in the free version. Mediatomb is often used on open source operating
		and embedded systems. It can be customized very well by experienced
		shellscript gurus. It is not a good choice for beginners.</p>

<p>
		PMS is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. A prerequisite is the
		installation of <a href="http://java.com/en/download/">Java
			Runtime Environment</a> (JRE) because PMS is programmed in Java.
	</p>

<p>PMS is shipped with all required software to make it work out of
		the box. However, additional features may require the installation of
		additional software.</p>

<p>There are a lot of technical details involved in the process of
		translating media. PMS tries to minimalize this for the user by
		shipping with working defaults for most situations. You simply start
		PMS and it will find your device and start communicating with it
		without any extra configuration.</p>

<p>PMS is optimized for use with the Playstation 3. But you can
		also use an Xbox 360, Popcorn Hour and various Samsung or Sony TVs as
		streaming clients.</p>

<p>In the old days, people would use a conversion program like
		"mkv2vob" and connect USB hard drives with converted files to the PS3.
		With PMS there is no need for converting files any more. If converting
		is necessary, PMS will do it for you on the fly.</p>

<p>PMS also makes it possible to stream web content like Youtube,
		GameTrailers, web radio or Picasa to your device.</p>

<p>
		PMS is free Open Source software and has been designed to allow third
		party plugins to extend its functionality. You are welcome to help
		improve PMS or write a plugin for others to use. See the <a
			href="https://github.com/ps3mediaserver/ps3mediaserver">project homepage</a>
		for more information.
	</p>

<p>The most stunning features of PMS are transcoding and muxing.</p>

<h2>What are transcoding and muxing?</h2>

<p>
		If the video codec is not supported PMS can convert the video stream
		to a device compatible codec. For example the PS3 is compatible with
		MPEG2. This procedure is called <a
			href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding">transcoding</a> and
		it costs a lot of CPU power.
	</p>

<p>
		When you try to play a media file on your viewing device and the
		format is not supported you get a "data corrupted" message. PMS is
		able to help in this case. PMS is able to change the container format
		on the fly if it is not supported by your device. PMS extracts the
		audio and video stream and puts it into a supported M2TS-container.
		This is called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muxing">muxing</a>.
	</p>

<p>Together, transcoding and muxing make it possible for PMS to
		stream almost every multimedia format to your viewing device. PMS
		enables you to view media on TV that you could formerly only view on
		your computer.</p>

<h2>Hardware requirements</h2>

<p>You can stream media files with quite old computers. If the
		device does not recognize the video container format and PMS has to
		remux you will need some additional CPU power. A 2 GHz CPU should be
		sufficient. When transcoding a video on full HD resolution an up to
		date dual core processor from Intel or AMD with at least 2,6 GHz is
		necessary.</p>

<p>It is also necessary to have enough network bandwidth available
		when streaming HD videos. It is nearly impossible to stream a full HD
		video via WLAN, even when restricting network bandwidth and setting
		video quality very low.</p>

<p>You should also have enough free RAM, which means about 512 MB.
		There is also some space needed on your systems hard drive for
		buffering videos. 500 MB free disk space is enough. If you want to
		stream media files from an external hard drive please consider that an
		USB 1.1 connection is too slow for videos.</p>

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