Using the PS3 as an IP TV media server

Technology research house isuppli has put out a research note showing that the new PS3 is c $250 - $300 underpriced for what it is, and has been extremely well engineered for power: To quote:

With the PlayStation 3, you are getting the performance of a supercomputer at the price of an entry-level PC,” said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and senior analyst for iSuppli.

and later...

The Cell Broadband Engine from IBM, which serves as the central processing unit of the PlayStation 3, provides the equivalent computing power of eight individual microprocessors. The Cell is what endows the PlayStation 3 with its supercomputer-like power, Rassweiler observed.

(Though Apple apparently was unimpressed and went with Intel, but its not clear if that was for technical reasons or commercial)

There are two PS3 machines - a $500 one with 20Gb, and a $600 one with 60Gb - and 802.11g Wifi. What makes this whole thing very interesting to me though is that Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi has claimed that the PlayStation 3 is being positioned as a supercomputer capable of running multiple operating systems, with the Linux system to be pre-installed on the machine's hard drive.

Add Linux to that bigger machine's storage, processing power and the WiFi makes it very, very interesting - because it possibly could be, with a bit of tweaking, a very powerful but fairly low cost"black box" around which to build an Open IP to TV home solution that is easier to use than a PC, cheaper than a Multimedia server, and does more than an IPTV set top box.

This is possible today - I remember seeing a demo at BBC Labs open day last year showing a PS2 being used as a home entertainment controller - but the extra capability of the PS3 means a lot more can be done.

It seems to still be a bit clunky - to quote from engadget:

1. Can you connect and play media from a USB hard drive?

We know this is the number one question people are asking right now, and we'll tell you this: we connected a thumb drive, and it recognized it. But it wouldn't play any of our MP4 / H.264 video or MP3 audio, so something seemed awry. It wouldn't even find the files on the drive, our PlayStation said there were none. So we're going to have to get back to you on this until we can do some further testing.
Update: Ittousai's PlayStation does properly read media from USB. Maybe ours is a firmware issue, we're not sure yet.

.....

3 Can the PS3 stream videos, movies, pictures, etc., from a PC?

No, not currently. This is something we really wanted to see, but they're just not prepared to do yet. If you're Japanese, however, you can download video via P-TV on So-net.

4. Would the PS3 be good replacement for or complement my Media Center PC?

That's a pretty subjective question. You can't stream media to or from it; you can copy media to it.

As so much of the technology is new there is bound to be a shakedown period for the PS3, and its also not clear yet how open the system will be. But, but if it were to become more open, there are a lot of potential applications that it could be used for that are currently done in the "digital mess" of the home - that plethora of home PC's, Set Top Boxes, Media Servers, Slingboxes etc etc.

If this happens and if takeup is high this could be a very disruptive play for controlling the home IP Broadband Media systems.

And it plays games.....

Postscript - we've been following this PS3 Supercomputer story...I don't think we've seen that last of this machine's potential. Additional posts of ours on this beastie are here, here and here.