How To: Play Media Stored On Your Playstation 3 With Windows Home Server and PVConnect/TwonkyMedia

By on July 25, 2008 in Add-ins & Apps, Digital Media Receivers, Hardware, Video, Windows Home Server

Many Windows Home Server users have experienced issues playing media files on their Playstation 3 consoles – this is due to the fact that the PS3 does not support Windows Media Connect, the media serving software embedded in Windows Home Server.

Up until recently, the solution to this was to install Packet Video’s PVConnect/TwonkyMedia DLNA-compliant media serving software, which works well with the PS3. However, a recent software update by Sony changed the UPnP handshake string that it sends out to identify itself to media streamers. This caused the PS3 to once again be unable to play files from Windows Home Server.

WGS Forum user ctewsley posted a fix for this issue over at our forums.

Below are the steps to follow for getting PVConnect / Twonky to recognize your PS3 correctly again:

1) Open a remote desktop connection to your home server.

2) From windows explorer go to the following path: C:\TwonkyMedia\resources

3) Open the file clients.db (use notepad don’t worry its just a text file)

4) You will find an entry marked ID:060 It will look like this

ID:060
NA:PS3
HH:PLAYSTATION3
DB:FIX
XM:DLNA10
XM:DATETIME
DL:MP4DLNA
HP:chunked
MT:mpeg,mpeg2,vdr,spts,tp,ts video/mpeg
MT:m4a audio/mp4
MT:avi,divx video/avi
AV:no-m3u

5) You need to put a space between PLAYSTATION and 3 so it should look like this: PLAYSTATION 3

6) Exit notepad saving your changes.

7) From the windows home server console select PVConnect

icon cool How To: Play Media Stored On Your Playstation 3 With Windows Home Server and PVConnect/TwonkyMedia Select the Media Receivers Tab

9) Click on reset list

10) From the PS3 scan for media center under any of the Photo / Music / Video search for media centers or whatever it is

After that PVConnect (aka Twonky) will recognize the PS3 as a PS3 and your video problem will be solved.

Let us know how you get on with this fix. 


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About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • Prime

    Hello!

    I don’t have a problem using Windows Media Connect to stream media to my PS3. It’s worked since day one. Matter of fact, I only ever used Windows Media Connect from a Vista environment before I purchased Windows Home Server.

    My two cents…

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  • Martin

    Same as above, i had terrible trouble trying to get music to stream from my desktop pc to my ps3. But streaming the same music collection from my home server to my ps3 has been faultless. Nice to know there is alternatives if i get a problem though

  • Andy

    And Twonky works great streaming VOB’s with dvd quality. DVDFab Platinum works well converting…

  • Greg

    For me, PVConnect is about the crappiest piece of crap I’ve ever seen. It’s like some terrible alpha version that some 9-year-old with an IQ of 47 put together. So many things it does wrong:

    1. Can’t determine it’s a PS3 (2.41) I’ve got hooked up to the network (yes, even after fiddling with the clients.db file). Have to pick that manually from the list. Lame.

    2. Can’t stream about 9954 of the 10,000-ish video files I’ve got (primarily DivX and Xvid). Although it does play a Matrix trailer I had from 2003, so maybe I shouldn’t complain so much.

    3. Can’t even identify the “Photos” directory on the MSS as the main directory containing photos, which of course it is. PVConnect instead fixates on some obscure, buried sub-sub-subdirectory (that has only 16 photos in it) as the main photo directory. Huh??

    OK, that’s only three things that it does wrong. But they’re pretty big things. Sorta like a baseball player not being able to hit, catch, or throw.

    Good thing I’ve got an HTPC, because PVConnect is a steaming pile.

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  • Jeff

    Terry…You are the man!! I installed firmware 2.42 on my PS3 and all of the sudden my streaming was broken. I have spent hours pulling out my hair and cursing Sony.

    You fix did the trick! Thanks a bunch…

  • Greg

    Well, I got it working. At least mostly. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling PVConnect, but that didn’t help. What did help was to uninstall PVConnect *and* the McAfee thing, then reinstall PVConnect before reinstalling McAfee. Then I re-modified clients.db as instructed, and now everything seems to work the way everybody else’s did from the start.

    I still maintain PVConnect isn’t that great, but at least now it’s for reasons everyone else can confirm for themselves, rather than some anomalous behaviour only I was experiencing.

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  • Benski1970

    Hi. I’ve just got a brand new HP MediaSmart EX470 that is invisible to my PS3. Perhaps this is the solution, but I’m stuggling with a beginner’s error here! I can’t get the Remote Desktop Connection to see the server at all, never mind editing files on it. I’m told that there are no servers within my workgroup, so there’s nothing to connect to. I don’t know how to put the server into my workgroup (if this is the fix for this step). Does anyone have any insights into how to go about this? Thx!

  • Benski1970

    @Benski1970 -
    One quick update here. I finally got Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) working with the EX470. Although you cannot browse to the unit, if you just type the name of the server, that’s enough to connect. Once you’ve connected you can edit that clients.db file on the box, change the workgroup, etc. Not that this has got the PS3 to successfully connect to the EX470 though – still no progress on that front. :-/

  • http://www.playstation3forsale.net Kris

    I got it finally working after reinstalling PVConnect.

  • Benski1970

    @Kris – I’m really surprised, having read all the comments out there, that I’m just about the only person on the planet who can’t get this to work at all. Is there something fundamental that I’m doing wrong here? Do I need to set up a username and password combination for the PS3, or something like that? I’ve followed so much advice in so much detail, but with absolutely zero success…

  • lrsnj

    @Benski1970 -

    Don’t know if you’re still having problems getting your PS3 to see your HP MediaSmart server, but I found the following link quite helpful.

    http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/lofiversion/index.php/t5100.html

    Also, initially my PS3 only saw Windows Media Connect and not PVConnect. With the Windows Media Connect none of my music or video files showed up. I unistalled and reinstalled both McAffee and PVConnect, then reinstalled PVConnect and McAffee in that order as someone else suggested. When I searched for servers on the PS3 after that, it then found two servers, the Windows Media Connect and PVConnect. And after following all the steps detailed in the above link, all my music and videos eventually showed up in the PVConnect folders.