blu ray to ps3 for home theatre center

[jmaverick101]

I was hoping someone could give me some advice on what I'm planning to do. I want to create a home theater center. I have the pc to store all my movies, and a ps3 as the source to watch on my hd television. Is there a file format that is better than others at preserving the quality of my blu ray/dvd movies and is compatible with the ps3. And any recommendations as to a program for converting blu ray files to that format. I already have the movies on my hard drive, i just need to convert them.

[guns1inger]

How are you intending to access the movies on the PC using your PS3 ? If you intend to use a media server then look for one that can read your files directly if possible, then quality is not an issue.

Or do you wish to re-encode in part to save space ?

[jmaverick101]

I have my comp connected by via Ethernet cord to my ps3. I wish to re-encode to try to save space with as minimal loss of quality as possible.

[guns1inger]

And your PS3 will see the movies how ?

You have to use a media streamer, be-it Windows Media Player, PS3 Media Server, Tversity or something else. Your choice of server may impact the choice the file type.

The most versatile container is probably MKV, but the PS3 cannot play directly. The most versatile that the PS3 can play is probably m2ts, however the PS3 cannot play HD DTS from a drive unless it is an optical drive (i.e. Bluray or AVCHD on DVD). Some streaming servers will server mkv happily to the PS3, some will not.

[jmaverick101]

which type container is best for preserving quality and reducing file size. I was hoping to use the ps3 as in interim before I complete building my HTPC, but it looks like that might not happen.

[guns1inger]

They are both the same. MKV and m2TS are containers. The quality comes down to how the video and audio is encoded within them. In all likelihood you will be keeping the original audio (that is, at least one of the original audio tracks), and will just re-compress the video. The codec with H.264, the encoder will come down to what tool you choose. Quality will come down to how much you choose to crush the video - i.e. what file size you target. If you don't have a specific filesize in mind, but just want smaller files, try a CQ encode with a quality value of 21, then 20, then 18. Quality will get better as the numbers get smaller, but the file size will also increase. You can also consider reducing the resolution from 1920 x nnnn to 1280 x nnn. Do some comparisons and see what suits you best.

[jmaverick101]

Thanks, will do