UPnP Media Server for PS3 and others: MediaTomb

Hardware
Linux
Networking
Author

Vinh Nguyen

Published

August 5, 2010

I wanted to get XBMC on my brother's PS3, but since he has a PS3 slim, the "otherOS" feature was not available. However, Sony's got to allow streaming to it right? Yep, via the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) protocol.

I used this guide to set up MediaTomb. On Ubuntu, basically,

sudo apt-get install mediatomb mediatomb-daemon
## don't do sudo mediatomb since I will be utilizing daemon
sudo emacs -q -nw /etc/mediatomb/config.xml
## change to yes
## uncomment or add this line 
## Next, go to http://server.ip:49155/ and add the location of the media

My PS3 didn't see mediatomb. After debugging with the help of the author over at #mediatomb over on freenode, I found out that the wireless bridge the PS3 was plugged to did not pass over all udp unicasts. There were communications between the two but the connection was not established because there were missing pieces.

In the process of debug, I used cidero and wireshark and tshark (via apt-get) per the faq. Basically, using cidero with my laptop plugged into the wireless bridge, I could see mediatomb. Using the web browser on the PS3 I could get to the mediatomb web ui. Plugging the PS3 onto the primary router, I see mediatomb. Then I used tshark to capture the connection information when the ps3 is searching for a media server and sent the capture to the author and he couldn't help me any further since it was the setup's fault. Haven't found a way around this wireless bridge yet, although I posted in the DD-WRT forum.