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I currently have the Qcast player sold by GameShark (not bad for $8, I think the shipping was free even). Unfortunately the PS2 does not have enough juice to decode HDTV files ganked from the net, but it does support DivX.

However XBMC looks promising, since it's OSS it's extensible and supports a lot of stuff. I may have to spring for a used x-box so I can play Dr. Who on my TV and not have it be choppy.

Wired or wireless shouldn't make any difference, as you can use a wireless to ethernet bridge for any "wired" device. I had my house built within the past year, and made sure every room was wired. Here is what I used to get music to every room:
xbox media center Optical out, lots of other options.
Rio receiver running yarrs I have been using this for years, just a small device to play mp3's off of the network. You can hook speakers up to it directly or just use it as a component.
qcast lets you stream mp3's to your playstation 2. Not as useful or functional as the xbox media center.
netjuke this let's me stream music to any other computer in a nice and tidy web interface.

you can also go with a squeezebox but I have no experience with it. The rio is much less expensive.

I have been using this setup for well over a year and it is a very viable solution. Simply hook up your home network to the PS2, install the Mediaplayer server software on your PC (runs on Windows and Linux), run the Mediaplayer on the PS2, and voila! It's real simple and easy to use. It plays your DivX videos, MP3/WAV sound files, and even displays pictures. For about $150 total (if you buy a used PS2), you get a very elegant solution to play your media in your living room with no hacking whatsoever.
http://www.broadq.com/ - Underlining software for Gameshark MediaPlayer

For audio, I have a device called the Audiotron from Turtle Beach. It can stream MP3's and full size wav files from Windows or SMB shares, and is really easy to use. It can also stream from some Internet radio stations. Very cool device, and it fits in perfectly with the rest of my black stereo stuff.

If you're wishing that there were a device that did what the headline suggests that this hack does (that is, play AVIs and stuff without a PC doing all the work) then you might want to look into this.

I bought an early release of the BroadQ QCast software (which I believe is now sold as the Mad Catz GameShark Media Player) for the PS2. It's pretty interesting - you have to get the PS2 network adapter so that your PS2 has ethernet, and then you also have to run the Java based streaming server app on the server that has all your media files on it. Once you've done that, you run this software and it lets you browse and play your audio and video media.

Initially I was pretty disappointed in the video performance. Basically most of the movies I had wouldn't play (either due to codec incompatibility, or the codec not being able to keep up with the frame rate) and especially because there was no fast-forward or rewind. A later release fixed most of those issues including the FF/RW.

It's still kinda cool but I'm sort of over my movie-ripping phase and back to DVDs so I don't use it that much. To be honest it's fairly cumbersome to get it all set up, so unless you really want to watch a lot of non-DVD digital video on your TV, it's probably not worth it. But you might find that this is a good audio solution with the bonus of movie playback.

Tom's Hardware has a review that's concurrent with my initial experiences:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/0 03/qcast/qcast -3.html

Too bad this is nothing new.

There's software called Qcast Tuner which uses your Playstation2 as a media player. You stream music or movies or photos from your PC to your PS/2 and it plays them on your TV.

You obviously need a PS2 with LAN adapter (and optionally a wireless adapter), but it gives you the functionality. This new linksys is nice though because it's all together in one purpose-made package.

The PS2 disc, which, interestingly, hasn't passed Sony approval

I bought a similar product: the disc it came on was a modified 'blue' PSOne disc and refuses to boot consistently. Part of our tale of woe is here.
The company has been promising (properly) re-manufactured replacements for months but no luck yet.

Really? You prefer a system that you have to pay extra for vs. free online play?
To each his own I guess. Live seems cool, but I'd rather save the money and play free, well free +$50 to buy the game.

" Xbox: Networked, best technology"
I'm sure you're saying, hey, the ps2 network kit costs $$. But, remember, the Xbox DVD kit costs $ too.

I've wanted an Xbox time and again. I loved Halo, I'd say it's up there with Counter Strike for all time favorite games. But, I've never been able to bring myself to buy one. I'm not sure exactly why. I even bought a 2nd ps2. I guess it's because I use my ps2's primarily to watch DivX and other media files using broadq.

In any case, bandwidth considerations aside, if you want a WMP alternative, try Nullsoft Streaming Video and Winamp 2.9x (as a few other commenters have suggested). It's good stuff.

If you already have a PS2, just stick a network interface on it ($30), and get the QCast Tuner software ($50) from BroadQ.

Their server runs on Java, and will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.

Turns the PS2 into a nice multimedia platform.

Run Linux, Windows, Mac, whatever on the backend, use your PS2 on the front end. Even use the handy DVD remote. Available from BroadQ or shortly from GameShark it has all the functionality I can glean from the Prismi?q box without yet another piece of hardware.

Except that M$ doesn't want any one to use there precious X-crap for anything other than what Bill says. Sony opened up it's platform for Linux almost from the start.

Check out this fun use for a PS2 - Qcast . All without Uncle Bills promission or a Mod chip.

Microsoft has been adamant that the Xbox is and will remain a gaming platform. Period. The knee-jerk reaction to news of additional capabilities, such as voice and music, is "The Xboxes aren't selling as game consoles, so they're trying other applications in hopes of selling more boxes."

This doesn't make much sense when one considers that Microsoft loses money on every Xbox. The bill of materials is $400-$500, and they retail for $200. That difference can't be made up on volume. This business model is to lose money on the consoles but make it back (and then some) on the games, much like the razor/blade model. Games are high-margin products, especially those created in-house, and I would think that the Xbox business case is dependent upon preserving those margins. So pushing the Xbox as an enabler of low-margin services doesn't make much sense. Let's look at those mentioned...

Voice
Sure, Xbox Live voice quality is pretty good. Since Xbox Live requires broadband, it's not tough to obtain toll quality. But why would they want to? There are many reasons why voice over IP hasn't taken off (customers don't want to be tethered to their PCs, long distance is already cheap -- you'd better not be paying more than $0.05/minute for interstate calls), and to my knowledge Xbox Live doesn't have the billing capabilities required for voice services. The article states that Microsoft would move the chat capability to the Xbox Live dashboard, which implies the requirement of an Xbox Live subscription. It's unlikely that this feature would convince consumers to subscribe to Xbox Live. Microsoft would also need VOIP-PSTN gateways, so their customers can call people who don't use an Xbox. Telephone service is complicated. Maybe Microsoft would partner with a company such as Vonage, but they certainly aren't the easiest to work with.

Music
A neat capability, much like the QCast Tuner for the PlayStation 2. Consumers have shown little willingness to pay for this, however, as they're accustomed to free players. Service like Rhapsody and pressplay would undoubtedly benefit from freedom from the shackles of the PC, but their revenue shares are micenuts compared with Microsoft's costs. Given the current crop of LAN-to-stereo bridges, like the AudioTron and the SimpleFi, the Xbox does stand out, but this advantage may be gone in a few months when the likes of Linksys launch its low-cost device.

Movies
One of the reasons for Movielink's slow start is the simple fact that most consumers prefer to watch movies on their TVs, not their PCs. This problem is defeated with the Xbox in the mix, as it enables high-quality video output to the TV. Perhaps Microsoft plans to download the top 3-4 pay per view movies to the Xbox hard drive each night (Movielink movies are 500-600MB each, so they would easily fit on the 8-9GB Xbox HDD), so when the consumer chooses a popular movie playback begins immediately. The margins on this business are low, too. And Microsoft will compete with existing TV-based PPV and Video on Demand, which is slowly rolling out to cable systems. This makes a tough market even tougher.

Summary
Low margin + low penetration services will not lift the Xbox to profitability. Great games will. Strong Xbox Live games will give customers a reason to pay $9.95 a month for the service. Hopefully the EA/AOL exclusivity deal will end soon, so Xbox can benefit from good sports titles. Until the games improve, Microsoft is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. They have the cash to be patient, however.

Disclaimer: I work fo

For 'media box' type work, nothing really beats the Qcast player for Playstation 2. For the cost of a used PS2 (around $100) a network adapter (around $20) a Component video cable ($19) and Qcast itself ($49) you can have an unbeatable media machine, anywhere you have a network connection. Want wireless? Use a cheap 802.11 bridge to bring the media to wherever you want it. I can say from personal experience that the quality is top notch, even at wireless speeds across a house, when streaming high or low compression video. Ive watched entire movies wirelessly with absolutely no glitches. The component output for the PS2 is something really hard to come by on any video card for a PC, and it has 5.1 fiber output if plain ol stereo sound isnt good enough for you. All in all, it delivers better quality for a lower price than any PC based solution. And you can play GTA on it! Just my 0.02, and no i don't work for BroadQ (maker of Qcast.) BroadQ

Here. Looks to me like they're attributing the source they use and complying with the GPL just fine. Maybe you should do some research before you claim that a company is stealing things. That's called libel.

The Linux server (I guess the others, but haven't tried them) is written in Java. For me not 100% stable -- seems to fall over after a while, and sometimes hangs.

The client software hangs more often than it should. Not that often, but a lot more often than you're used to seeing your PS2 hang.

The spec details you're after are here.

Haven't tried a lot of video. Played around with some DivX exports from Premiere that were fine, but I'll let someone else give useful detail. Overall the reviewer has it about right. It supports the PS2 DVD remote, and is a lot easier and cheaper than setting up a PC to do the same thing. But it suffers from some useability issues. Not being able to edit a playlist while playing is a little annoying, but the start up is a much bigger problem. I find that several minutes to first song is a big drawback, and means that it gets used a lot less frequently than it might. That includes loading the disc to boot QCast and choosing a playlist.

I bought mine about two weeks ago.

One glaring flaw in the Review: If you hit R2/L2 you can page up and page down on long lists of files, making scrolling long directories painless.

In general I've loved it so far. It saved me the hassle of setting up something to stream MP3's from my computer.

I run mine over 80211b and it works fine. I've watched full length Divx movies and they streamed fine.

Audio wise it's as good as your MP3's.

There are several UI problems and most are noted in the review. Not being able to play songs while you build your list is a bad one, but according to Qcast there's nothing they can do about it. I'd also really like to be able to watch slideshow's while MP3's play but that's a later release according to broadq.

Speaking of
BroadQ they maintain an excellent forum, which is regularly read by developers.

One thing the reviewer failed to mention is that the software is updateable remotetly. A new version is set to ship "any day now". Any updates that require a new cd broadq has provided free of charge to existing users.

I love mine, and use it all the time. Just for streaming MP3's around it would be worth the $50 bucks, but being able to watch my family guy episodes on a full TV makes it a bargain. If you have an internal network and a PS2 save yourself the hassle of trying to build a box yourself and just drop the $50 bucks on this thing. It will be well worth it.

I haven't actually tried it, but most of the reviews seem pretty good. It looks like for about $300, you can access all of your multimedia from a PS2. QCast

I haven't gotten it (yet), but QCast for PS2 with online adapters looks like a good way to access networked digital media. Now I just wonder if I can leave my PS2 online all the time without getting annoyed by the fan noise. :p

http://www.broadq.com for details

If you already own a PS2 and a network adaptor, you can play media files on your TV with Q-Cast Tuner. However, this does require you to have your PS2 on the LAN with your PC. The files are streamed off of your computer to the PS2 which then decodes them and plays them on your TV.

I havent tried it wireless, but I seem to recall there's a thread on their forum around here

Yep, I use the BroadQ Qcast Tuner almost daily to play Ogg Vorbis files from my FreeBSD box. It also can serve files from Windows, OS X, and any *nix that has a JRE and X.

I use the BroadQ Qcast Tuner on my PS2 serving files off of a FreeBSD machine almost daily. With the Linux Binary Compatability stuff installed, you just install the JRE through the ports collection and it works. Really well, in fact.

I highly recommend BroadQ's software. It uses a Sony Playstation to play MP3's DivX's etc over a home network. Its a work in progress but it rocks! BroadQ.co

Just get a Sony ethernet adapter for it. And this software ($$$). Granted, it won't record shows, but it will play your divx, mpg, mp3, etc.

Although slightly off topic, if you are interested in something like this for your PS2, check out the broadq QCast Tuner for PS2. It too plays MP3s, OGG Vorbis, DiVX/xvid, MPEG-1, etc. It doesn't require a mod chip, which is nice, but it does requre the ~$40 PS2 network adapter. The developers are also extremely active on the forum, making it simple to get help.

And no, I'm not a broadq employee, I'm just a really satisfied customer.

-Steve

Although slightly off topic, if you are interested in something like this for your PS2, check out the broadq QCast Tuner for PS2. It too plays MP3s, OGG Vorbis, DiVX/xvid, MPEG-1, etc. It doesn't require a mod chip, which is nice, but it does requre the ~$40 PS2 network adapter. The developers are also extremely active on the forum, making it simple to get help.

And no, I'm not a broadq employee, I'm just a really satisfied customer.

-Steve

Something like that: QCast Tuner from boardq. But there's the but.

You need your pc and software hardware to do dvd backups.. And you need playstation2 AND network adapter.

Well, there's tons of pvr projects that will eventually do pretty much anything with given media.

Use your PS2, or use the QCast Tuner

But its called QCAST
And it does much more than Divx

For those who don't know what it is called, here is a link to BroadQ's QCast Tuner. It plays Divx, MPEG, digital music, plus shows jpg slide shows.

Already doing this for the PS2: BroadQ

There is already a cool media player for the PS2 called the Qcast tuner. I beta tested this program and could do everthing but record TV. I have a all-in-wonder in my linux media server that takes care of that. The server software they wrote works on Linux/Mac/Win. It can play MPEG-1,2,4 and DivX 3.11-5 video. Also plays MP-3 and Ogg audio (no WMA, what a pity). Works with Cat 5 and 802.11 a,b,g. It also plays audio through the S/PDIF port on the PS2. It rocks

http://broadq.com/

$200 for ps2 $50 for broadq's qcast tuner which plays DivX, mpg, ogg, mp3, jpg, etc.. and works great link doh! for got the $40 for the network adapter... so the broadq solution is a little bit more expensive, but playing games as well makes up for it..

If you want to access stuff on your PC, and you have a Playstation with ethernet adaptor, go to

BroadQ

It's software for your Playstation and your PC that lets you play movies and music on your entertainment system. All that stuff is stored on your PC.

If you've got a Playstation, no need to go buy a separate box to do it.

This little doo-dad doesn't actually sound like it's a PVR - streaming content off your computer is great, but it never says anything about getting TV onto your hard drive.

If you already have a PlayStation2 (that doubles as a DVD player), why spend $250 on more hardware when you can use this: QCast Tuner? It'll record TV onto your computer's hard drive and pull media off of it, too. All you need is the Sony Network Adapter... wireless network option is up to you.

No, I don't work for BroadQ, but I do own it and it's a great product. Who needs to spend more cash on extra hardware?

Instead, why not just spend $50 bucks and do this on your Playstation 2?

Q Cast Player

This thing rocks, by the way.

Or get a PlayStation 2 and Qcast Tuner software for $50 (one-time) from BroadQ. Total cost $250, if you don't already have a PS2. I suppose that TiVo might have an interface advantage depending on how they implement it, compared to loading a disc in the PS2. But then the TiVo won't do digital video as well as photos and .mp3 -- the Qcast Tuner will.

If you don't want to deal with modchips and swapping you can get a Qcast for $50 (thinkgeek sells 'em too) and play MP3, OGG, MPEG and DivX files streamed from a Windows, Mac OS X or Linux system over the network.

Thats why my kids received a PlayStation 2 instead of a upgrade to thier PC this year. The games cost the same and thier are no messy patches or driver upgrades to fvck with.

Also, with the QCast it can double as a Video/MP3 client on my home network ;^)

Slashdot definitely has a liking for "Microsoft gets screwed" news but I think that in this case it has more to do libre software.

The QCast Tuner costs $50 and the XboxMediaPlayer project is GPLed.

Uh, explain to me why this causes a huge fuss on /., but articles about Qcast for the PS2 (which is four months old and cool as shit) never see the light of day? Qcast just added Ogg support as well. Supports everything The xbox MP does, plus xvid. Has supported AC3 for a few months.

This isn't a grouse, just wondering why a Media Center for 30 million+ installed PS2s holds little interest, but an unavailable hack of xbox that does the same thing is big news.

Anyone?

Has any been able to do anything else with the network adapter besides games?

Well, Frequency Online seems like a glorified chat-room. Okay, just kidding, it's a good game, but it seems like most folks who join the servers just want to chat.

As someone's already pointed out, there's the QCast Player. And the PS2Linux kit (which now, I believe, comes with the same PS2 NA that's in stores instead of the slightly modified, but still fully functional, one). Sony's supposedly got someone working on a web-browser type thing, but web-browsing on a TV doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I saw EyeTV at Macworld NYC during the summer. I had my credit card out to buy one, but saw the MPEG1 quality, and put the card away.

I have a couple of Tivos and the EyeTV quality is well below even the lowest quality I can get on my Tivo. I would rate it at about the same level as a decent telesync of a film...no better. I asked why no MPEG4/Divx compression and didn't get a decent answer.

Also, I don't want to watch TV off my Mac, even on a Cinema Display. I could stream it to my tv using Qcast but then what's the point? Might as well just buy a Tivo.

I'm the most gullible of early adopters and I didn't buy EyeTV. Hopefully it'll improve in time.

I did however buy the very cool Powermate volume knob that they were using to control EyeTV. That's turned out to be a neat gadget, and really nice for film editing.

Uh, sorry...the link changed last night. Doh.

This is the right one.

Sorry.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (I've posted on this software a few times and even tried to post it to /. as a story but ...oh well.)

Qcast is the media server people are wishing they had in a few dozen posts here. You don't need to add a hard drive to a DVD player...all you need is a PS2.

Qcast is a two-disk installation. Install Disk 1 on your PC, loaded up with movies and tunes (mpeg1,2,4, xvid, divx, svcd, vcd, mp3.) Then load Disk 2 on networked PS2 (cheaper than Sampo DVE631CF and hard drive) and bingo! You have a spiffy Flash interface on the PS2 for all your PC-based content, which then streams over your network on demand.

No taking apart DVD players..if you need more space, add an IDE or Firewire drive to your PC in about five minutes.

And even better...you can use multiple PS2s to stream different content from the same PC all over the house. Not only that but you can point the PS2 to multiple drives. This blows away a HD-equipped DVD player, since the PS2 plays DVDs natively anyway.

Disclaimer: I neither work for, nor have any financial interest in Qcast. I just think it's cool as shit and no one knows about it. Well you do now.

Just do what I did. When out and bought the network adaptor for my PS2 and bought a copy of this software: broadq Now, I download the videos I want to my linux box, or setup jobs to capture when I'm not around, boot the PS2 and watch them on my TV. It's like Tivo, only I have lots more control and it'll play DivX, Mpeg(1,2,4),mp3,etc... Also, instead of making VCD's, when I want to archive something, I just write it onto a cdrw and throw it on the shelf...

"What this is lacking is a internet/TV convergence device that lets people (especially non-techies) transfer the download to their TV. The lower resolution of a television compared to a monitor will help to cover up the artifacts and other low-quality issues. Sitting 8+ feet from the TV helps too. If WB leased a webtv-like broadband device with a HD big enough to hold a couple movies along then I'd be all over it."

Check this out. It's exactly what you ask for: a insanely simple to use Internet/TV convergence device, which, using the PS2 as an interface, streams mpeg, mp3, divx , xvid and more over your local LAN from your PC. I've been playing with it for over a month and it's beta but cool. Works on Linux, Doze and OSX.

I submitted a story on Qcast to /. September 16, but it got rejected. Ah well.