How do I get the most out of the PS3?

I second http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/ as well, it is extremely simple to use. It does music, pictures, and videos, also the ones that your PS3 cannot decode (your PC/MAC does it instead). For games: - Uncharted 2 is the best third-person shooter on any platform right now IMO. Great online multiplayer as well. - Borderlands is "Diablo with guns". This can either be amazing or very poor. Has offline and online co-op. - Heavy Rain is a must, read about it on the internet, I absolutely adore it. - God of War 1 and 2 are sold together for 40$. Great action games. Note older-gen (PS2 graphics. Yet God of War 3 is just out and received rave reviews. - LittleBigPlanet is a great mutiplayer platformer. (Online and Offline). You can download millions (literally) of user-made maps. - You can get: Half-Life 2, HF2: Episode 1, HF2: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 on a single Blu-Ray for about 20$. - If you like tower defense games: Savage Moon, PixelJunk Monsters and Comet Crash are great. -Also, the PixelJunk downloadable games are pure (offline) multiplayer fun!

MKV files are the only one's I've had to transcode Strictly speaking, most mkv's don't need to be transcoded; they usually just need to have their audio and video streams extracted and repackaged as an avi. This usually takes maybe ten, fifteen minutes for a ~5GB 720p file. When they need to be actually transcoded, it takes hours.

I put entire TV series on a USB thumb drive, plug it in, and have a media library just sitting there waiting. As http://ask.metafilter.com/149418/How-do-I-get-the-most-out-of-the-PS3#2140332, streaming HD over wireless is not ideal, but with transcoding you can play essentially anything from a USB stick. Mkv2vob has been very reliable for me. Put video files in a folder titled "Video" so the PS3 will find them automatically. I use the same USB stick for music, via iTunes. You can drag songs directly out of the iTunes window onto the USB folder (titled "Music"). The playlist controls are very rudimentary, but it can be nice to just start it up and forget it, with the decent visualizations it does. You can plug in an iPod as well, though it doesn't seem to like the iPhone much. As for games, they were mentioned in both other threads, but Flow and Flower can never be recommended too often.

We watch hulu.com stuff on our PS3 via TVersity, a free download to the computers on our home wireless network. It also sends pictures, video, and music to our PS3. I like this program a lot. And our netflix downloading is seamless. After we activated an account, netflix sent us a DVD style disk. When it is inserted in the PS3, we can watch whatever is available on streaming netflix. (Since the netflix interface is not easy to search for particular items, we generally prefer the DVDs that come in the mail, however.) I love the PS3 for gaming, but it is worth it just for the quality of its DVD play.back. Everything looks and sounds better, whether or not it is blu ray.

Heavy Rain was fun, but has zero replay value. I thought Dragon Age: Origins got mixed reviews, but I loved Baldur's Gate & it's supposed to be a (single player) successor to that game, so it may get a look from me - I'd rather a 2 player (same console) version, though. I wasn't aware they'd made a Fallout for the PS3... I'd heard good things about the PS2 version. Does it really do multiplayer? Wikipedia says it's single player only. +1 Uncharted 2 as a good platformer. It's won all sorts of awards - might make sense to go through the first one, though. Again, mostly a single player affair. +1 God of War, +1 Little Big Planet (though it's a bit too cutesy for me - I prefer more of a plot & tougher challenges). +1 just download the demo from the Sony Store. Oh, and the Lord of The Rings game got mixed reviews & I didn't like the demo, but on second blush, it looks promising.

To be clear, you can't view the torrent file itself on the ps3, and the ps3 will not download the torrented files for you. You can view the resulting .avi or whatever after you've downloaded it to a pc. the PS3 does not play XVID transcoded avi files. Has for several firmwares. IIRC, it won't play xvid/divx if it was encoded with some advanced options, but I don't think I've seem more than one or two (out of hundreds) of divx/xvids that used those options.

Second the Netflix streaming. You get the DVD in the mail, and it lets you stream anything they have that is stream-able. Ours works flawlessly (internet connection is cable). If you have Windows 7, google for how to connect your PS3 to the Home Group on your computer. This will let you access music, photos, etc, whatever media you have on your computer.

I play video files off USB sticks or an external hard drive (connected via the PS3's mini-USB controller charging cable). As ROU_Xenophobe said, the PS3 plays nearly any downloaded file without problem. MKV files are the only one's I've had to transcode, but there's solutions pointed out in this thread. Note that the PS3's XMB (cross media bar) is a bit clumsy when searching through external drives. Scroll to the media type (audio or video) you want, scroll down to the drive, press triangle and choose 'Display All'. The folders on the drive appear and you can browse through to the correct location. If the PS3 can play the file under the media type you've selected, the file will appear. In other words, audio files won't appear if you're searching in the video XMB menu. Also, if you have a lot of subfolders, like folders for each artist under a general 'Music' folder, the PS3 takes an extremely long time to display all of the folders. Some don't appear. I've had trouble trying to listen to a specific artist off of my external HD. Netflix streaming has been good, not great, for me. I've had no problems with the actual playback, but several times I've had to re-connnect my system to my Netflix account. Just a minor PITA. I've also had problems with some titles not appearing in the instant stream queue on the PS3 while they DO appear online. FWIW I connect the PS3 directly to my router, which connects to the cable modem. PSN demos are awesome, as are the actual paid downloadable games. Nthing the Pixel Junk games (Monsters, Eden, Shooter, Racer) and Fat Princess. There's hundreds of games and dozens of them are VERY good. Depending on http://us.playstation.com/support/answer/index.htm?a_id=232 you bought, you may be able to play PS1 and PS2 games. That, obviously, opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

I've gotten a hell of a lot of bang for the buck out of my PS3, and I got bored rather quickly when I used to have a PS2 and regular Xbox. It's indeed a great DVD player and decent living room web surfing device. Not only do Blu Ray discs look great, as a networked player, you get features on the discs that many cheapo blu ray players can't use. As testament to its' quality, I believe the PS3 is the Criterion Collection's reference player of choice. Honestly I haven't done too much with the 'media server' aspects of it other than throw in a DVD-R of mp3s and let it play. I've been meaning to try Pandora and Last.fm and see if that stuff works well, but haven't yet. Maybe it's my age, patience, or whatever, but I've been MUCH more successful at playing through, finishing, and enjoying games for the PS3, too: My Faves: Metal Gear Solid IV: This is quite a game. I'm a fan of the series and Kojima's other stuff, but this one was really awesome. I think it's priced at a 'Greatest Hits' level now, and I'd say it's a must buy to experience it, but ultimately it's a Kojima project, and he does things his way. It's really, REALLY heavy on cutscenes, though. Especially the like, what, hour and a half of straight cutscenes at the very end? Not kidding, it's long. Fallout 3: Bought this the same day as the PS3. Another series I am fond of. This is pretty excellent with some weak points. VATS (you can play it as an FPS or not, VATS is the alternative to raw FPS'n) is a great feature for those burnt out on FPS like me. I loved the open ended ness of this game and the plot you could dip in and out of. Unfortunately, I never finished every quest in the game because the DLC (which was so-so) made it very buggy. Heavy Rain: I think I probably bought my PS3 for this one, ultimately. It was announced like four years ago and probably was one of the things I was really impressed by, demo-wise, coming out for the machine. This is like, one of my favorite video game experiences, period. I don't think I've ever played a game from beginning to end in almost ONE SITTING. It probably took about 10 hours, though I did break for dinner. You're either going to hate this or it will absolutely blow you away. I'll agree, once I played it through once, and then replayed some stuff to get a 'better' ending, I was DONE. It's a really emotionally draining experience, it's hard to explain. You kinda don't want to go through it again, yet it was incredibly enjoyable? I'll hang onto it until all of the DLC is released, though. Not a fan: Bioshock: I bought this because it was so praised. I found it very weak. Enemies irritated me, plot was stupid, ending was stupid (I was given the bad ending because I harvested ONE little sister and saved the rest). Sound design annoyed me (like, when there's 8 enemies all chattering plus those machines, plus a voice over, it's like, jesus. headache). Sorry, everyone. Grand Theft Auto IV: I was very let down with this after being enamoured with Vice City when it was released. I think, ultimately, it's just more of the same, with somewhat improved graphics (though not up to par for other PS3 games I thought). Thought the storyline, characters, etc were all kinds of hokey. Missions are the same old crap. Was just too bored to get very far into it. Maybe someday. Call of Duty 4: Not terrible, but I got bored with this one early on. Some improvements to the typical FPS thing, but it's like, eh. I'm just not much of an FPS'r, gave it a chance. Unreal Tournament (or whatever it was): Bargain bin. Not terrible, not great. See above. The Jury is still out: Final Fantasy XIII: Another series I like, but am not obsessed with. Fantastic graphics. Certain things about it bother the shit out of me (on rails, no towns, limited grinding, scarce items, hours upon hours of 2-person partying) and certain things I like (combat system is different and rewarding when you figure out how to beat a foe). I'm a little more than half way finished. Little Big Planet: I can see the appeal. This game is insanely cute. I'm not sure I'm the target audience whatsoever. I've tried to like it, but I think you have to be a pretty big platform fan to truly enjoy this as an adult. Opening credit sequence is amazing. Honestly, this feels like a Wii thing with thousand-times-better graphics.