The PS3, if you didn’t already know, is certainly useful for more than just playing games.  I use it as a media centre for watching RIPs of DVDs I’ve watch and it’s my DVD/Blu-ray player as well.

There many ways to setup a UPNP media server and in my case I have an older Mac Mini (G4) with a large 500Gb USB drive hooked to it.

I used to use TwonkyVision and remember what a pain it was to both setup and keep happy.  When I went looking for an alternative Nullriver happened to put out a new product called MediaLink.  I’ve been using it for some time now and decided to post about it because McQ is not too happy about TwonkyVision either.

As you can see in the image I’ve put on my post, it’s just a simple preferences panel application and has never failed me.  Well, once in a while it’s not running for some reason after startup but I usually check that if I’m rebooting my Mini (not very often of course).

I have my iTunes copied onto that machine and all the album art and playlists are picked up by MediaLink.  I don’t have my massive iPhoto collection on there so I just hand craft particular groups and put them in a photos directory.  The video content is split into TV and Movies and within the TV folder there’s folders of show names.  In Movies it’s separated by genre (sci-fi, family, etc).

On the PS3 it shows up as some cryptic name but works so what do I care. You just navigate into the folder you want and start playing.

So for $20 it’s a really good deal in my opinion.  They update it fairly regularly however I have no clue what they’re doing to it because there’s no release notes or web page describing whatever they’re doing.  You can try before buying too.  What are you waiting for, oh buying a Mac Mini first, right....