I wanted to make a nice long post explaining everything about iTunes and iPods dealing with music and videos files being played back on the PS3. I know this won't become a sticky, I am fine with that. It is mainly so that I can link people to this post every time they ask a question about putting iTunes music on their PS3 consoles. So here is a list of the things that you should know:
1. The PS3 is not compatible with standard iTunes Store song purchases. These songs are encoded at 128kbps and contain DRM which restricts their playback to your computer and all your iPods. The only legal way to get rid of the DRM is to burn the songs to a audio CD and rip that audio CD to either the AAC, WMA, ATRAC3, or mp3 formats using any number of programs (although I don't recommend using the ATRAC3 audio format as it sucks).
2. The PS3 is compatible with iTunes Plus Store song purchases. These songs have a little plus sign next to them in the iTunes Store and they are encoded at 256kbps.
3. The PS3 is not compatible with standard iTunes Store TV show, music video, or movie downloads/rentals. There is no legal way around this.
4. The PS3 is compatible with iTunes Plus Store music video purchases. These videos do not contain any DRM and their audio is encoded at 256kbps.
5. The PS3 is not compatible with Apple's AAC tagging setup. This means that songs purchased from the iTunes Plus Store or songs ripped from an audio CD using iTunes AAC will not show information such as track artist, album, song title, year, genre, etc. on the PS3. This is the main incompatibility right here. Sony refuses to adopt to Apple's technology even though the rest of the market has. The newer Creative portable audio players, SanDisk Sansa players, Xbox 360, Microsoft Zune line, Nero's software, Core Audio AAC encoder (WinAmp), Helix AAC encoder (RealPlayer), over 100 car CD decks that play AAC data files, and many other portable audio players and software all use or are compatible with Apple's AAC tagging scheme. So the AAC community has pretty much embraced Apple's technology, everyone except Sony with the PS3. Sony's car CD decks and some of their portable players can display Apple AAC tags but neither the PSP or PS3 can. Why? Because Sony has come out with their own AAC encoder and tagging scheme. Their AAC files must be wrapped in a 3GP container instead of the usual mpeg-4 container.
6. The PSP received an update not too long ago making it compatible with Apple AAC tags. This feature might be coming to the PS3 with a future firmware update.
7. AAC songs stored on an iPod will show up as four random letters. This is because iTunes changes the name of all songs before it is copied over to an iPod, they did this to stop people from easily copying music from one computer to another. There is nothing you can do about the AAC files showing up like this until Sony supports Apple's AAC tagging setup.
8. It is possible to get AAC files to show up properly on the PS3 but it takes a lot of work. Someone on the hydrogenaudio boards formulated a solution but it isn't pretty. That and you must take the AAC audio out of its mpeg-4 container and put it in a 3gp container thus limiting its compatibility to a couple cellphones on the market and the PS3. The solution can be found here.
9. The PS3 is perfectly compatible with mp3 files ripped with iTunes or any various program so you won't have any issues with mp3 files, just AAC files.
10. The following iPods are compatible with the PS3 (keep in mind that the letter G stands for generation, it is not the capacity of the iPod): 3G iPod, 1G iPod mini, 4G iPod, 4G iPod photo, 4G iPod with color screen, 2G iPod mini, 1G iPod shuffle, 2G iPod shuffle, 2.5G iPod shuffle, 5G iPod, 1G iPod nano, 5.5G iPod, 2G iPod nano, iPod classic (only with PS3 firmware 2.1 and only for the 80GB and 160GB models), and the 3G iPod nano (only with PS3 firmware 2.1).
I have not heard anything about 120GB iPod classic compatibility or 4G iPod nano compatibility.
I will gladly update this post when I find out more information.
11. The following iPods are not compatible with the PS3: 1G iPod, 2G iPod, 1G iPod touch, 1G iPhone, iPhone 3G, and the 2G iPod touch.
12. You can use a compatible iPod to transfer over music and video content to the PS3 but it must be formatted for Windows use (FAT32) and you must have disk mode enabled.
13. You can either open up My Computer and create a MUSIC folder on the iPod or you can leave everything as-is and when you plug in the iPod go over to the music/video section, go down and highlight the iPod, press the triangle button, then select View All from the options listed.
14. Photos stored on iPods using iTunes cannot be tranfered over to the PS3 unless you allow for the full resolution versions to be copied on the iPod as well. Photos on iPods are actually converted to a Apple format to save space on the iPod. iTunes converts every picture down to a 640X480 image to save space.
15. You can open up My Computer and copy the full resolution images to your iPod as well, you don't have to use iTunes.
16. Most audio and video podcasts should work with the PS3 as long as they aren't protected, iTunes will tell you if they are protected or not. Just keep in mind that the same rules apply as with AAC audio files; information such as publisher, podcast series, etc. will not be displayed by the PS3.
17. The iTunes Store contains some mpeg-2 layer III podcasts, those should work with the PS3 and display everything as needed.
18. You cannot use iTunes to stream media to the PS3, it will stream media to Apple's devices such as the Apple TV or Apple's AirPort Extreme base station.
19. Playlists stored on the iPod are not compatible with the PS3. They will work with the Xbox 360 but not the PS3, Sony needs to give the PS3 the ability to read the iTunes file structure in order see playlists.
20. I recently discovered that a media server application known as TVersity can be used to transfer mp3 and AAC files to the PS3 over a wired or wireless network.
The reason why I mention this is because TVersity keeps the AAC track tags in tact without transcoding/converting the AAC files during the transfer.
You get a lossless transfer with track tags that are 100% compatible with the PS3.
This is the only way that I know to transfer AAC files to a PS3 with the track tags in place (unless you want to mux the AAC audio into a 3gp container and then convert the tags).
This will work for all DRM-free AAC files at any bitrate.
I have tested the iTunes AAC encoder and Nero AAC encoder, both work just fine and their tags show up.
Embedded album art (or album art added automatically through iTunes) won't be shown (due to the PS3's AAC tag limitations) but the rest of the information will show up.
21. It appears that Mac OS X users are in luck for media servers that will also convert the tags (a lossless process) of AAC files for PS3 compatibility.
Twonky 5 and EyeConnect.
I believe that Twonky is also available for PC users but it appears that the program isn't free.
Either way, Mac OS X users now have a couple of options for getting their AAC files on their PS3 while displaying the proper tags.
I think that is about it. I would appreciate the input if there is anything else. I just hope that I can link people back to this long thread anytime they have any questions about copying music from their iTunes library/iPods to their PS3s. I and many other users have typed out all this stuff numerous times, now I just want to take away some of that stress and just have everyone linked to this post.
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