Impressed by Mezzmo, have several questions!

[GrantCaptain]

I'm a longtime PS3MediaServer user that recently started looking elsewhere for streaming support. I was forced, for various reasons, to switch from a lovely Gigabit Ethernet network to a Wireless N network. This effectively took my throughput from somewhere around 700 Mb/s to about 70 Mb/s. I was unable to fit a 1080p PS3MediaServer stream inside 70 Mb/s, but Mezzmo came out the other side with no problems!!

I'm very excited about Mezzmo, and as soon as my trial expires I intend to purchase it, but I have a few questions!

First, the test videos I refer to below are completely uncompressed MKV files containing the main movie title (as well as a 3/2.1 audio audio stream) from Blue-Ray disks. These files are each around 22-30 Gigabytes on my hard drive.

1. I watched the network traffic coming out of Mezzmo while streaming Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon and The Day After Tomorrow, and it barely seems to climb above maybe 20 or 30 Mb/s. How is it streaming 1080p video at this rate when PS3MediaServer was eating up around 90 Mb/s? I assume it is because PS3MediaServer was sending the fully uncompressed H264 video from the MKV file over the network, whereas Mezzmo is transcoding it first, but is that all there is to it?

2. What is the difference between the Playstation 3 profiles? It defaults to "Playstation 3 (Compatibility)" but what about "Playstation 3" and "Playstation 3 (No DivX)"?

3. When I was streaming using PS3MediaServer, my audio receiver was getting DTS 5.1 audio (or maybe it was DD 5.1, can't quite remember), whereas when I stream with Mezzmo, I'm getting Multi Channel In PCM. I think the difference here is that the PS3MediaServer was sending the raw bitstream, whereas Mezzmo is transcoding the audio stream and sending 6 channels to the receiver. Is this correct? Is one method more ideal than the other?

Thank you for your time!

[Paul]

Hi GrantCaptain,

Thanks for your questions. Some answers:

1. You are most likely right Mezzmo server may be transcoding your MKV on-the-fly whilst streaming it. I assume you are streaming to your PS3. PS3's don't play MKVs natively, so they must be transcoded (either on-the-fly or pre-transcoded). The difference between Mezzmo and PS3MS is probably that Mezzmo is reducing the video bitrate when transcoding into the new compatible format.

2. We have found that PS3s can be slightly different in the various regions around the world, so we have a few device profiles to support them. "Playstation 3" has full support for the formats that we know of (including DivX). If your PS3 does not have DivX support, then choose "Playstation 3 (No DivX)" as it does not stream DivX files natively and will transcode them. If you experience streaming/incompatibility problems, then try "Playstation 3 (Compatibility)" as this has a base set of formats and attributes that should work with all PS3s.

3. Mezzmo server will transcode the audio channel inside your MKV into multi-channel AC3. There's nothing wrong in doing this since you are maintaining your multi-channel audio for your home theater and your computer seems fine to transcode it on-the-fly.