Stream videos, photos and music to PS3, Xbox 360, and other supported UPnP/DLNA devices.
Playback allows you to share your media with any Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or other UPnP compatible device. It automatically integrates with iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture, Adobe Lightroom 2 & 3, Photobooth, EyeTV, and more. You can share all content from these applications or choose specific playlists and albums. Playback can also share media stored in folders or even make entire disks available to your Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. By default, Playback will share almost any content on your system. No configuration required. If you prefer to tinker, you'll appreciate Playback's built-in access control list (ACL) and bandwidth throttling. The ACL allows you to control which devices have access to your media. Bandwidth throttling limits the transfer rate from your computer to your UPnP device so others on your network can still surf the web and check their email. Of course, if speed is your thing, we've got that too. Playback was engineered for extreme speed. Your media is served via nginx. Nginx is known for its high performance, stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. Nginx powers several high-visibility sites, such as WordPress, Hulu, Github, Ohloh, SourceForge and TorrentReactor. Other features include Growl notifications, on-screen thumbnails powered by QuickLook.
Up and working in a minute
Smart access to mac files via the Xbox, included mac organizational folders
Video streams fine even over old wifi set up
Cons
haven't found any yet
Summary
Just got my son and xbox 360 for Christmas and was upset to find out you can't copy video, photos or images to the xbox's hard drive. Only solution for playing back many family-related images and video was to find a streaming solution. Tried Window Media Center but most of my files are on my mac, and I wanted to stream directly from the mac. Did research and bought this program. It's fantastic. Installed and immediately up and running on my iMac without any tweaked needed. Xbox immediately recognized my mac and I was streaming photos, my video collection and my iTunes music. Even better, the software retains Apple "categories" like Albums, Artists, Genre, etc for itunes and "Events" in iPhoto. So Playback is iLife friendly. Couldnnt have asked for an easier or better implemented software. made MY Christmas!
Works better then I expected
EPerez37
Pros
Works Great streaming Media from my Mac to my PS3, Easy to set up and use.
Cons
Not all media is supported yet but hopefully updates will fix that.
Summary
Yazsoft Playback works great streaming Music, SOME Movies (hopefully that will change with future updates) and your photos from Mac to your PS3 and XBox and you can copy your media to the PS3. Playback is very user friendly and Yazsoft's costumer service is very helpful.
Absolutely Maddening
steelsmith80
Pros
Pride of ownership
Cons
Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe I'm not computer savvy enough, but if you'd got a macbook pro and an xbox 360, you'll hate life.
Summary
If you click on the "supported files" link in the software, you will get an article from FREAKING 2007 that shows a scattered list of file types that should work. Well folks, they don't. MKV files don't convert correctly and almost all downloaded .AVI files (xvid or otherwise) simply don't work on the xbox. If you like to cut yourself, buy this software.
Does not play a sufficient range of formats.
_nashyo_
Pros
It works.!
Cons
It costs.!
Summary
I'm sure that my content is protected. But I have used Connect360 to play some of the other movie files I have on my system, that this software could not.
UI good, worked for music, but not for video or TV
edarodriguez
Pros
The program has a very good interface, very Mac-like. Recognized my DLNA client immediately. Played iTunes songs.
Cons
Did not play video or pictures. It cost more than Twonky, which had a free license of 30 days rather than 7.
Summary
In a perfect world I may have ended up with the program rather than Twonky, because it was slicker looking, but the world of DLNA is far far from perfect. This was the first DLNA/UpNP compatible server that I downloaded and tried when I first attempted to connect my MacBook Pro to a LG 50PX950 that is DLNA enabled.
(I tell the story below not as a review of the software, because it was find, but to give a heads up to those trying the same thing.)
Playback recognized the TV immediately and showed thumbnails of my picture, music, and videos. However the TV would only allow me to play the music. Because this DLNA technology is fairly new, I think that there are still a ton of compatibility issues between clients and servers. So the problem with the media not play is probably neither the software's nor LG's. I chalk it up to new technology. I knew that when I set out to connect my computer to the TV wirelessly to stream media I was heading towards the deep end of the proverbially pool for a person of my middling technology savvy. I downloaded all the mac compatible servers, I could find to see which would work best. None was able to work perfectly with my TV. I finally chose Twonky for three reasons. First, it worked about as good as the others. It was fairly cheap at $10. And finally, and most importantly, I had thirty days of free use to see if I could get it to work. I know that getting it to work properly--if I could get to work properly would take a long time. I was able to finally make it work after much research on the web and various trial and error "experiments". In the end I had to edit entries in a client.db file that is part of Twonky when you unpackage it. I then needed to edit a line in database to allow it to transcode my jpegs in a format that the TV would recognize. What I changed is probably not really considered code, but it was a bunch of letters, separated by commas amongst a lot of other letters separated by commas. This was a first for me. So my conclusion is that none of this DLNA server software for Macs is really good right now. I am sure that in a few years all the compatibility issues will be worked out and it will work like you expect it to work.
Epilogue:
I started this project knowing that it would be time consuming and not certain to be successful. I also knew that an AppleTV would stream my media easier and probably better. I did it because I wanted to see if I could do it. If you don't want to deal with a lot of hassles, I would skip the DLNA functionality for now.
Simple yet very effective software
Ziutek--2008
Pros
Integrates perfectly with OSX. I am able to play movies, videos, and photos over my network using the WD TV live. Price is right as well.
Cons
None that I have yet to find.
Summary
If you want to access videos, audio, or photos on your Mac using the WD TV live, this is a very simple and cheap solution.
