[GRLUG] Linux on the PS3

[Olding, Jim]

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Second, mplayer is slow on the PS3.  I wanted to try Linux on the PS3 as
a cheaper alternative to buying a box beefy enough to transcode videos
on the fly.  No dice.  Checking /proc/cpuinfo revealed two 3GHz PPC
processors with Altivec support, which should make it more than a match
for my x86_64 Ubuntu install on my laptop (a dual-core Intel T2370
running at 1.73GHz).  At least, I thought it would.  I tried two
Nostromo Divx 5 AMVs (HypnoStrobe and HypnoStar) and an h264 AMV
(Woolongs for Nothing), and they both stuttered terribly.
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Sony unfortunately doesn't allow direct access to the video hardware
under Linux.  Everything runs under a hypervisor, so all you get is a
non-accelerated framebuffer device for X with no video overlay or
scaling support.

However, they do allow control of the SPE coprocessors.  I don't have
the links in front of me right now, but there is a custom build of
Mplayer that is linked against libspe, which allows for color decoding
and video scaling in hardware.  It worked fairly well for me, though it
did seem to make X a bit unstable.  I was able to watch 480p H.264
encodes without issue, though 720p was still pushing it.

Another option I've found to speed up Linux on PS3 was to create a swap
partition on a flash drive, and set that as a higher priority swap than
the disk swap.