I found something called Twonkyvision, downloaded it, installed it, and after not too much time, my PS3 saw my iMac.

My PS3 has a Clark picture as its background pattern, but you can kinda see how the PS3 XrossMediaBar thingy works here. It sees the iMac under all three server categories, Music, Photos and Movies.

And you XMB your way through directories of files just as you would expect. The PS3 isn't entirely familiar with the Mac's method of directory distribution, so their is some weirdness... but I suspect the PS3 would act the same if it was browsing from a Windows machine. In this regard, the PS3 is clearly delivering a no-frills experience.

Naturally, it doesn't play every track, skipping over any that I bought through the iTunes Music Store with DRM. When you play a song, you get to watch the PS3's funky visualizer in action.

Browsing our photo collection works the same way. You can click through a slideshow of the entire iPhoto library with no trouble.

And here's me watching a downloaded bootleg of the banned TaleSpin episode "Flying Dupes." The PS3 doesn't play every single movie format, but it does play stuff we recorded on our digital camera, the video podcasts I've grabbed in iTunes, and most of the video game trailer type junk that I've downloaded over the years.

The thing is: I have no idea how this works. Twonkyvision is not running an app. After the initial install setup, it disappeared. The Twonky folder has nothing but an html link to my media server's setup page, which works like my router's setup page. I don't know enough after server creation to figure out what's going on, but it works, and the PS3 streams music tracks from a local IP far smoother than the Wii did.

Once Sony releases the add-on that turns PS3s into Tivos, I expect this sort of functionality will get a lot better.