[Tommy C]

Hi

I occasionally plug my sony mp3 player into my PS3 so i can listen to the music through my tv. I download my music from MP3fiesta.com and for some reason any mp3's i've down there don't work. The PS3 will play any mp3's that i've copied onto the mp3 player from CD but not the ones from MP3fiesta. The MP3's from MP3fiesta are unprotected and are at 320 kbps and my sony mp3 player has no problems playing them.

Anyone got any ideas what is going on?

[hamphlet]

Hello Tommy

I'm in the same boat. A percentage of my collection doesn't play on my PS3 either. I use TVersity but I know that's not the problem because I've tried running some of the problematic files from my Vista laptop & direct from an SD card in the PS3 itself. The PS3 simply says that "the data type is not supported."

I've tried a bit of research & there's some talk on the web that the latest firmware may be causing a problem. Also I've tried using an MP3 analyzing program to see if there is a common feature of the files which won't play, (bitrate, encoding type, etc). There isn't.

One thing that did strike me though Tommy, was when you mentioned that your files had come from MP3Fiesta & it occurred to me that 99% of the files I cannot get to play are from MP3Fiesta too. There are a few I've got from them which are OK but the rest cause this problem. So, I think we've hit on a commonality here. The problem is that these are supposed to be plain old MP3s which should play on anything, but they don't. Further research on the web reveals people having problems getting MP3Fiesta MP3s to play on their ipods.

So far I haven't found an answer, please let me know if you find one. It should be possible to re-encode the files and get them to play but that would mean a loss of quality.

Cheers

[Steven]

I would speculate Sony are protecting their business interests in not being overly quick in supporting music obtained from discount Russian websites. But that is only idle speculation on my part

LFC_SL

[hamphlet]

I would agree with you except for the fact that I have a lot of MP3s from MP3Search, Gomusic and MP3City, none of which exhibit the same problem. And anyway, how would Sony's software differentiate between MP3s provided by one web site & another?

[Steven]

Twas mere speculation But it is a curious coincidence nevertheless

[esspee]

I found this discussion by googling a similar question. My Ipod wont play any files from mp3fiesta, in addition it crashes all the time, after having transferred such files onto it, so that nothing else can be played on it either. I now have to go thru my collection and convert what i have downloaded from them to another format (by using a third party prog such as Media Jukebox, and converting from for ex 256 kbps to 192). i have tried this with a number of tracks and they are then playable. What worries me is the odd track i might have left on the ipod by mistake which may cause it to freeze in the future.
Like another poster, i have tried to diagnose fiesta files, but they dont seem to be marked with anything that differentiates them from other files. A mystery.

[becharab]

I believe the issue is related to some encoding options within mp3 which PS3 cannot decode.
I have a lot of mp3 files which I encoded from my CDs using Lame with the -r3mix switch... Nearly 75-80% of those cannot be played on PS3!

Looking forward for a firmware update that would solve the issue.. Would hate to have to re-encode EVERYTHING!

[longwori]

Sorry to bump this thread up but I have a fix that may help people getting the dreaded "data type is not supported" message for a chunk of their mp3 collection.

I have found that either of these solutions work:-

Using iTunes to fix the tags (please note I have not looked in depth to see if some ID tag data is lost by following this process so proceed at your own risk. This also looses the artwork but it can be retrieved again using iTunes however, after doing this it failed to display on the PS3 for some reason, even though it was present in iTunes. I can say that basic track, artist, album data is not lost:-

Highlight the single mp3 or your whole collection
Right Click to convert ID3 tags
Tick the box to change the version and choose v1.1
Click OK
Tell iTunes to re-fetch the art work as it disappears
Optionally - you can now convert the mp3 id tag version back up to 2.4 if you wish or just leave it at 1.1


OR


Download and run the open source MP3VAL and scan and then fix the mp3 or your whole collection. Note that on some errors that it finds in the scan, it warns that the sound quality could be degraded by the fix but on the test samples I ran it over I could not hear any difference. Also note that if you dont tick in preferences to delete backup files, you will end up with the mp3's duplicated as .bak files.

MP3val | Reviews for MP3val at SourceForge.net


Both options sorted the problems for me.

I hope this helps. It was driving me mad!