Simple Media System for PlayStation 2

SMS turns a bone-stock PlayStation 2 into a media player. It plays video (DivX / XviD / MPEG-4 Part 2 and MPEG-1/2), audio (MP2/MP3, AAC, AC3, FLAC, OGG and WMA) and pictures (JPEG), with soft subtitles and M3U playlists — read from just about every storage device the PS2 can reach: CD/DVD, USB, MX4SIO microSD, the internal HDD (APA and exFAT), i.LINK, MMCE (SD2PSX / MemCard PRO2), SMB shares and the UDPFS network drive. No HDD, no network adapter, no chip required.

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9storage backends

1024 pxper-axis source limit

640×48030 fps hardware baseline

MX4SIOplayback — a first

ℹ What SMS is (and what this build is)

Simple Media System (SMS) is a free, open-source media player for the PS2, originally written by Eugene Plotnikov (2001–2005) and maintained since by the PS2 homebrew community. Its party trick has always been playing good-resolution video with sound on an unmodified console straight off a burned disc — no hard drive, no network adapter. This documentation covers an enhanced fork that adds first-class MX4SIO microSD playback, exFAT support on the internal HDD, i.LINK and MMCE devices, a fully on-screen network/SMB setup, the UDPFS network drive, DualShock 3/4 support and a refreshed look — while staying a stock-console media player at heart. The Getting Started guide gets a file playing in minutes; the sections below are the deep reference.

What this build adds on top of SMS

MX4SIO microSD playback — video and audio play smoothly from a microSD in an MX4SIO (SIO2) adapter, with its own device icon and an Autostart MX4SIO toggle. This is the headline feature — see MX4SIO.
Internal HDD, exFAT and APA — read media from a modern exFAT drive over ATA (BDM) as well as the classic APA/PFS SMS_Media partition. See Internal HDD.
i.LINK (IEEE 1394) storage — mount a FireWire drive as a game/media source. See i.LINK.
MMCE devices — browse media from an SD2PSX or MemCard PRO2 in the memory-card slot (mmce0: / mmce1:). See MMCE.
UDPFS network drive — browse a real PC folder as udpfs: through PS2-Servers UDPFSD; boot, playback and clean exit are hardware-confirmed. See Network Setup.
On-screen network & SMB setup — configure your IP and connect to a Windows / Samba share entirely from the pad, with a real on-screen keyboard — no pre-made config files to hand-edit. See Network Setup.
DualShock 3 & 4 — wired USB and Bluetooth controller support, including in-app Bluetooth pairing. These paths stay on USB and do not contend with MX4SIO on SIO2.
Native MP4 playback — MPEG-4 Part 2 mp4v video with AAC audio, now included in the hardware test matrix. H.264/H.265 remain unsupported.
Clock redraw reliability — status rendering now waits for the pending VIF1 DMA before resuming the clock, preventing doubled or fragmented digits after menus and playback.
Settings that save anywhere — configuration persists to the memory card or to the device SMS booted from (USB, HDD…), so a memory-card-less setup keeps its settings. See Settings.
A refreshed theme — new desktop artwork and device icons, on top of the existing .smi skin engine. See Themes & Skins.

Playback support and exact limits

There are two useful boundaries: what the current source accepts, and what has been confirmed at full speed on real hardware. SMS rejects video when either dimension exceeds 1024 pixels, but that is an input ceiling rather than a promise that every 1024×1024 encode will be real-time.

Property	Current support / limit
Video codecs	MPEG-4 Part 2 / ASP (DivX, Xvid and Microsoft MPEG-4 v3); MPEG-1; MPEG-2
Video files	AVI (`.avi`, `.divx`, `.xvid`), MP4 (`.mp4` with `mp4v`), MPEG program stream (`.mpg`, `.mpeg`)
Video dimensions	Width ≤ 1024 and height ≤ 1024
MPEG-1/2 frame rates	23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60 fps
Standalone audio	MP2/MP3/MPA, Ogg Vorbis, WMA v1/v2, AAC Main/LC and HE-AAC/SBR, AC-3 and mono/stereo FLAC
Container / file limits	8 streams maximum; 32-bit file addressing (individual files smaller than 4 GiB); compressed packets up to 2,097,088 bytes for video and 524,224 bytes for audio
Unsupported video	H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, VP9 and AV1. Supported audio in such a file may still play without video.

✓ Hardware-confirmed baseline

The complete generated test pack has been exercised on a real PS2. Confirmed video cases include Xvid AVI at 640×480, 30 fps and 1.5 Mbit/s; MPEG-2 PS at 640×480, 30 fps and 2.5 Mbit/s; MPEG-1 PS at 640×480, 30 fps and 1.15 Mbit/s; and mp4v + AAC MP4 at 640×480, 30 fps, 1.5 Mbit/s. MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA v2, FLAC, AC-3, M4A/AAC, ADTS AAC and MP2 standalone audio also passed. H.264 and H.265 video remained unsupported as expected. See Video Playback and Audio & Playlists for the full profiles and the distinction between accepted and performance-tested limits.

Full reference

Jump straight in, or use the search box up top to find any device, format, or setting instantly (press / to focus it).

🚀Getting StartedFirst file, end to end 🎬Video PlaybackFormats, controls, the player 🎵Audio & PlaylistsMP3, FLAC, OGG, M3U 💬SubtitlesSRT / SUB, styling 💠MX4SIOmicroSD over SIO2 🔌USBFAT32 & exFAT mass storage 💽Internal HDDAPA/PFS & exFAT 🧩MMCESD2PSX / MemCard PRO2 🌐SMB NetworkWindows / Samba shares 🔧Settings ReferenceEvery menu & option 🎨Themes & Skins.smi skins & artwork 🛠️TroubleshootingWhen something won't play

SMS at a glance

Capability	What SMS does
Video	DivX / Xvid / MPEG-4 Part 2 (AVI or MP4), MPEG-1/2 (MPG/MPEG program streams)
Audio	MP2/MP3, AAC (ADTS, M4A or audio-only MP4), AC3, FLAC, OGG Vorbis and WMA
Pictures	JPEG viewer
Subtitles	External SRT / SUB, shown over video with adjustable size & colour
Playlists	M3U
Sources	CD/DVD (incl. CDDAFS & DVD-Video), Audio CD (CDDA), USB, MX4SIO, internal HDD (APA & exFAT), i.LINK, MMCE, SMB and UDPFS
Requirements	Any PS2 that can run homebrew. HDD and network adapter are optional — used only if you want those sources.

Where did SMS come from, and what is this fork?

Simple Media System was created by Eugene Plotnikov around 2001–2005 as, in his words, "the simplest DivX player able to play good-resolution movies at good frame rate on the unmodded PS2 without any extra equipment." It introduced CDDAFS — a trick for storing data on an audio CD so the PS2's copy protection accepts a burned disc — and a heavily PS2-optimised port of parts of FFmpeg using the console's IPU for colour conversion. The project was later adopted and modernised by the ps2homebrew community, gaining USB, HDD, network (SMB), a GUI browser, a skin engine and many more formats.

This documentation is for a downstream fork focused on storage breadth: it makes MX4SIO microSD playback work, adds exFAT/ATA HDD, i.LINK, MMCE and UDPFS devices, moves network and SMB setup fully on-screen, adds DualShock 3/4 support, and refreshes the look. It is a labour of love built on the work of many — see Credits & Sources.