The TVersity dev team has announced that their media server application is now running at version 1.0 RC2. Among other updates, this new build carries support for album art and support for individual Youtube videos. The rest of the changelog is available in the full article.

Download: TVersity 1.0 RC2

The TVersity team have announced that their media server app is now at version 1.0 RC1. While a changelog isn't available yet, the developers did note some of the features that come packed with this new release. You can view them over in the full article.

Download: TVersity 1.0 RC1

The TVersity Media Server has been updated to version 0.9.10.3, adding full support for Sony's PS3's firmware 1.8 and Microsoft's Spring Update for the Xbox 360. This should make the task of streaming media content to and from your consoles occur with fewer conflicts this time round.

Because of the length of the changelog, we've opted to give you some of the important points here, with the full changes visible at the read link below:

• Internet radio now works on the PS3. First playback attempt is likely to fail with an "Access to the media server has been denied" message (or "unsupported data" message), this is because the PS3 does not wait long enough for the data to be fetched over the Internet. After this failure, wait a few seconds and try playing this same station again. Assuming a connection to that station was possible, there won't be an error message, however the actual playback may take up to two minutes and more to start since the PS3 requires about 1 MB of data before it initiates playback.
• Internet video and transcoded content starts playing faster on the PS3 than it used to (saving about 5 seconds).
• Library refresh is now reflected on the PS3 and on any other device that checks the media server for updates (leaving a folder that has updates and then going back to it is required in order to see the changes).
• Issues with green bars or distorted colors when playing via PS3 were resolved.
• TVersity can now produce for the 360, WMV7 or WMV8 or WMV9 or MSMPEG4V3 once can switch between them by setting the wmProfile variable in config.xml to one of wmv7, wmv8, wmv9, mp43.
• TVersity can now encode to WMV in two methods, the first is via directshow (which always existed and still is the default) and the second is via ffmpeg. While for now only wmv8 can be produced via ffmpeg, it is slightly faster than directshow and hence it may prove beneficial in certain cases.
• Fix image browsing for the DirectTV HR20.
• Do not block every URL with two consecutive dot characters, but rather check if the canonical path is shared or not and based on this determine if to allow ot deny access to it. This solves some playlist related playback issues.
• The TVersity service is now starting more reliably during a reboot, waiting, if necessary, for the networking to finish initializing, instead of quitting if it is not already initialized when Tversity is started.

In any event, give the app a try, but don't forget to go over the full changelog as well. Enjoy!

Download: TVersity v0.9.10.3

 

QJ reader Ryvis informs us that the latest update to the TVersity Media Server is now available at the official site. Since it's been several months since we last posted about this, here's a little refresher: TVersity features on the fly transcoding to WMV for the Xbox 360, and allows for management of various media files. It can be used to create a personalized sequence of channels. It also serves the said media to networked devices in your home.

Version 0.9.10.1 was released on April 19, 2007, and as of this writing, folks from the official site, say that release notes for the new version are "coming soon." However, we do know that, in this version, video support for the PlayStation 3, the Wii, the Nokia N800, and video for the Sony PSP is featured.

Oh, and for you Wii owners out there eager to try this out, please be aware that the developers note that due to their inability to get a Nintendo Wii, support for the Wii is experimental and was only tested via a desktop version of the Opera browser.

For more information on the application, feel free to head to the official site via our "read" link below. If in case the download link that they've got isn't working that well, we have one for you folks to use below. Enjoy folks!

Download: TVersity 0.9.10.1

TVersity Media Server v0.9.9 (beta), which features on the fly transcoding to WMV for the Xbox 360, is now available. The TVersity Media Server allows the management of Internet and home media. It can also be used to create Personal Entertainment Guide (PEG) - personalized lineup of channels. It then serves this media to networked devices in the home as well as mobiles, making the media available anywhere, anytime and from any device.

Some of the features contained in the latest update are:

• On the fly transcoding to WMV for the Xbox 360
• Xbox 360 users can now play their entire media library with no need for MCE.
• Users of other devices that can play WMV can use this target format as an alternative to MPEG. While this will require faster machines to achieve the same quality, it allow for a higher quality per bitrate meaning that a slower home network can be used. This is important mainly for HD content streamed over wireless connections.
• Upconversion of videos to WMV HD can be done (on a fast machine) by tweaking the minVideoInfo in config.xml.

• Bug Fixes
• Bad Internet URLs no longer cause the server to hang for a long period of time (during which no other media could be played).
• UPnP connections from different networks or different subnets are now accepted when the server is configured to accept remote connections. This is as opposed to the past behavior where this configuration only affected the web based interface.
• The XML results returned by the server are now guaranteed to place the item/container title first as required by the UPnP standard.
• Some issues related to playing flash video files (FLV) that were downloaded by the server automatically were fixed.
• Temporary files that were mistakenly placed in the wrong folder are now stored in the Windows temporary folder.

To run TVersity Media Server you need the following minimum system requirements:

• Pentium III 700 Mhz or better (Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz with support for Hyper Threading is recommended)
• 128 MB of memory or more (512 MB recommended)
• 50 MB of disk space (At least 1 GB of free space is recommended for cache area of transcoded media)
• Windows XP or Windows 2000
• DirectX 9.0 or higher
• Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher
• Audio enabled on the computer running the software
• Flash version 7 for the GUI (MSIE version 6.0 required for full GUI functionality, other Flash enabled browsers such as Firefox will have most but not all of the functionality.)

If you want to try this free app, click the link below and you'll be directed to the TVersity site where you can get more details about TVersity Media Server v0.9.9 (beta).

Download: [TVersity Media Server v0.9.9 (beta)]

TVersity pioneered delivering Internet and home media to televisions, mobile devices, and the Xbox 360. The team's TVersity Media Center allows the Xbox 360 to access audio files in formats not natively supported by the Xbox 360 (like Vorbis and FLAC), play Internet radio stations, and access podcasts and photo feeds from photo sharing sites (like Flickr). All those can be done with the Xbox 360 via TVersity Media Server without a Media Center PC.

Now the the TVersity team has released a preview version of their patch for the on-the-fly transcoding feature of WMV files for the Xbox 360 console. Directions for installing the patch:

• Stop TVersity Media Server
  
• Extract the content of the patch zip file into the installation folder of TVersity (by default it is Program FilesTVersityMedia Server)
• Start TVersity, go to the 360 and browse your computer for videos. You should now see all the videos shared via TVersity plus all the online video URLs; and assuming your directshow has the filters needed to decode these videos they should all play on the 360.

The TVersity team has also released the following notes for the preview patch:

• Videos may take from 10 seconds to a minute to start. It depends on the bitrate of the video. The 360 requires 2 MB of data to be provided before it starts playback. For low bitrate content (like the stuff coming from the Net) it can take a minute to get to 2 Mbyte. For hi-def content it happens very fast.
• Transcoding in real time of high resolution material requires a very fast computer.
• The quality of the result of the transcoding, can be controlled via the TVersity GUI. Increasing the resolution will improve the quality but will require a faster machine. You can also experiment with the compression ratios and bitrates, these all affect the WMV transcoding just like they affect the MPEG transcoding that TVersity has been traditionally doing.
• You can even upconvert videos to HD if you wish and if you have a fast machine by tweaking the minVideoInfo in config.xml.
• If your computer is not fast enough, you can decrease the resolution and then try again or wait till the transcoding is done and then play it.
• Transcoded videos cannot be FF/Rewind during the transcoding (this is a 360 limitation) however after transcoding is done if you play some other video and then go back to the transcoded one, you will be able to seek in the file.
• It is highly recommended to upgrade to Windows Media Player 11 as it includes more recent and more stable encoders.

Download: [TVersity Xbox360 WMV Transcoding Patch]