The TVersity Development Blog

TVersity Media Server 1.9.6 is here!

2011-07-15T22:53:00.002-04:00

After a 6 months of silence we are very pleased to release the TVersity Media Server 1.9.6. This release has many improvements under the hood (in preparation for 2.0 which will have even more!)

With this release we have added support for many devices but the coolest ones got to be Android tablets running Android 3.0. You can now play all your personal and Internet media via the DLNA clients included on these tablets.

Here is a partial list of newly supported devices:

Added device profiles for Android 3.0 tablets (tested with Asus Eeepad Transformer TF101 but should work on other Android 3.0 tablets - let us know if this is not the case). Please note that transcoding for Android requires the Pro edition, and only Android 3.0 or higher is supported.
Added device profiles for WDTV Live.
Added device profiles for various Samsung TV models.
Added user contributed device profile for Logitech Revue.
Added user contributed device profile for Windows Phone 7.

Full release notes at:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Download it at:
http://tversity.com/download/

TVersity Media Server 1.9.3 is here

2010-11-26T19:27:00.003-05:00

We are delighted to announce the availability of the TVersity Media Server 1.9.3. This release includes dozens of bug fixes and improvements under the hood as well as some new features.

Here is a short list of the main new features:

Pro edition

The Pro edition will now take any HTML page and display its content on TV, not just pages from the sites that are officially supported. This may prove beneficial for some users in its current form, but will become much more valuable in future releases when we introduce the means to control the content of that page while its displayed on TV.
Playback of web content with Flash videos starts much faster.
BBC iPlayer is now fully functional.

All editions

New browser toolbar that includes a menu of supported web content sites (facilitates content discovery) and a “subscribe” button (enables 1-click addition of web content to the media library). This is useful mainly with the Pro edition since most of the content requires Pro but some sites (like YouTube and Funny or Die) work with the Free edition as well.
Monitor folders for changes and automatically reflect these changes in the media library - this feature is long overdue, we are glad it finally made it.
Up to 7x faster indexation of photos.
Indexation no longer hangs on corrupt AVI files.
Album art is now supported for WMA and not just MP3.
Simplify and improve the installation wizard.
Support more than one TVersity instance on the network with the Xbox 360.

See full list of changes at:

http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Get the new release at:

http://tversity.com/download/

On the fly transcoding for the iPhone/iPad is here

2010-07-14T00:16:00.004-04:00

We are pleased to announce the release of TVersity Media Server 1.9 featuring:

Pro Edition

Transcoding to H.264 is now supported and so is HTTP Live Streaming.
On the fly transcoding for iPhone/iPad/iPod touch including transcoding of local media and web content.
Full support for the iPad.

All Editions

Revamped iPod/iPad interface with support for:

Move to next item automatically when playing music.
Keyword search.

Add some user contributed device profiles (mainly Blu-ray players and connected TVs).

Transcoding of FLV with H264, and of MPEG2 transport streams is supported.

Once again we are pushing the boundaries of what a home media server is, and incorporating into TVersity features that are typically found in high-end enterprise level streaming solutions.

The videos embedded in this post are demonstrating some of the features above.

One byproduct of this release is that you now have more reasons than ever to go pro. In case you do not know what are exactly the differences, the table below may prove helpful:

	Free	Pro
On the fly transcoding	except iPad/iPhone/iPod	Yes
Transcode to H.264	No	Yes
YouTube	except premium web content	Yes
Hulu	No	Yes
Other premium web content	No	Yes
iPad/iPhone/iPod touch	Music and Photos	Music, Photos and Video
Xbox 360	Yes	Yes
PS3	Yes	Yes
Wii	Yes	Yes
Annual Maintenance	N/A	50% (optional for an additional year of free updates)

Full release notes are here.

Download latest version here.

Some cool things we are working on

2010-06-03T15:19:00.002-04:00

On-the-fly transcoding has always been one of the unique features of TVersity. Thanks to this features you could play almost any media on any supported device, disregarding the limitations of the device. For those of you that are new to TVersity, we introduced the notion of on-the-fly transcoding in our very first release back in 2005. In fact TVersity was the first home media server ever to offer that feature.

Today On-the-fly transcoding has become a must have feature for end users, and even Microsoft is doing some of that on Windows 7 - a great validation of our approach. Of-course the transcoding capability offered by Microsoft in 2010 and on Windows 7 only, is roughly equivalent to what we offered in 2005 for all Windows versions.

Since that time we have been constantly improving our transcoding engine and introduced things like on-the-fly transcoding of Internet content, transcoding for mobile devices and a server side web browser (which allows us to transcode full or partial content of a web page with Flash video and deliver it to your devices and your TV).

On the mobile front however, one important feature was missing - we could not transcode videos on the fly for the iPhone. Initially it was technically impossible to deliver media converted on the fly to the quicktime player built into the iPhone. However in iPhone OS 3.0 Apple introduced the notion of live HTTP streaming and suddenly it became possible to do that. The recent introduction of the iPad (which also supports live HTTP streaming) triggered us to leverage this capability.

Once again we are pushing the boundaries of what a home media server is, and incorporating into TVersity features that are typically found in high-end enterprise level streaming solutions.

The videos embedded in this post are demonstrating some of the features of our upcoming release:

Play any format on the iPhone or iPad without requiring a manual format conversion.

Utilize our server side web browser (based on Webkit and more specifically on Google Chrome / Chromium) to stream the content of any web page with Flash video to the iPhone and iPad. This of-course includes Hulu.

These features will be available in TVersity Pro 1.9 which is due in a few weeks, so please stay tuned.

TVersity v1.8 is here - Play any flash video site on your TV!

2010-02-26T03:08:00.003-05:00

Last year we made the first release of our Pro edition, with the intention to enable access to premium web content (including movies and full TV episodes). The big promise of this approach was the use of a full blown web browser running on your PC but displaying web content on your TV. Ultimately we want to let you access any website on TV with this technology, today we are taking another step in that direction by letting you access any video site based on Flash.

We are pleased to announce the release of TVersity Pro edition 1.8 featuring:

New implementation of the off-screen web browser based on Google Chromium for increased stability and speed. In fact we think this is approaching rock solid levels and can soon come out of beta (please be sure to let us know what you think).

We are opening the list of supported premium content sites so that advanced users can add new ones (only web pages with Flash video for now). If you are an advanced user and you are not intimidated by xml files then check osb.xml, it is pretty much self explanatory.

List of supported websites can now be updated without requiring a new release. From now on, new sites will be added and pushed to all users. (Advanced users should send us their additions since from time to time we overwrite osb.xml).

Full release note are here.

Download latest version here.

Have questions related to adding premium content sites? Need support for the Pro version? Try our new questions and answers tool available at: answers.tversity.com.

Access your media remotely via SureWest.net

2009-10-15T00:50:00.002-04:00

If you have been a TVersity user long enough, chances are that you were looking for a simple way to access your media on the go - after all this is one of the promises of TVersity. Until today, the only way to do it, was open a port in your home router/firewall, find out the IP address assigned to you by your ISP and point a remote web browser to this address. If you were lucky and your ISP was not blocking you, you could access your media wherever you were - a very liberating experience. For most of us however that was just too complicated.

Today, we are starting to change all that, we have come together with SureWest to offer a custom version of TVersity called SureWest Media Connect, that allows dead simple remote access (SureWest subscribers only at this point). This custom version of TVersity is fully integrated with the SureWest network and the MySureWest.net website, so all you need to do is enter your SureWest username and password during the installation of SureWest Media Connect, and then login to the SureWest portal from anywhere. No network configuration of any kind is required, just install the software and when you want to access your personal media remotely, simply login to SureWest.net. A widget on the home page will allow you to play your music and videos and see a slideshow of your photos from just about anywhere (see widget screenshot).

This new service is currently in Beta, so you will need to first join the Beta program by logging in at SureWest.net. If you are not a SureWest subscriber and yet you live in SureWests Northern California service area, there has never been a better time to switch... Other users who are interested in this service can help us bring it to them by contacting their ISP and suggesting TVersity remote access as a possible value-add service.

In case you are wondering how this remote access service relates to our core offering - access of personal and Internet media on TV, the basic idea behind TVersity is to empower users to access their favorite media on their favortie devices - be they TV connected or mobile. This is the first time however that we have been able to make remote access as easy as it needs to be. Needless to say SureWest Media Connect includes all the other features of TVersity and can therefore satisfy all your media serving needs.

"I am thrilled to be launching the SureWest Media Connect Beta! We have worked for some time with TVeristy to bring this service to our customers in a way that would make it easy to access and use. With SureWest Media Connect and the My Surewest website we are able to give our customers a truly unique service, the ability to remotely access and play all of the music, photos and videos stored on their home PC from anywhere on the world!" -Rick Vohs, Product Engineering Manager, SureWest

TVersity Media Server 1.7 is here

2009-09-11T12:16:00.002-04:00

We are pleased to announce the availability of the TVersity Media Server 1.7!

This a bug fix release with many improvements under the hood, the most notable ones are:

It is no longer required to disable UAC when using TVersity on Vista, in fact TVertsity works well with UAC. Furthermore, after the installation, no UAC prompts will pop out except when starting/stopping the sharing service.

It is no longer required to disable the SSDP service on Vista. Additionally, the discover-ability of TVersity on the network has been improved on all operating systems.

We had a problem for a while now with the GUI, where on some systems it would not connect to the media server. We were finally able to identify the root cause and believe that this release eliminates the problem completely.

In case you are curious, the source of the problem is related to incompatibility of multiple Flash Player versions running on the same system. It turns out that on some systems with newer versions of Flash (9 or higher) the Flash local storage was disabled for older versions (TVersity GUI was using Flash Player 8) and it was not possible to enable it. That in turn rendered the TVersity GUI useless as it relies on this local storage.

Full release notes are available here.

You can download the software here.

It is recommended for all users to upgrade as soon as possible, and if you have not yet paid for the Pro version despite the fact that you are using it, now is the time to purchase a license.

TVersity Pro 1.6 is out

2009-05-19T19:52:00.003-04:00

We are glad to announce the availability of the TVersity media server Pro 1.6!

This release is all about relaxing the system requirements for premium content (this includes Hulu, BBC iPlayer, and all the other supported premium content sites). Most importantly, a sound card with stereo-mix is NO LONGER REQUIRED, and the sound will not be heard on the PC running TVersity. Also, the installation wizard will detect whether Flash for firefox is installed, and will prompt the user to do the installation when necessary.

With these fixes we believe we are addressing all the major issues users were having with the Pro version.

In terms of bug fixes we eliminated the MP4 indexing problem that was introduced in 1.0.0.11. We fixed device discovery issues on machines with long hostnames and we upgraded to the latest SQLITE which should fix some rare library corruption issues.

Full release notes are available here.

You can download the software here.

It is recommended for all users to upgrade as soon as possible, and if you have not yet paid for the Pro version despite the fact that you are using it, now is the time to purchase a license.

Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Joost, CBS, Marvel, Comedy Central, Amazon VOD and the list goes on

2009-04-21T17:39:00.007-04:00

Today we are launching the Pro edition of the TVersity Media Server and we bring you support for Premium Web Content (including full TV episodes) from names like Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Joost, CBS, NBC, The WB, TV.com, ESPN, NFL, Comedy Central, South Park, Marvel, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and more.

This is the culmination of an almost 5 year effort, to bridge the world of Internet Video with the TV.

Back in 2005 when we launched our very first version, videos on the web were still thumbnail size moving images. Yet we felt that Internet Video is just about going to explode, so we gave you the very first media server that could stream Windows Media Video and Audio (on-demand and live with time shifting built in) to your TV (via UPnP A/V Digital Media Adapters - DMAs).

Still in 2005, our second release gave birth to the idea of the Personal Entertainment Guide (PEG). We wanted to let you, the user, determine which channels you can watch and we wanted to make it as easy as possible (over the years the method for adding online content to your PEG has evolved from copy and paste to drag and drop and to 1-click subscription buttons and hopefully soon to a browser toolbar).

So you see, right from the very beginning we realized that the Net is changing the rules of the game for television and that one of its many impacts is the fact that you the end-user is becoming the programmer. No longer can an aggregator put together a line-up of channels (in the form of an EPG) that can satisfy all viewers, but rather each user will need to be able to customize their program guide.

Shortly after that, YouTube was launched and video on the web changed forever. Our prediction came true even sooner than we expected. Naturally we were the first to allow YouTube to be played on the big screen (without hooking up your computer to your TV, that is) and our users loved it.

When the Xbox 360 and then the PS3 added support for DLNA, our user base exploded over night. Suddenly there were these mainstream, high quality yet affordable, devices that were connected to the TV and to the home network. These devices were able to connect to TVersity and play videos (up to HD quality) streamed from your computer to the living room. Of-course with TVersity you could also play Internet media, and you did not need to concern yourself with the heavy lifting associated with the conversion of videos from one format to another, we did it for you on the fly whenever you wanted to play something.

As time passed, we kept adding support for new devices, and so the Sony PSP, iPhone, and DIRECTV Set-Top-Boxes played a role in our rapid growth as well. We also kept adding support for new media formats and streaming protocols so that you could play almost anything you wanted.

But there was one thing we did not support. Prime time TV content found its way to the web in early 2008 and TVersity did not support that content. Today, one year later, we are changing all this by launching yet another game changing feature.

The improvement in computer processing power and specifically multi-core processors, made it possible to get online video delivered to the living room in a totally different way. The Pro edition of TVersity (released today), is utilizing a web browser that renders its content off-screen, this content is encoded in real time (along with captured audio) in a format that is most appropriate for your target device and the result of that encoding is delivered to the living room for instant viewing.

How is that different from what we were doing so far? To date, TVersity was connecting to streaming servers on the web, fetching the video from them and converting that video as necessary. While this approach is more straightforward, it also requires custom integration with each source of content. Moreover it does not maintain the investment made by the content owner in their video player in terms of ad insertion, tracking & measurement, user authentication and authorization, and other unique player logic.

The Pro edition of TVersity is utilizing both methods, the direct connection to video servers is used primarily for user generated content. While the off-screen browser is utilized with premium web content. This allows us to offer the best of both worlds and to enable a superior online video experience in the living room.

While adding this new functionality we remained true to our philosophy of user generated program guides. We did not want to create a dedicated set of menus with all the different shows and episodes, for each of the websites we support. There are simply too many sites for that approach to be useful. Had we done it the result would have been overwhelming to the user and things would get worse as we added more sites. How can you be expected to navigate TV menus with thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of items?

Instead we let you subscribe to content of choice from any one of these sites. Simply point your browser to a page with a video player featuring your video of choice, drag and drop the icon to the left of the address bar to the TVersity GUI and a dialog box will pop up with the video address pre-populated, leaving it up to you to choose the title, tags, and so on.

Want to subscribe to an entire show and have TVersity update your subscription automatically? You can do it, as always, by subscribing to RSS feeds (as long as the site offers video related feeds). Let's take Hulu for example, each show has several RSS feeds (one for all videos, one for full episodes, one for clips, etc.), you can drag and drop these RSS icons to TVersity and add that show to your personal program guide. You can do the same for RSS feeds from many other sites, in fact we included some example feeds in our content guides (look for the Guide tab in the GUI) so that you can easily get started with creating your PEG.

How about searching for content? Some sites offer an RSS feed for their search results. TVersity supported these RSS feeds with YouTube and Google for a while now and the Pro edition supports them for Hulu as well. Simply drag and drop that RSS icon to the TVersity GUI.

Adding content to TVersity is easy, but it is not easy enough. What if you want to manage your content on the website itself (YouTube has a channel per user, Hulu has a queue and so on). You should not need to manage that content twice. The Pro edition allows you to subscribe to your Hulu queue (and we always allowed subscription to your YouTube channel and Flickr photos). This way when you add something to your queue on Hulu, TVersity picks it up the next time it refreshes the library (every midnight by default).

Last but no least, you can add to your PEG any content from Google, YouTube, Flickr, BBC iPlayer and Hulu from within the TVersity GUI without opening a web browser. Simply click the big plus icon and in the dialog box that opens choose the website, and then the type of content you wish to add (you will see things like By User, By Search Query, By tag, etc.) We created these content subscription wizards within the GUI for some of the most prominent video sites because we believe in a fully personalized experience and in true empowerment of the end-users to legally access media on their terms.

There are however, as is usually the case with a new technology or feature, a few caveats. The Pro edition requires a faster processor for doing its video encoding via an off-screen browser and it requires (for now) a sound card and a sound driver with support for Stereo Mix (on Vista Stereo mix must be manually enabled). While we will be working to relieve some of these in future releases, we expect that many (if not most) of you have these requirements satisfied already.

Finally, while we spent the last few months thoroughly testing this new functionality, and did every effort to make it rock solid, we still consider it beta (it has seen very little use in the real world). We need your feedback to make it even better so please drop us a note by commenting to this post, posting to the support forums, to our Facebook wall, or on Twitter.

2009 TVersity wishlist + RC7 is out

2009-01-19T15:53:00.004-05:00

Seventh release candidate is out with more bug fixes. We think we are getting really close to our first non beta release, which is our biggest milestone ever and so we wanted to take the opportunity and share some of our future plans for TVersity.

In 2009 we have three main goals:

Embed TVersity in a hardware home server appliance(s). Initially it will probably be Windows Home Server based and later on Linux based (maybe even Open Solaris with ZFS). These devices will be more powerful than a typical NAS (to allow real time transcoding up to DVD quality), probably as powerful as a low end PC, but with a much lower power consumption. Intel dual core Atom seems like a good fit, thoughts and suggestions by the community are welcome.
Add many more Internet content sources, Hulu is first on our list. Already works in the lab and will be released soon in our 1.5 beta.
Keep supporting new and interesting devices that have a massive consumer following. Maybe the new TechCrunch tablet will be a good fit???

This is it, please share with us your feedback as well as your 2009 TVersity wish list. Our product roadmap is very dynamic, and since the connected home space is evolving very quickly we are going to adapt as often as necessary.

RC6 is here

2009-01-04T12:05:00.002-05:00

We are pleased to announce availability of our sixth 1.0 release candidate. This is a bug fix release with minor enhancements and performance improvements.

All Sony PS3 users should upgrade immediately since this release fixes a serious bug related to photos. Other device users are encouraged to upgrade as well at their earliest convenience.

Full release notes at:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Download at:
1.0.0.10 RC6

1.0 RC5 is here + TVersity on Facebook

2008-11-27T18:06:00.000-05:00

Our fifth release candidate is out - this is a bug fix release, designed to address many known issues so that we can finally emerge out of beta.

Your feedback in the next couple of days will determine whether we can make an official 1.0 release or need an additional set of fixes.

A few weeks ago we got an email from James Leenheer, who wrote a review about TVersity in tripletags.com, trying to find out how come we do not have a page on Facebook. After learning what a page on Facebook is, and with a lot of help from James, we now have one.

If you use Facebook, you should check it out and you should definitely become a fan. You will get a chance to meet other TVersity users and exchange ideas in a social environment.

Here is a link:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/TVersity/14170584966

Election day live on TVersity

2008-11-04T15:11:00.001-05:00

There are many online sources out there offering live video coverage of the election day, many of which can be watched via TVersity on your networked devices (game consoles, mobiles, etc.).

For your convenience we are listing below a few live streams from the CNN, if you have other streams please comment to this post and if they are indeed compatible with TVersity we will add them to this post for the benefit of all.

CNN Live Election Day Coverage (click to subscribe via TVersity):
CNN Election Day 1
CNN Election Day 2
CNN Election Day 3
CNN Election Day 4

In case you prefer the media URLs (drag and drop to the TVersity UI):
Election Day 1
Election Day 2
Election Day 3
Election Day 4

Release Candidate 4 is here and so are Full Episodes from YouTube

2008-10-23T21:20:00.001-04:00

The forth release candidate is here with support for PS3 firmware 2.5, higher quality YouTube content and automatic update of expired URLs.

As many of you probably know YouTube has been improving the quality of its videos and at the same time made its content available in H.264 and not just Flash video. Up to this release TVersity would take by default low quality videos even when higher quality was available. This release will always try high quality videos first and only if not available, fall back to the lower quality.

Furthermore, TVersity can serve YouTube content in FLV and H.264 by taking it from the source and without any need to transcode. This insures higher quality, faster response times and immediate playback on MP4 only devices (like the iPhone).

Another long overdue improvement is related to expiring URLs. It is common practice among content publishers to embed in playlists (or redirect to) URLs that expire after a while. TVersity used to take the expired URL and stick with it even after it stopped working. This release will automatically re-acquire expired URLs eliminating the need to keep refreshing content of this nature (some examples are YouTube and ASX playlists).

Last but not least, YouTube has been experimenting with full episodes of certain TV shows (such as the original Star Trek, The Young and the Restless, and FRONTLINE | The Choice 2008 to name a few), the current TVersity version is the best way to watch this content. You can now get the highest quality YouTube offers, you need not worry about expiring URLs and you can watch it on the big screen, so enjoy!

For a complete list of changes please check the release notes.

Download the latest release here.

UPDATE: Today something changed at YouTube, this lead to... (you guessed it or worse experienced it) TVersity failing to play YouTube content. We just released a newer version that fixes these issues so please upgrade!

Version 1.0 RC3 is now available

2008-09-21T03:23:00.000-04:00

In this version we bring you support for raw digital camera images, a slightly easier menu navigation on devices, new formats, new devices and of-course some bug fixes and other minor improvements.

Full release notes are available at:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Download it here:
http://download.tversity.com/TVersitySetup_1_0_0_4_RC3.exe

The second TVersity 1.0 Release Candidate is here

2008-07-22T18:31:00.001-04:00

We have been hard at work fixing some issues with RC1 and adding album art support and today we bring you TVersity 1.0 RC2.

Album art support is the main new feature of this release, it is compatible with the Sony PS3 as well as with the HTML interface (PSP, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) and flash interface (Wii). Album art support relies on JPEG files conforming to certain naming conventions that are present in the same folder as music tracks. These files can be created by either Windows Media Player or WinAmp and TVersity will pick them up, or users can add them manually.

To give you full control over the album art image, TVersity allows you to override the art assigned to a certain album by adding to the folder that contains track belonging to the album an image file named:
albumart.<album name>.jpg

If such file does not exist, TVersity looks for files added automatically by Windows Media Player or by WinAmp. We do not currently take album art files created by iTunes.

In addition to music album art, this release also display art icons on the Sony PS3 next to RSS feed items that have such icons in the RSS (e.g. YouTube feeds).

Finally, many issues were fixed based on the great feedback we received from the community. More info at:

http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Download the new release at:
http://tversity.com/download/

TVersity 1.0 RC1 is here

2008-06-30T00:22:00.000-04:00

We are delighted to announce the general availability of the first release candidate of our 1.0 version. Please note that this is a release candidate and not a final release, meaning that we need your feedback in order to fix issues and turn this into a final release as fast as possible.

We will post full release notes shortly, in the meantime in case you missed it, this release is all about user interface and usability, but it also includes many bug fixes and other minor and major improvements to the transcoding engine, media library, auto discovery by devices, and much more.

In order to simplify some of the initial configuration needed to get TVersity up and running for the first time, we are including in this release a configuration wizard that can do most of these tasks for you. This includes firewall setup, service auto-start setup, Vista setup issues and more.

With regard to Windows Vista, we currently require UAC to be turned off or else TVersity will abort the installation. If you do decide to disable UAC or already have it disabled, the installation will work as usual. However on Vista only, the configuration wizard will recommend disabling the Windows SSDP Discovery service, you want to know why? It turns out that this service conflicts with TVersity and essentially hides TVersity form other devices on your network. In case you are curious it does not do it only to TVersity but rather our research suggests that any software stack that has its own SSDP implementation (as opposed to using the built in Windows stack) is affected by it. It did not happen on XP, but it does happen on Vista.

The codec pack has been updated as well, for best transcoding results it is recommended to install it. Our transcoding engine can now for the first time download FLV and MP4 videos, convert them and stream them to devices all at the same time. We have had this capability for a while with WMV streams but other formats needed to be pre-downloaded - not anymore!

We are also including in this release a web surfing toolbar from our partner Ask.com. It has always been our goal to introduce some web surfing tool that can help surfers uncover media URLs and share them with TVersity. We are taking the first step in this direction by forming this partnership with Ask. We are starting with their generic toolbar (made available in this release) and we are planning to continue in the future with a specialized TVersity toolbar that is integrated with Ask's video search results.

This release also features support for Blackberry devices (media streaming requires OS 4.3 or higher, downloading requires OS 4.2 or higher). Blackberry users with OS4.3 or higher can stream live Internet TV to their phone, watch YouTube videos and Podcasts, listen to radio stations and essentially enjoy anything that TVersity offers - access to one's home media library is of-course included.

As always we are looking forward to your feedback, please drop us a note and let us know what works and does not work for you, what you like and dislike and so on.

Most importantly we hope that this release empowers you to enjoy your personal media library and your favorite Internet media more than ever before and that you can now share it with more of your friends thanks to the simplified experience this new release offers.

Finally, in case you wonder, the picture attached to this post is a screenshot of our new website - to be release within a few days, so please stay tuned.

New version is almost here

2008-04-29T19:50:00.000-04:00

A few months ago we posted some screenshots of our new user interface. It has been awfully quiet ever since on our blog since we were hard at work implementing the new interface as well as many other improvements. This upcoming release is major for us, we will finally hit 1.0 and so we decided to give it an extra week or two if necessary and do it right. In the meantime, we wanted to give you a little something to look at, while we finalize our work.

So... we are happy to announce that one of the new features in our 1.0 release will be Blackberry support. We will support the 81xx, 83xx, 88xx models (also known as Pearl, Curve and World Edition) and we will require OS4.2 or higher (streaming requires OS 4.3 or higher). For video, models that support WiFi are naturally recommended (this is until a 3G model becomes available...).

To help you visualize it we have created a short video and uploaded it to YouTube. We do not know how many TVersity users own one of these Blackberry models, so please drop us a note and let us if this feature strikes a cord with you.

Announcing availability of the TVersity button on viewmy.tv

2008-02-08T17:44:00.000-05:00

It is with great pleasure that we announce the availability of the TVersity 1-click subscription button on viewmy.tv.

Adding new live Internet channels to TVersity has never been easier now that viewmy.tv has added these buttons, simply head over to their site and click on the TVersity button whenever you come across a channel you like. Assuming TVersity is installed on that PC, this will open your TVersity application and add that channel to it (all you need to do is confirm that you have TVersity and then when it opens confirm the addition of the channel).

Peter Woodford, the founder of viewmy.tv has been a great supporter and worked diligently with his team to add our button ever since he got a request from a user. Here is what he had to say about this new feature on their website, "www.viewmy.tv are glad to have the Tversity button available so that our visitors and members can get access to free online TV from a multitude of devices."

For those that do not know viewmy.tv, they are a social network for free online TV. They already have widgets and gadgets for Mac, Vista, XP platforms and social networks like facebook and according to Peter when they added the TVersity button, they wanted to answer to their audience some of whom are already TVersity users.

Once you try it, you will know that this is how easy it should be to add any web content to TVersity. So if other content publishers see this post, please follow the steps of viewmy.tv and G4TV and add our button to your site. People really want to be able to watch your content on devices other than the PC and it is up to you to make it easily available for all.

A preview of the upcoming user interface

2008-01-15T13:52:00.000-05:00

We are re-doing our user interface and wanted to share some screenshots and get some feedback early on.

Before I get to that, some of you may have noticed that we recently upgraded our icons. These icons were sent to us by Dylan Wreggelsworth, a graphic designer and the founder of Trifold Designs. He did it of his own initiative and it happened at a time where we were looking to get some professional design work put into our software and our website (yes, finally...). Naturally we got in touch with him and after a short discussion we knew he would be the right person for us. So before I show you the result of his work, I want to thank him for his wonderful design work.

And now here are the screenshots, your feedback is welcome:

Windows Mobile support is here via LobsterTunes

2008-01-04T18:43:00.000-05:00

We have been asked many times over the course of the last two years for Windows Mobile support and so it is with great pleasure that we announce that Windows Mobile support for music is here via our partner LobsterTunes.

LobsterTunes is a very unique MP3 player, it can connect to your TVersity server while you are away from home without requiring any firewall customization. For those that are familiar with Hamachi and Yoics, LobsterTunes includes their functionality built in so you do not need to do any network configuration to have access to TVersity on the go from your Windows Mobile device.

When coupled with a fast and unlimited mobile data plan, this is a very liberating experience. You no longer need to synchronize anything, you do not need a hard drive on your music player and you do not need to do any special network configuration. Add to that the intuitive user interface and fancy album art feature that LobsterTunes has and you got one of the best ways to take your music library with you on the go.

We are also delighted that the LobsterTunes folks have created a special coupon for 25% discount (valid through February 29th of this year), exclusively for TVersity users. All you need to do is enter the coupon code "TVERSITY" on the buy/checkout page of lobstertunes.com.

So, take it for a spin and let us know what you think, we are eager to hear from you.

Support for Sony PS3 2.1 and more

2007-12-30T17:05:00.000-05:00

TVersity 0.9.11.4 is here with:

Support for the Sony PS3 firmware 2.1.
Transcode settings at the file/folder/url level.
A new optional menu hierarchy for folders only.

These last two features are the two most sought after features in our forums and so we are delighted to finally deliver.

You may have also noticed our new logo, we are in the process or redoing our GUI and website as well so please stay tuned.

Full release notes are at:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Download the latest release at:
http://tversity.com/download/

Happy New Year from the TVersity team!

Support for Xbox 360 2007 Fall update is here

2007-12-04T01:10:00.000-05:00

TVersity 0.9.11.3 is here with support for the Xbox 360 2007 fall update and the PS3 firmware version 2. With these new firmwares it is now possible to fast forward, rewind and skip within transcoded media with both the Xbox 360 and the Sony PS3.

We also bring experimental support for Windows Mobile and some improvements for the DirecTV HR20.

Full release notes are at:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Download the latest release at:
http://tversity.com/download/

Secure access to TVersity on the go

2007-11-27T18:13:00.000-05:00

Many users keep asking for a secure method to access TVersity from outside their home network. While advanced users are able to set up a VPN, the rest of us need easier methods and so it is with great pleasure that we announce the availability of YOICS with built-in support for TVersity.

YOICS need to be installed on the machine running TVersity as well as on the machine from which you wish to access TVersity. When installing Yoics you can configure it to share certain resources on your machine and TVersity is one of them. Unlike other solutions only those resources which were specifically designated as shared become available remotely and so one has the flexibility to decide what to share and with whom.

Step by step instructions for setting up YOICS with TVersity are available at the YOICS forums at:
http://support.yoics.com/viewtopic.php?t=127

Please give YOICS a try and if you have YOICS related questions please post them to the YOICS forums.

TVersity 0.9.11.2 is here

2007-11-12T14:03:00.000-05:00

We are happy to announce the availability of the TVersity Media Server version 0.9.11.2. With his new release we bring you increased security when accessing your media library remotely, customizable menus and better support for the Sony PS3 firmware 2.0.

For a full list of changes please visit:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Or to download the new release please visit:
http://tversity.com/download/

Version 0.9.10.8 is here

2007-10-08T22:17:00.000-04:00

This release features support for Windows Media Center and for Media Center compatible solutions like Active-TV.

It also improves the DirecTV HR20 support and includes many bug fixes and other enhancements.

For a more detailed list of changes please go to:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

To download the new version please go to:
http://tversity.com/download/

iPhone support is here and so is version 0.9.10.7

2007-07-19T01:52:00.000-04:00

We are thrilled to announce our latest release featuring support for the Apple iPhone.

To see this new functionality in action, point Safari on the iPhone to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/iphone. When using an EDGE connection use http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/iphone/edge. In both cases xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the machine running TVersity.

You can now access your entire media collection in the home and on the go from your iPhone however in each of these cases a different IP address is needed and you may need to establish a port forwarding in order to access it on the go.

Please be advised that when video transcoding is needed, the iPhone cannot start playback until the entire conversion is completed, this is a restriction of the MP4/MOV/3GPP containers when streamed over HTTP (and since the iPhone does not support RTSP/RTP there is no way around it at the moment).

In addition to this we have many bug fixes in this and the previous release, including one security fix and hence we encourage all to upgrade.

For more information about this release please visit:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

To download it now please visit:
http://tversity.com/download/

TVersity 0.9.10.5 is here

2007-06-27T08:10:00.000-04:00

We are glad to announce the availability of the TVersity Media Server 0.9.10.5. In this release we are fixing many issues and adding a new Radio directory by our partner radiotime.com. We are also adding new features for Sony PS3 owners and Microsoft Xbox 360 owners.

If you always wanted to add your home and Internet content of choice to TVersity via a single button click, this release is setting the stage for that. We now support a one click addition of content to TVersity from third party content sites and also via the Windows explorer. The former is intended for Internet content and the latter is for your home content.

This release is also adding new version alerts, so from now on you will be notified about new releases when running the TVersity user interface.

The full release notes are available at:
http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

You can download the new version at:
http://tversity.com/download/

As always we are looking forward for your feedback!

Version 0.9.10.3 is here

2007-05-30T01:29:00.000-04:00

We are happy to announce full support for the Sony PS3 firmware 1.8 and the Xbox 360 spring update.

As you probably know, shortly after we made our previous major release, both Microsoft and Sony issued major updates for their game consoles, making them an even better multimedia gateways. In order to best serve our users, we issued patches overnight that supported the new functionality of those firmware updates, however these patches were only partial solutions. This release brings full support for the new functionality of the PS3 and the 360 and the ability to properly serve them both at the same time (the two patches were conflicting in certain aspects, these conflicts haven been removed).

The main benefits of this release are:

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 seting 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.

Full release note are available here.

Download the latest release here.

Update
We just updated this release with a fix to the pause after ~30 seconds of playback problem. The version for this quick fix release is 0.9.10.3a. It is recommended that all users upgrade.

A Patch for firmware 1.8 of the Sony PS3 is now available

2007-05-26T01:16:00.000-04:00

As you may know Sony has released yesterday a new firmware update for the Playstation 3 which added support for UPnP AV / DLNA.

We are glad to announce that we already have a patch that takes advantage of this new functionality allowing playback of almost any audio and video files on the PS3, including Divx/Xvid and many other audio and video formats.

This patch also allows playback of some Internet radio/TV channels, albeit it is still somewhat limited in this area. A revised patch that can play all the channels TVersity can typically handle with other devices is coming soon.

You can download the patch at:
http://download.tversity.com/SonyPS3-180PatchV2.zip

To apply it please follow the steps below:

Make sure you have TVersity version 0.9.10.2 installed, otherwise install it. Please note that this patch cannot be applied on top of older versions and is designed for 0.9.10.2 ONLY.
Stop media sharing in TVersity (via the advanced menu or the tray icon)
Unzip the patch file and copy its content over to the TVersity installation folder (by default it is \Program Files\TVersity\Media Server)
Start sharing and try accessing your audio, video and photos from the PS3

As always, feel free to share with us your feedback at our support forums.

Edit
A revised version of the patch has been released due to issues with the original one.

Second Edit
Yet another version of the patch has been released fixing the green bars and distorted colors appearing with some transcoded videos.

Third Edit
Release 0.9.10.3 is now available with additional improvements and fixes for the PS3.

A Patch for the Xbox360 spring update is now available

2007-05-09T21:19:00.000-04:00

As you may know Microsoft has released today a new firmware update for the Xbox 360 and this broke compatibility with TVersity (only with videos, audio and images work as before).

We are glad to announce that we already have a patch that fixes this problem and also takes advantage of the new functionality of this spring update, letting you browse your video in a folder hierarchy instead of just a long flat list.

You can download the patch at:
http://download.tversity.com/Xbox360Spring2007Patch.zip

To apply it please follow the steps below:

Make sure you have version 0.9.10.2 installed, otherwise install it. Please note that this patch cannot be applied on top of older versions and is designed for 0.9.10.2 ONLY.
Stop media sharing (via the advanced menu or the tray icon)
Unzip the patch file and copy its content over to the TVersity installation folder (by default it is \Program Files\TVersity\Media Server)
Sart sharing and try accessing video from the 360

Thank you everyone for helping us test this. It will be great if people with a 360 from different regions in the world will test it since in the past we had cases where European boxes behaved different than American ones.

As always, feel free to share with us your feedback at our support forums.

Update:
A revised patch that also fixes some audio related issues introduced in the Spring update is now available at:
http://download.tversity.com/Xbox360Spring2007PatchV2.zip

Update:
Yet another revised patch that fixes the image viewing issues introduced in the previous patch is now available at:
http://download.tversity.com/Xbox360Spring2007PatchV3.zip

(Note: There is no need to apply all the patch, applying the latest one is enough)

TVersity offers better Nintendo Wii and DirectTV HR20 support

2007-05-02T00:25:00.000-04:00

We are happy to announce the availability of TVersity 0.9.10.2 featuring better support for the Nintendo Wii and the DirectTV HR20.

The Adobe Flash interface for the Wii and PS3 is now fully operational via cursor motion/clicks and it no longer requires the use of arrow keys. This change was made to better support the Nintendo Wii:

There is a new “up one level” button that is always visible and is more accessible than the one in the toolbar.
The scroll bars are larger and allow page scrolling in addition to single item scrolling.
Playback controls are displayed once the cursor is moved to the bottom of the screen.

For the DirectTV HR20, images at resolution higher than 1920×1080 are now downsampled since this device cannot handle very high resolutions.

You can download this new release at:
http://download.tversity.com/Setup_0_9_10_2.exe

New Release from TVersity (0.9.10)

2007-04-22T13:41:00.000-04:00

TVersity 0.9.10 is out, featuring support for the Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Nokia N800 and video transcoding for the Sony PSP. This new release has a new Adobe Flash based media library interface that allows audio and video streaming to any device that supports the flash runtime. While this interface was created specifically for the Sony Playstation 3 and for the Nintendo Wii, it can be used on many other devices and on computers of any operating system.

This new release has many additional improvements under the hood, designed to allow video/audio conversion to many new formats such as Divx, MPEG4, Flash Video and more (TVersity could convert these formats to MPEG1/2 before, however conversion to these formats is a new addition).

Wii owners, please note that due to inability to get a Nintendo Wii, support for this unit is experimental, however some users already report success in streaming both audio and video.

As always, we ask that you take the time to share with us your feedback and ideas for further improvement. This is now especially important as we approach our 1.0 release and wish to emerge out of beta status.

Download the new release at:
http://download.tversity.com/Setup_0_9_10_1.exe

Release notes are at:

http://tversity.com/support/releasenotes/

Some fixes for Version 0.9.9 are now available

2006-12-25T20:33:00.000-05:00

We are glad to announce the availability of the TVersity Media Server V0.9.9.2. This bug fix release also includes a few enhancements that are intended mainly for Xbox 360 users but may prove valuable for others as well.
Here are the main changes:

Better support for YouTube RSS feeds

Support for non Latin1 or UTF8 RSS feeds

Add support for transcoding audio to PCM

Eliminate display artifacts with the Xbox 360 by adjusting the video resolution when transcoding to WMV to allow upscaling to 720p or 1080p using integer multiplication

Both 16:9 and 4:3 DVDs are now displayed correctly (we now take into account non square pixels and convert them to square ones)

Lower CPU consumption when transcoding to WMV is now possible on fast machines when the "Disable decoding clock" on the transcoder section of the settings tab is turned off

Added a new index for songs: "Release Year / Artist / Album"

List under the "Song" folder of the Xbox 360 all audio URLs as well as all local audio files, this way it is no longer necessary to place URLs inside playlists to see them on the 360 menus

Add support for long title strings, which are essentially titles that include the name of their parents. This is to allow users of the Xbox 360 to navigate their long list of videos. This feature is turned off by default since devices other than the Xbox 360 do not need it. When turning it on (from the settings tab in the GUI) one needs to reconstruct the media library for this to take effect

Better compatibility with Windows Vista UAC

Fix issues related to premature termination when transcoding to WMV (this should solve the famous termination problem with the Xbox 360)

Add support for short URLs, this will allow devices that trim long URLs (like the Xbox 360 and the Sony PSP) to accept content from TVersity disregarding the length of the URL of that content

For a full list of changes please fo to:
http://tversity.com/whatsnew.html

You can download the new version here.

TVersity 0.9.9 is out

2006-11-28T11:51:00.000-05:00

TVersity 0.9.9 is out featuring on the fly video transcoding for the Xbox 360. We also have many improvements to the GUI and a preview of our new media library navigation interface (in the picture) which is designed for web enabled devices with Macromedia Flash.

You can download the new release at:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/download.tversity.com/Setup_0_9_9_1.exe

Or read about the new features at:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.tversity.com/index.html

WMV transcoding for the Xbox 360 is here

2006-11-19T17:39:00.000-05:00

Here is an early preview for the on the fly WMV transcoding feature for the 360. Since we have other stuff that needs to make it into the next release and since this is not yet ready we are releasing a patch. Please try it and let us know what you think.

The patch is available at:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/download.tversity.com/Xbox360Patch_0_9_8_4.zip

Installing the Patch:

Stop Tversity
Extract the content of the patch zip file into the installation folder of TVersity (by default it is \Program Files\TVersity\Media 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.

Some additional notes:

Videos may take from 10 seconds to a minute to start. It depends on the bitrate of the video. The 360 requires 2 Megabyte 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 GUIl. 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.

This is it, enjoy and be sure to send us your feedback!

We have a thread on our forum dedicated to this topic at:
http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?p=14300#14300

Version 0.9.8.1 is out

2006-09-11T23:42:00.000-04:00

We are glad to announce general availability of TVersity 0.9.8.1.
The highlights of this release are:

TVersity now supports ID3v2 tags, FLAC tags, Ogg tags, Ape tags, AAC tags, WMA tags and MP4 tags.
The AlbumArtist tag is now supported for ID3v2 and WMA and the Artist/Album and Genre/Artist/Album indices now rely on this tag (as opposed to the Artist tag).
Browsed and searched media library content can now be opened as playlist in Windows Media Player, Quicktime and Real Player. This makes the web based interface for browsing one's media library remotely much more useful and user friendly.
Multiple instances of TVersity can now coexist on the same network without interfering with one another.

For a full list of changes please refer to http://tversity.com/whatsnew.html

To download it right now please go to http://tversity.com/download.html

Some fixes for V0.97 are now available

2006-08-11T00:38:00.000-04:00

Here are the main changes:

Media Library

Media library creation is now 2.5 times faster than before, meaning that the scanning of media files that used to take 10 minutes will now take about 4 minutes. This improvement is not relevant for media URLs or RSS feeds since for them the delay is mainly related to the time it takes to analyze the format of the media over the Internet.

Bug fixes and more

The problem with playlist files missing from the media library has been resolved, and they now appear as they did prior to 0.9.7.1.
The problem with the latest firmware of the Netgear MP101 not connecting to version 0.9.7.1 has been resolved.
Smart playlists items now show ID3 tags.
Problems with the Xbox 360 possibly not connecting to TVersity when the GUI settings is changed from auto-detect to the Xbox 360 profile, have been resolved.
Memory leaks related to backgrorund downloading of RSS items have been fixed by upgrading to the latest cURL version.

You can download it here.

Version 0.9.7.1 is out featuring support for the Xbox 360

2006-07-31T05:50:00.000-04:00

We are pleased to announce availability of version 0.9.7.1 of the TVersity Media Server. In this version we bring you support for the Xbox 360 as well as support for searching and for smart playlists.

A full description of changes in this release is available at http://tversity.com/whatsnew.html

You can download the new version at http://tversity.com/download.html

Playlists in TVersity

2006-07-05T16:23:00.000-04:00

Starting from version 0.9.5 TVersity supports video and photo playlists in addition to M3U and PLS audio playlists. The format for video, image and audio playlists can be PLS, M3U, RSS and ATOM.

Unlike previous versions where TVersity expected to find MP3 audio files inside M3U and PLS, recent versions check the actual format of each playlist item and based on it decide where in the library it should be placed. If a playlist is comprised of audio files then as before it will be placed in the playlist section of the audio library. Unlike before, the image and video library now also have playlist sections and so playlist comprised of video items only or image items only will be placed under the corresponding playlist sections. Mixed playlists are also allowed and will be placed in the video section.

You may even mix URLs and local files into the same playlist creating any kind of collection you see fit and you can also nest playlists within one another. This kind of flexibility, designed to let you truly personalize your media, is above and beyond any other media server out there.

Here is an example of a video playlist file in PLS format:

VTS_03_1.VOB
VTS_03_2.VOB
VTS_03_3.VOB
VTS_03_4.VOB
VTS_03_5.VOB
VTS_03_6.VOB

Just give it some name and save it in the same folder as the items inside it and it will work as expected.

If you wish to place the playlist in a different folder you will need to include a full or relative path and not just the file names. Here is an example:

c:\movies\VTS_03_1.VOB
..\movies\VTS_03_2.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_3.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_4.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_5.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_6.VOB

If you prefer RSS files, it will look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>A Test RSS Playlist - Be Cool</title>
<link/>
<description>Nothing in particular</description>
<item>
<title>Be Cool - 1</title>
<enclosure url="D:\My Movies\BE_COOL_WS\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.VOB" length="" type=""/>
</item>
<item>
<title>Be Cool - 2</title>
<enclosure url="D:\My Movies\BE_COOL_WS\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_2.vob" length="" type=""/>
</item>
<item>
<title>Be Cool - 3</title>
<enclosure url="D:\My Movies\BE_COOL_WS\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_3.vob" length="" type=""/>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Here it is in Atom feed, taking into advantage the fact that each entry can have more than one link associated with it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed>
<title>Test Atom with Enclosures</title>
<entry>
<title>Be Cool</title>
<link rel="enclosure" href="VTS_03_2.VOB" length="162344448" type="video/mpeg" title="Bee Cool 1"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="VTS_03_3.VOB" type="video/mpeg" title="Bee Cool 2"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="VTS_03_4.VOB" title="Bee Cool 3"/>
</entry>

<entry>
<title>Some other Movie</title>
<link rel="enclosure" href="..\other\VTS_03_2.VOB"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="..\other\VTS_03_3.VOB"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="..\other\VTS_03_4.VOB"/>
</entry>
</feed>

A similar playlist can be constructed in RSS with the Media RSS extensions by Yahoo using the media:group element from those extensions.

Please note that in all the XML files, the title, length, and type are optional. Moreover they are almost always ignored for local files since the information is taken from the file itself and so they are meaningful only for URLs.

Backup your URLs

2006-07-05T15:15:00.000-04:00

Recently a few users have been asking us if it was possible to back up the URLs they added to TVersity. While we do plan to add an export and import feature to the TVersity GUI, it is possible already now to backup your URLs from the command line. Step by step instructions for doing it are available at the announcements forum.

Some Fixes for Version 0.9.6 are Now Available

2006-06-28T02:57:00.000-04:00

We are glad to announce that version 0.9.6.2 of the TVersity server is now available for download.

With this release it is now easy to email an RSS URL published via the TVersity server to designated recipients, making it very easy to share multimedia content with friends and family members.

See a full list of changes here and download the latest release here.

TVersity Media Server version 0.9.6 is out

2006-06-09T19:25:00.000-04:00

We are happy to announce the newest release of the TVersity Media Server, release 0.9.6. With this release we once again break new grounds by adding support for non UPnP A/V devices and allowing one to access content on the TVersity server from mobile devices including the Sony PSP, mobile phones and even iTunes.

We also added support for additional UPnP A/V compliant devices including the Sony Vaio VGP-MR100U. We now do image resizing on the fly and therefore can display thumbnales for images. And we also allow devices of different make and model to access the server simultaneously.

One more noteworthy feature (besides the usual bug fixes and other minor improvements) is the ability to publish a portion of your media library as an RSS feed and subscribe to it from any Podcast manager such as Juice or iTunes (and from their download it to your iPod). You can even subscribe to a feed published by one installation of the TVersity server from another installation, making it possible to synchronize content with friends and family and access this content on your device of choice.

We would like to recommend a service called hamachi to easily establish a secure virtual private network, for users that wish to synchronize some content between two installations of TVersity.

You can find the full list of changes in this new release here.
You can download the the new release here.

Some Fixes for Version 0.9.5 are Now Available

2006-04-30T03:41:00.000-04:00

We have been hard at work in the last week, incorporating the great feedback we have received for the latest release and we are glad to announce that version 0.9.5.1 is now available for download.

All users are encouraged to upgrade and especially users of the DLink DSM 320 for which major issues with firmware 1.07 have been fixed for online content.

See a full list of changes here and download the latest release here.

TVersity Media Server version 0.9.5 is out

2006-04-23T19:39:00.000-04:00

We are happy to announce the newest release of the TVersity Media Server, version 0.9.5. With this release we once again break new grounds by allowing owners of any UPnP A/V enabled network device to subscribe to Audio/Image/Video Podcasts and Blogs and play the enclosed media disregarding the codec limitations of their device.

While audio blogs typically contain mp3 files and image blogs typicaly contain jpegs, both formats that any media hub can handle, video blogs are mostly in an iPod Video compatile format which happens to be incompatible with most media hubs. This is not an issue for TVersity due to its built in transcoder which allows an on the fly conversion of those videos to a format supported by the target device.

In addition to podcasts and blogs the new release connects your media hub to Internet resources such as Flickr, Yahoo! Video Search, Google Video Search, Webjay and more. With this much content available for playback with a click of your remote, the media adapter you purchased is finally worth it!

You can find the full list of changes in this new release here, and a brief discussion of what those changes allow you to do here. In the next couple of days we intend to follow up with some quick tutorails for using the new Internet feeds and advanced playlists features so stay tuned.

Some Details about the Upcoming Release

2006-01-29T22:10:00.000-05:00

We thought it might be interesting to discuss a few of the things we have planned for the next release and start collecting some feedback. As we mentioned in the past, the upcoming release is all about RSS/Atom with enclosures. This XML format is used on the Internet to publish podcasts and vlogs (unlike audio publishing feeds which are collectively referred to as podcasts, there are several terms used for video publishing feeds including vlogs, video blogs, video podcasts, vodcasts, and more). The plan is to add the capability in TVersity to read all RSS versions (0.9 0.91/0.92/0.93/0.94/1.0/2.0) and Atom (including the iTunes extensions and the Yahoo MediaRSS extensions), and allow one to subscribe to such feeds from the TVersity GUI. Each such feed subscription will result in the content published by that feed to be added to the media library, which from that moment and on will be kept synchronized with the feed automatically.
Enough with technical stuff, let’s discuss some of the great stuff it will allow you to do:

Any Audio blog (Podcast), Video blog or Image blog can be subscribed to via TVersity and all its content becomes immediately available for playback on your TV (or other UPnP devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, etc.). Each time you refresh the media library it gets updated with the new feed so you always have access to the latest media published. Few examples of the stuff you can subscribe to are:

You can subscribe to your RSS feed on Flickr (automatically created by Flickr for each account) and have your Flickr photos available for viewing on your TV and other devices. Whenever you update your Flickr collection, all you need to do is refresh the Flickr subscription in the TVersity GUI and immediately you have those updates applied to your media library. In addition to that you can get from Flickr an RSS feed for every tag or search query you care about and subscribe to them as well.

Yahoo has a service, which makes the results of any search query you make against their video search engine available as an RSS feed. Let’s assume you like to track videos on the web related to Uma Thurman, you can of-course search the Yahoo video search engines with the words “Uma Thurman” and get a list of relevant videos but even better you can use the service we mentioned to get an RSS feed of the search results and subscribe to this feed via TVersity. From now on you can access on your TV the latest results that such a search yields and play those files at will.

Webjay is a playlist community; it allows people to create playlists from audio and video URLs and share them with others. Each such playlist is available as an RSS feed and by subscribing to it you can access its content via TVersity. You can even use Webjay as a playlist-editing tool and create new playlists and subscribe to them via TVersity. These playlists can be shared with others via Webjay or simply by sending them the RSS URL of the playlist. You can even save the RSS feed as a file and just share this file so that changes made on Webjay won’t affect you.

Playlists of online content are great but what about playlist of content located on your home network? TVersity will also process RSS files located on your hard drives and treat them as playlists. These playlists can contain media files, media URLs, folders and even other playlists (M3U, PLS, RSS). This will give you the ultimate flexibility in assembling different pieces of your media library and combining them into a collection that can be easily accessed and played on your TV. Later versions will also allow one to edit playlists from the GUI, in this next version however it will be required to edit these files using an XML editor or an RSS editor.

In summary, we think this next release will improve dramatically one’s ability to access Internet content from the devices she cares about and in the same time enable the creation of playlists for videos, images and other media type (happens to be one of the most requested feature by our users). This is it for us, now we want to hear what you think, please be sure to drop us a note in the forums or in the blog and let us know.

Going back to being a development blog and nothing else

2006-01-24T03:02:00.000-05:00

Recently we started blogging some market analysis and insights and all of a sudden we had more of that stuff than development news. So we had to either change the designation of this blog or separate it to two different blogs. We decided to go with the second option, meaning that the market analysis will be published from now on at mediaholic.org - our new blog for mediaholics. If you like TVersity and the promise it brings to the digital home and to digital living in general, you will like reading mediaholic.org, see you there and don't forget to drop us a note and let us know what you think about the new blog.

Additional fixes for V0.9 are now available

2006-01-18T03:42:00.000-05:00

We have recieved additional great feedback for V0.9 and based on this feedback we decided to release more fixes and improvements. Download this latest release if you are having issues with V0.9. For a full list of changes, please refer to the release notes on the TVersity website.

"Mobile Me" by Apple

2006-01-18T01:30:00.000-05:00

After sticking our neck and making a prediction about the next big thing for the iPod, boy were we happy to see all the hype surrounding the "mobile me" trademark applications by Apple. For those that missed it here is a quote taken from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Earlier this month, Apple filed four trademark applications for the term "Mobile Me," covering a broad array of possibilities, including "digital music," "cellular" and "telecommunications."

So obviously this re-ignited the engines of the hype machine and lots of speculations were made, most of which were about a cellular phone. While we agree that a cellular phone with digital music capabilities is a logical evolution for Apple, this is not the next big thing for the iPod. A cellular phone will always be first and foremost about voice calls while the iPod will always be first and foremost about music so these are obviously going to remain two separate product lines for a long time. Therefore we would like to stand by our original prediction and say that the "mobile me" thing is about adding wireless networking capabilities to the iPod and possibly also adding or improving the PDA like features that the iPod already has but were never emphasized such as the calendar, contacts manager, etc.

And while we are at it, what is the next big thing after Wi-Fi? A phone maybe? I am not going to make another prediciton at this point however if I were Apple I would skip the whole cell phone thing and stick with IP networking. What many people do not realize is that VOIP does not stop at revolutionizing the landline market, but rather the next big frontier for VOIP is the cellular market. Yes, as Wi-Fi starts covering whole cities and with Wimax being just around the corner, think how much money can be saved by on-the-go VOIP? I know one company that has a peanut butter like name and was recenlty acquired by the largest online auction company, that is patiently waiting for this day. A day that will no doubt be the Jelly that goes with this peanut butter, but Apple is here to spoil the party. Apple, in my opinion, is positioned even better than Skype to take over this new market (I think "mobile me" is a pretty good name for this market, don't you?). Very smart people are leading Apple and it looks like they already figured all this out, and if I am right about this one, then it will be Apple share that hits $1000 5 years from now, not google. But hey this is too much predictions for one months, enough is enough.

CES 2006 and the UPnP standard

2006-01-09T18:07:00.000-05:00

One of the most interesting aspects of the recent Consumer Electronic Show for TVersity was the state of the UPnP standard and how well it is received in the market. What we found exceeded our expectations and we left the show far more excited about the future of UPnP than we were before, however we also found several reasons for concern.

Here are some of the interesting trends we spotted:

UPnP AV is no longer standalone; One unsurprising trend is that digital media adapters, which were very hot in CES 2005 were not so hot this year. In fact I can think of not more than half a dozen new DMA models and they were all introduced by established players in the market who also introduced other products in which UPnP AV was merely a feature. On the other hand UPnP AV functionality got integrated into many different devices and has shifted its role from the basis for a new product category to an enabling feature of existing categories such as DVDs, TVs, Phones, NAS devices and so on. All the companies that released new DMAs (such as DLink, NetGear, Buffalo, and Zensonic) had also released networked DVDs or NAS devices and emphasized those products and not the DMA.
UPnP AV in DVD players; Networked DVDs were almost exclusively based on UPnP AV. Some of you may know that there are two other proprietary solutions that are considered alternatives to UPnP. One of them has been created by Syabas (can be found in devices from Asian companies like IOData and Buffalo) and the other was created by Kiss and can be found in devices from Kiss (now owned by Linksys) and some other less known local European brands that licensed their technology. While in 2005 it seemed like Europe is divided between Kiss and UPnP and the far east is controlled by Syabas, with UPnP leading only in America, it is clear now that 2006 will be all about UPnP. Syabas, essentially admitting the inferiority of its solution, has added UPnP support to the middleware it sells and so new firmware versions for devices like the Buffalo Linktheater and the IOData Avellink essentially make them UPnP compliant. Moreover companies like Buffalo have made the switch from Syabas middleware to UPnP only middleware (e.g. in their Linktheater Mini and their NAS devices). At the same time, Kiss, despite its acquisition by Linksys, has not been able to spread their proprietary solution and to the best of our knowledge there was not even a single announcement in CES of a new company that is planning to release products based on the Kiss solution. Kiss however has demonstrated in CES that their latest models are compatible with Windows Media Connect, i.e. with UPnP AV.
UPnP AV in every TV; We were astonished to see how many new gadgets have built in UPnP AV support. We must have seen two dozen TVs with built in UPnP AV support, this includes names like Toshiba, Sony, Samsung, Philips, HP and many more less known brands. The rumor is that Apple will announce tomorrow a plasma HDTV with built in support for Intel Viiv, which is also UPnP AV based.
UPnP AV in phones and mobile devices; The Nokia N80 phone was a very pleasant surprise, not only that it is UPNP AV compatible but it works with TVersity as was reported to us by the Chief Designer of the Symbian Platform Development in Nokia (he also told us he was using TVersity at home and he was pushing Nokia labs to start testing their releases against TVersity!). We haven't seen any other phones with UPNP AV support but since we have had many visits recently to our web site by Motorola and since Samsung has already introduced UPnP support in Televisions we won't be surprises if by the end of 2006 the top three Cell phone companies will all have models supporting UPnP AV. Furthermore Nokia told us that they were seriously considering UPnP support for the Nokia 770 (which is a Linux based WiFi and bluetooth enabled, pocket size tablet) and we heard a rumor that Sony was planning to add UPnP support to the PSP.
UPnP AV Devices are going HDTV; All the new TV and networked DVD product announcements were for devices that support HDTV. This included support for HDTV codecs (with MPEG2 being the basic most codec and H.264, WMV-HD and Divx-HD as the more advanced ones) and HDTV connectors such as HDMI and component video. In this CES, HDTV was a must have and essentially all devices (except handheld ones) had to have HDTV support.
Storage is going UPnP; One very obvious trend was that every player in the NAS devices for the home and small office markets has now built in support for UPnP. This includes names like Buffalo, Netgear, IOMega, Linksys, DLink, Maxtor, etc. This is also an indication that UPnP Media servers have now two distinct markets, one is the embedded market and the other is the PC/Desktop/Server market. Although we do not have official numbers, it looks like TVersity is the leader in the PC/Desktop/Server market while other companies (like Mediabolic and Twonky) compete in the embedded market. This is not to say that we have no competition, if anything 2006 will bring much more competition simply because UPnP is gaining popularity, however we do feel that there is no other technology out there today that can match TVersity in its features, and that consumers come to acknowledge that and many of them make the switch from the media servers they got with their UPnP enabled product to TVersity.

While everything so far has been very positive to the UPnP standard there is also a serious concern as the standard has now many flavors which could essentially evolve into proprietary solutions. The flavors we identified so far are:

Intel Viiv; Intel has announced their Viiv platform, which although is based on the DLNA guidelines (some additional interoperability guidelines to handle issues not properly handled in the UPnP AV standard), it seems to be destined to take its own course and as I am sure Intel would love to see evolve into its own de-facto standard.
Windows Media Connect or Disconnect? Microsoft has released at the end of 2004 the first version of Windows Media Connect which was fully UPnP AV compliant with some necessary extensions to support WMDRM. However a year after, at the end of 2005, they released the second version which had no real new features other than the vague headline of "support for XBox 360". Those of us that cared wanted to know if the XBox 360 was UPnP AV compliant and unfortunately we now know that the answer is NO. We spoke in the show with the CTO of Twonky and he told us that they were able to add support for the XBox 360 through reverse engineering and that the Xbox is designed not to work with any other UPnP media server other than Microsoft's Windows Media Connect. Is anyone out there surprised?
We are however happy to say that we had a very good conversation with the CTO of Twonky and we both feel that the two companies, being the real champions of open standards, should remain on friendly terms despite the obvious competition.
Apple is rumored to release a Plasma TV based on Intel Viiv; We will know if it is true or not tomorrow, however we mention it here since Apple is sure to either create its own flavor of UPnP or come up with something else altogether as it has done so far with its proprietary solution for streaming audio from iTunes to the Airport Express.

Clearly, the UPnP AV standard is catching on and yet its success could also be its demise as companies like Microsoft, Intel and Apple may each try to take advantage of the interoperability it offers to promote their own interests while introducing their own proprietary extensions and keeping them unpublished, in order to block others. If you care about open standard and wish to see an open ecosystems in which innovative solutions from small companies and even individuals can prosper just like solutions from large companies (which tend to be innovative in terms of business models and new revenue streams and not in terms of benefits to the consumer...) then do your very best to encourage consumers to refrain from solutions that deviate from the standard and make sure that neither Windows Media connect nor Viiv become the new names of UPnP since this will be their gain and the loss of all of us the consumers.

And the next big thing for the iPod is...

2006-01-05T03:26:00.000-05:00

So far this blog was used exclusively in order to make new release announcements and since these were also emailed, I doubt anyone was reading it. In an attempt to change that I am going to start sharing our views and analysis of the market, where it is going and how it is all related to TVersty. I am also going to allow comments to be posted to the blog so that you can tell provide some feedback.

Right now I am in Vegas waiting for Bill Gates keynote at CES, and so I finally have some time to do some blogging about … Apple. Yes, Apple the only company absent from CES, and yet the company that is able to generate more buzz than the entire CES show and all its exhibitors. I know I for one care about Apple plans for 2006 more than I care about Microsoft and Intel’s plans combined, simply because Apple is the only company that has been able to demonstrate the real meaning of convergence while others have been mainly talking about it and spending lots of marketing dollars with no real progress. Speaking of marketing, this CES is the beginning of a new marketing campaign for Intel, the VIIV campaign which was announced a while ago but is really starting only now (big billboards with VIIV and the new Intel logo, Leap Ahead, instead of Intel inside, were welcoming everyone at the airport at Las Vegas), I wonder if VIIV will catch on or not but this probably deserves its own post, so let’s get back to Apple.

It is well known that Apple is keeping its plans as a complete secret until an actual announcement is made by Steve Jobs, and this time, with Mac Expo just around the corner, is not going to be any different. Since it won’t be another week before Steve Jobs shares with us his company plans, I find it too tempting not to join others in the industry and use the time left till the show, to make some predictions about Apple’s plans for 2006. Now, I am a long-term guy so I have no intention to try and guess what will Steve Jobs talk about in this coming Mac Expo, however I am going to try and guess what he has in store for the iPod in 2006 as a whole. If past experience is any indication, there will be several press conferences this year in which Apple reveals just another piece of the puzzle so when the upcoming Steve Job’s speech in Mac Expo will seem to have nothing to do with what I am about to say, do not be too harsh with my predictions, wait till the end of 2006 and then make up your mind.

Without further delay let me get to the point, up until a few months ago when video support was added to the iPod, video was the hottest feature expected by the pundits with almost everyone agreeing that it is just matter of time till it’s added. Now that it is a done deal and the iPod can play video, it is time to come up with the next great frontier for the iPod and if we can all agree then we can all go back to speculating when it will be added instead of what it is. Of-course unlike video support there is nothing obvious that everyone is talking about and so I do not expect everyone to agree with my prediction and yet I think I can at least convince you not to discount this possibility and to give it serious thought. Clearly small improvements such as a bigger screen, longer battery life, thinner form factor, and a fresh design (cooler than ever), are all going to happen in 2006. But what is the next BIG thing, something that will turn the iPod into an even greater gadget, something so wonderful that it will make Microsoft spend even more money trying to buy the entire industry in an attempt to catch up with Apple.

And the Oscar goes to…wait a second I can’t seem to be able to open the envelope provided to me by the academy…ok, ok I know it’s enough going in circles so here it is, the Oscar goes to wireless networking. Whether it is bluetooth, WiFi, wireless USB or all of the above, the next big thing for the iPod in my opinion is to become a part of the network, the home network, the Internet and the all encompassing network of the entire universe – also known as the Ansible (oops this one is not yet invented, I guess it will be announced in CES 3006).

Now that I spilled it out and it’s out in the open, it is time to defend my prediction. So, why on earth does the iPod need to join the network? I mean isn’t it supposed to get a 120 Gigabyte hard drive this year and thus allow you to carry whatever you want, eliminating the need to be connected (expect when synchronizing). Well, the huge storage concept works great for audio but if you ask me it won’t work so well for video. You see, unlike many, I think that video like audio will be very successful for the iPod and like audio most of the media people store on their iPod won’t come from the iTunes store but rather will be things like recorded TV shows, DVDs, illegal downloads, etc. And for recorded TV shows, which will probably be the most important element in the success of the video functionality of the iPod, a wireless connection is very important since it will allow synchronization to happen automatically when the iPod is within range of the home network. This “minor” improvement is very important since newly recorded TV shows become available every day, where with music one needed to synchronize their iPod only once in the beginning and then when they bought a new CD or song (probably once a month for the average Joe and once a week for the music enthusiasts).

Of-course seemless synchronization while important cannot justify by itself adding WiFi support. The real great thing enabled by a wireless network connection is the ability to stream music and video from the home network or from the web, without needing to synchronize anything and to incorporate this streamed content with the iTunes store such that impulse contextual purchases can be made from the iPod without going through a computer. I can for example, visualize recording a TV show and while it is being recorded the show is also being streamed to my iPod in some other part of the world where I am enjoying coffee in some hotspot. With respect to music, I can visualize many new CD quality commercial free radio stations that are made available for the iPod for free simply because the iTunes store can now be accessed from the iPod and so impulse purchases can be made as one listens to the radio (yes Sirius and XM should be very worried since their business model is under a serious threat). And if all that is not compelling enough then what about all the video content available today freely on the Internet, I am not talking about vlogs (which are already integrated with the video iPod), I am talking about the networks and the studios webcasting lots of great stuff on the Net. This stuff is not downloadable so it can’t be used with the current video iPod but once the iPod is network enabled suddenly I can watch MTV or Bloomberg TV live on it from any part of the world (which also remind me of a prediction I read that satellite TV capability will be added to the iPod, once the iPod is network enabled who needs satellite TV?). Now I know you are going to say that the quality of this stuff is still not adequate, well this is the beauty of it all, the quality is not good enough for the big screen, but on the small iPod screen it will look like hi-definition TV!

So where is TVersity in all that? TVersity from its very inception has made it a goal to allow one to create her own personalized lineup of channels and to access it from TVs and from mobile devices. Yet, we do not support any mobile device yet, do we? The reason for that is the inability of most of these devices to access the home network or the Internet. Once this ability will be added, these devices just like digital media adapters will not be able to handle many of the media formats and of the streaming protocols out there and we intend to solve that problem for these devices just like we did for networked DVDs and DMAs. This will make our solution more complete as we will all get one step closer to having universal access to our media. Here is to the future and a happy 2006 to aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!

Some fixes and additions for V0.9 are now available

2005-12-24T04:08:00.000-05:00

We have recieved a lot of great feedback for V0.9 (released 10 days ago) and based on this feedback we decided to release some fixes and improvements. Download this latest release if you are having issues with V0.9, or if you are one of those who has been waiting for Monkey Audio, Musepack or Karaoke support - all of which are now available as long as the relevant directshow filters are installed on your system. For a full list of changes, please refer to the release notes on the TVersity website.

A few words about the upcomimg release, support for podcasts and vlogs (via RSS/Atom) is the next thing on our list, with improved support for tags and image transcoding next. As always we want to know what you wish to see added next so make sure you drop us a note in the feedback and feature requests forum.

Finally, happy holidays and a happy new year to all!

GUI is here!

2005-12-14T21:36:00.000-05:00

You have all waited long enough so just go and download it, version 0.9 is here and it has our flash based GUI as well as support for command line interface for those of you that prefer it (anyone?).

A few words about the GUI, you can run it from the start menu, the desktop shortcut or from any web browser on any machine on your network. The latter is done by putting into the address bar the URL http://ip:port/, where the ip is the ip address of the computer running TVersity and port is the port used by TVersity (the default would be 41952). So if your TVersity server is running on a computer that has the ip address 192.168.1.100 and on the default port, then you need to use the URL http://192.168.1.100:41952/. This means that you should be able to open the GUI from a Pocket PC device, but this was never tested. If anyone does test it, please let us know how it goes.

We will have the release notes page updated later so you can all read what is new, but for now we want to tell you about the new tagging feature. Every URL that you add can have from now on tags associated with it. These tags will affect how you see it on your TV, so e.g. if you add the tag madonna to some URLs you will have on your TV the ability to browse your URLs by tags and when you choose that option, you will be able to see the madonna container under which every URL that has the madonna tag will be shown. But, this is not all, we also support hierarchical tags (we are probably the first to ever come up with the term hierarchical tag, so remember when everyone else adopts it you saw it here first!). So, with hierarchical tags instead of just saying madonna, you can say artist.madonna and some other URLs can be tagged by artist.pearl jam. Now when you browse your URLs by tags, you will see in the first level the term artist, and when you dive in you will see both madonna and pearl jam and under each one of them all the URLs associated with them. This is, in our opinion, a very exciting feature since it lets you organize your URLs in a very flexible manner that goes beyond placing them in folders. This is because the same url that had the artist.madonna tag, can have as many tags as you wish, so e.g. it can also have the tag genre.pop or even genre.musicvideo.pop, and so on. Of-course as before, you can always browse the full list of URLs, if this is what you wish to do, but you should know that the nice thing about tagging is that in a future release they will be used by the TVersity web site to make all the user generated content searchable and accessible to others (unless you turn off the public flag that each URL now also has).

One more thing to know about the GUI is that, being a flash application that runs inside the browser it has some limitations that prevent us from doing things that normal applications would do. The two main issues here are:

The inability to browse for files when running on any browser other than MSIE.

The inability to do conversion of pathnames that use network mapped drives to UNC automatically.

Those limitations will of-course be addressed in future releases, but for now we suggest using MSIE (which will happen automatically when you start the application from the start menu) and to keep using UNC.

Finally, be sure to drop us a note and tell us how you like the new version.

Good News for Owners of the Philips Streamium Media Hubs

2005-09-12T20:04:00.000-04:00

Version 0.8.0.3, which is now available for download, includes a fix for the famous periodic rebuffering that occured with the Streamiums. This fix eliminates the major issue that may have prevented owners of the Streamiums to switch to TVersity and therefore we have decided to make a special release just for it (and few other minor bug fixes).

Owners of different media hubs may also benefit from this fix, which should improve the performance of the TVersity media server for media hubs connected wirelessly to the home network, resulting in less hiccups and a smoother playback. This improvement may also prove beneficial when streaming media from network shares and NAS devices.

Finally, we would like to remind our users to share URLS of the good online stuff they come across. Let's all not forget the good old BitTorrent saying "Give and ye shall receive!".

Some fixes for version 0.8 are now available

2005-09-09T23:50:00.000-04:00

Version 0.8.0.2 is now available for download. This release is fixing issues with regard to the corruption of the media library when the media server and MShare attempt to modify it simultaneously, as well as a few other minor issues. We also extended the URL sharing feature to include sharing of MP3 streams and of HTTP URLs of M3U or PLS files. This means that for example radio stations from shoutcast can be added by sharing the URL copied from the shoutcast website using any web browser. There is no need anymore to save these URLs as files and then MShare the files, moreover the URL will appear under the "My Online Audio" entry with a title of your choice and will not be mixed with your playlists.

A few words about running MShare, MShare can still output an error message if invoked while the media server is refreshing the library. This is because only one of them can modify the library at a time. This failure however is temporary and no longer results in corruption of the media library, i.e. it is safe now to do it. Once the media server is done with the refresh, MShare will be successful. The error message that MShare displays has been revised to reflect that. Please also note that each time the media server is started it does a refresh of the media library (i.e. it is synchronizing the library with the content of the shared folders), and therefore at that time MShare is very likely to fail. Feel free to stop the media server when you need to share something right away, then run MShare and start the media server (even before MShare is done). Please also be advised that while MShare is running, the media server will occasionally fail to acces the media library, this is because from time to time MShare is committing the changes to the library, during which time the media server cannot read from the library. Those occasional failures may result in an error message on your media hub, however they will disappear once MShare is done. OK, now that we said it all we must add that it is not as bad as it sounds :), just try it, it is safe.

Before we finish, we want to encourage users to share URLs of new and interesting content. In order to facilitate that we started a new forum called "Share your online content URLs". Users that have found some nice URLs should post them there so that others can enjoy them as well. In order to make it easy for users to try these URLs we ask that each post will include a short description of the content covering things like the topic, website, language, bitrate, etc. and then a line per each URL which is the same command line one needs to use in order to MShare the URL. This way users can copy this line and save it in a text file with a ".bat" extension and then simply run this file. Each user should have such a file (or files) for online content, so that they can easily restore their URLs in case they reset the media library or reinstall the server. Here is an example of what a message posted to this fourm should look like:

The US WB channel has the pilot of its new series the Supernatural (english) available for watching on Yahoo (http://tv.yahoo.com/feature/supernatural.html). You can add it to your TVersity content by running the following command:
MShare -T "Supernatural Pilot" -V "mms://wmcontent43.bcst.yahoo.com/b02r01/005/yahooinc/7/17987379.wmv?StreamID=17987379&ht=30&pl_auth=6369e2e33d074a6ae98297cfb8030396&sg_id=50273&b=4csm33d1cu6od431e4a37&RegID=49169317097804260&ru=Windows-Media-Player"

Version 0.8 is here

2005-09-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

It has been a little over two months and version 0.8.0.1 is finally here. The previous post covers pretty well the highlight of this release (a complete rewrite of the media library database that can handle up to 100,000 items and more) so we won’t repeat it again. We will say however that we added thousands of radio stations from all over the world, which are accessible by name, region, genre or language. We also added support for many new file formats including Quicktime (mov), Real media (rm, rv, ra, rmvb), Matroska, FLAC and more. Each of these will require some directshow decoding filters to be installed or else the media server will not be able to transcode them. These filters are not distributed with the media server since their license does not allow that. We will however add to the FAQ some links that will make it easier to find them.
Another new feature is related to the management of the disk space consumed by the cache area. Unlike previous versions where the cache area could grow indefinitely, in this release one can configure the minimum and maximum disk space to be allocated for the cache and the media server will manage it automatically.
Finally, many bug fixes, support for some new media hubs, and more configuration parameters also made it into this release.

Before we finish we would like to share some information about the next release, which will be the first to feature automatically updatable online content. Initially we will add support for RSS and for Media RSS. This will allow one to subscribe to vlogs and podcasts and have the media server take care of everything from downloading the audio/video to making it available for playback on the TV/Stereo. Later on we will add new channels that do not have an RSS file readily available on the web, but rather TVersity will create one for them, using its web crawler. These RSS files will not feature only downloadable content (as is the case for vlogs and podcasts) but also streaming media content. Consider for example a CNET news channel, or a FoodTV short video channel, which will feature their videos as an updatable channel on your TV.

This is it for now, please drop us a note and tell us what you think about the current release and about our plans for the next one. As always we would like to thank our users for providing great encouragement and very helpful feedback. Special thanks for all those that showed their support for the project and made a generous donation, without you we might not make it to this point.

Some details about the upcoming release

2005-08-04T11:51:00.000-04:00

We decided to share some details about the upcoming release in order to satisfy the curiosity of all those that keep asking about it. Version 0.8.0.1 should be out before the end of the month and will feature a complete rewrite of the media library database. Unlike the current implementation the database will no longer reside in memory but rather come from the disk. Also it won't be an XML file but a lightweight RDBMS (based on an open source project called SQLite). The main advantages of this implementation are:

The new implementation will be able to handle libraries with up to 100,000 items (and more) very efficiently. Both browsing and sharing have been optimized with that size libraraies to outperform the previous version.
The media server will have a much smaller memory footprint and more importantly the memory consumption will no longer grow as one shares more and more files/folders.
It will become easy to support automatic updating of the media library (unlike the previous implementation) and this feature will indeed be apart of this release and so is the ability to remove a folder/file from the shares.
As one shares files/folders they become immediately available to the media server, meaning that it is no longer necessary to wait till the end of the sharing process in order to start using your media. This also means that it is no longer required to restart the service after sharing media.

In addition to the rewrite of the media library the release will include many bug fixes, up to date online content and other features. These are not yet set and will be anounced when the release is made.

Finally we would like to thank one of our users for digging TVersity. Carlos posted TVersity to digg.com. For those unfamiliar with digg, it is a technology site where users post news and other users digg them to the surface. That way the story goes to the front page and crawls up to the top list. If it stays in the top list for long it gets discused in diggnation a top ten podcast at iTunes. So for all of those that wanted to help TVersity, please go to the following link http://www.digg.com/diggall, look for the story titled Best media server out there! and digg it (you will be required to register), or go directly to http://digg.com/technology/Best_media_server_out_there_.

Version 0.7.0.1 is now available for download

2005-06-19T16:48:00.000-04:00

It has been just about a month since the last release and the next one is now available for download. The highlight of this release is support for additional media hubs. In fact the TVersity Media Server now supports (in addition to the DLink DSM 320), the Philips Streamium SL300i/SL400i, the Roku Soundbridge M500/M1000/M2000, the SMC EZStream SMCWMR-AG, the Gateway ADC 320 and more. Also, as per our users request we made the folder based indexing hierarchical and not flat and as always lots of online content has been added. Finally the server is now much more configurable and even though it still has no graphical user interface, advanced users can now easily modify its behavior and better tailor it to suit their needs. For a more detailed description of the above changes as well as a description of bug fixes and other minor improvements please refer to the release notes page.

Once again we would like to thank our rapidly growing community of users for providing great encouragement and very helpful feedback, and as always special thanks for all those that made a donation!

Version 0.6.0.2 is now available for download

2005-05-24T03:28:00.000-04:00

TVersity is happy to anounce that version 0.6.0.2 (alpha) of the TVersity Media Server is now available for download. This is the second release made by TVersity, and it is made just two weeks after the first release of the software. During those first two weeks, the TVersity Media Server has seen over a thousand downloads, with three dozen users registering in the support forums and providing valuable feedback to the developers. This new release not only fixes many of the issues described in the forums but also adds hundreds of TV stations from all over the world to the programming guide that comes bundled with the software. Users of the TVersity Media server can now enjoy those stations on their TV screen and navigate through them with a remote control. This new feature allows immigrants and foreigners in every country to tune in to TV broadcasting from their homeland and enjoy it in their living rooms.

The TVersity team would like to take this opportunity and thank the wonderful community that has quickly developed around its software. Without the great feedback from this community the rapid improvements in the software would not have been made possible. Special thanks to all those that have made a donation to the project!

Go to the download page now and get the new version.