TVersity 1.0 RC1 is here

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.