Here is a link:

http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/webtools/64902/Tversity.html

We never gave much thought about TVersity in education but I guess there is definitely some value in being able to manage a global repository of the school audio/video collection and then have access to it from each classroom / media room using a simple and low cost device like the Wii + a TV screen.

Not many users are aware of it, but the free TVersity version can serve up to 30 concurrent streams and more and can do multiple transcodes simultaneously (depending on the CPU+memory available to it). Moreover it can serve the same transcode to multiple recipients and it proxies Internet content, serving one incoming stream to as many recipients as needed and caching it for future use.  This means that your school Internet connection is not getting clogged with many different attempts to access essentially the same media.

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/

You can monitor the status of S3 at:
http://status.aws.amazon.com/

More and more start-ups and large companies are relying on Amazon web services, yet instead of Amazon improving the reliability of these services it has been getting worse (last outage was about 3 months ago). Maybe it is time to think about alternatives…

In the meantime, here is an alternative download link for the software:
http://tversity.com//TVersitySetup_1_0_0_2_RC1.exe

Update:

It took Amazon almost 8 hours to get S3 working again in the US (6 hours for S3 Europe). Here is what CNET (which is also an S3 customer) had to say about it:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-9995302-62.html

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.

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.

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.

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:

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 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!