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.
• Many bug fixes and other minor improvements.

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:

Full release notes are here.

Download latest version here.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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???

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

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