TVersity

Thank you for Downloading TVersity

Before You Start

1. Please make sure your system complies with the minimum system requirements of the software. It is very important to install the codecs mentioned on that page, without them you are likely to experience failures in video transcoding and possibly also some crashes of the software. If you have codec packs or other codecs that were installed but are not really necessary we strongly advise removing them before installing the recommended codecs.
2. There is no need to uninstall older versions of the software, Tversity will upgrade your existing installation and will copy your shares to the new installation.
3. Xbox 360 users must upgrade to Windows Media Player (WMP) 11. On Win2k or Wink2k3 you can install the Windows Media related codecs from the Ace codec pack instead (this is because WMP 11 is not currently available on these systems).
4. Xbox 360 users will also need to get the 2006 Fall upgrade from Microsoft in order to access videos from their computers via TVersity (it is not required for music and photos).

After Download

1. Please locate the setup file you downloaded and make sure it has a ‘.exe’ suffix. On some systems, due to certain security software/practices one will find the file with no suffix, in such a case please rename it so that the ‘.exe’ extension is restored.
2. Run the setup file and go through the installation wizard.

After Installation

1. If you have a personal firewall running or the Windows firewall is running please make sure that the executable MediaServer.exe located under the installation folder of the software (c:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server by default) is allowed to accept incoming connections on the port used by the media server (which is by default port 41952) (it is not necessary to specify the port on most personal firewalls, however your system will be more secure if you do so).
2. For transcoding purposes you will need to make sure you can play in Windows Media Player all the media formats you wish TVersity to handle. If you cannot play some formats via Windows Media Player you will not be able to play them via TVersity and so you will need to install additional directshow software components to overcome this issue.
3. In addition to that, you may need to change the log-on account of the TVersity service (by default it is set to the local system account) to a user account in which Windows Media Player and the additional directshow components were installed (these are necessary in order to provide decoding for the media formats you need). Please refer to this FAQ section for step by step instructions on how to do that. If you have no intention to play online media and to do any kind of transcoding then you can leave the log-on account as is, otherwise leave it as is for now and later on if you experience transcoding issues, consider changing it.
4. Xbox 360 users will need to disable media sharing in Windows Media Connect, Windows Media Player 11 and in the Zune software (assuming it is installed on some computer on their home network).
5. At this point make sure the server is running and responding by opening the following URL http://localhost:41952/, which will start the TVersity GUI. Once the GUI starts click on one of the category icons on the left side to see the various sources of content from any given category. New installations will have all the categories empty.
6. You may want to know that you can access the TVersity GUI from any machine on your network by replacing the localhost in the above URLs with the IP address or name of the machine running TVersity.
7. The first time you run the server after an upgrade to a new version it does a full refresh of your media library. During this refresh the browsing of your media library (via a web browser, UPnP device, PDA, PSP, Xbox 360 or any other device) may result in an error due to a known issue with the TVersity server, and so it is best to let the refresh complete before moving to the next step. Once the spinning wheel at the top right corner of the TVersity GUI disappears the refresh of the media library is done and at that point you can safely move to the next step.
8. You can now browse your media library in a web browser from the TVersity GUI or by using the URL http://localhost:41952/lib. This is a slim (yet powerful) interface developed by TVersity to run on web browsers of mobile devices (such as PDAs, Phones, the Sony PSP, etc.). TVersity also offers a more fancy interface (work in progress) based on Macromedia flash that can be opened using the URL http://localhost:41952/flashlib.
9. TVersity also offers a standalone (not browser based) interface that can (and should) be used only on the machine on which TVersity was installed, and has a few additional features. You can open it from the Windows start menu, it resides under Programs -> TVersity Media Server.

For owners of the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch

1. Open the Safari browser on the iPhone and point it to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/iphone, where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the machine running TVersity.
2. It is recommended to do it initially with the iPhone connected to your home wireless network. You can find out the IP address of any given Windows machine by going to Start -> Settings -> Network Connections -> Local Area Connections -> Support tab.
3. You should now see your media library and be able to navigate it and play everything on it. Once an item has been selected for playback please wait till the little Quicktime play icon appears, then tap on it and the playback will start.
4. The only exception is live video streams, which cannot be played due to a current iPhone limitation (live audio streams such as Internet radio stations do work).
5. Please also note that videos that require conversion will start playback only after the entire conversion is complete, so please wait patiently - this is a result of the same limitation that prevents playback of live video streams. Once the conversion is done, you can play the video and FF/Rew freely. Repeat playbacks of the same video do not require another conversions so playback can be started immediately.
6. Congratulations! You have successfully installed the server and used it to play content on your iPhone.
7. In order to access the media library on the go, you need to use the same URL mentioned above but with a different IP address. You can find this IP address by pointing the web browser on the machine running TVersity to http://tversity.com/myip.php.
8. You also need to set up your router to forward the TVersity port (by default port 41952) to the machine running TVersity. Step by step instructions are available here. (please note that there are security risks associated with port forwarding and that you do it at your own risk)
9. If you are using an EDGE connection make sure to point Safari to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/iphone/edge so that TVersity will generate low bitrate videos which are appropriate for streaming over EDGE.

For owners of the Sony PSP (firmware 2.6 or higher)

1. In order to access the media library from the Sony PSP, please start the Sony PSP web browser and enter the address http://host:41952/lib where the IP address of the computer running TVersity is used instead of the word host. You can find out the IP address of your computer on Windows by following the instructions on this page.
2. At this point the media library is still empty since you haven’t yet shared any media, however you will be able to access online content from the TVersity content guides. Click on Audio and then on TVersity Audio Guide and you should see a list of Internet radio stations that are included in your media library for demonstration purposes. You may expect to play the radio stations by clicking on them, however the PSP web browser is configured to download music files when clicking on them and store them on your memory card. While this behavior is useful for downloading music tracks from your media library to the PSP (for playback when no network connection is available), it will not allow you to play live content such as these radio stations.
3. Luckily the PSP RSS reader can do audio streaming, i.e. it can play the audio off the network without first downloading it, a necessary feature for playing live content. In order to see this feature in action, click on the RSS icon (the orange icon at the top right corner of the TVersity toolbar) and this will result in the PSP browser asking if you wish to add this Podcast. Please select Yes, close the web browser and open the RSS reader. Navigate to the podcast you just added, select one of the radio stations and play it. After a few seconds (the time it takes to buffer some data off the Net for playback) you should be able to listen to the radio station on your PSP. At this point you can pause the station, rewind and then fast forward it, despite the fact that it is streaming live, because the TVersity server comes with built in support for time shifting.
4. Once you share media from your home network (see step-by-step instructions below) you will be able to download it to the PSP (via the web browser) or stream it (via the RSS reader) in the same way as described above. Please note however that the PSP cannot handle folders inside RSS feeds and therefore only the music tracks inside the feed will be displayed in the PSP RSS Reader. This also means that if you add an RSS feed comprised only of folders (such as the root of the media library) nothing will be displayed in the PSP RSS Reader.
5. For videos, TVersity converts them to a format that is compatible with the PSP when you download them via the web browser. Please note that, unlike audio, videos start downloading only after the conversion is complete (this is a limitation of the MPEG4 format - the only video format the PSP supports). For that reason you can not play live streams and you cannot stream videos to the PSP, you can only download them, store them on the memory stick and play them later directly off the stick. With audio, the download and the conversion happen simultaneously and therefore streaming (via the RSS reader) is possible. In order to download a video, navigate the library and click on it. This will start the conversion however it will not start the download (unless the video is already in a PSP compatible format or was already converted once in the past via TVersity). Only when the conversion is complete the PSP will start downloading it. If the conversion takes a while the PSP will display an error message. Do not be discouraged by it, the PSP is simply not designed to wait long periods of time for the download to start. All you need to do is click the video again and wait till the conversion is complete.
6. Once the conversion is done, the download can be started, and once the download is complete, you can leave the web browser, go to the video section of the PSP menus and play the newly downloaded video.
7. Do not attempt to download live streams since in principle they are of an infinite length and hence cannot be stored on the PSP memory stick.
8. Congratulations! You have successfully installed the server and used it to play online content on your Sony PSP.
9. If you wish to access your media library on the go using your Sony PSP, you will need to use the public IP address assigned to your router by your ISP and to configure your router to forward port 41952 to the computer running TVersity. In other words, you will need to open the TVersity port (41952) on your router/firewall for incoming connections and use your public IP address or a dynamic DNS instead of the localhost in the URL you open in the PSP browser. Step by step instructions for the setup of port forwarding with a specific router make and model, are available at portforward.com. You can find your public IP address by clicking here.

For owners of the Nintendo Wii

1. Open the Wii’s web browser and enter the address http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/flashlib, where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the computer on your home network that is running TVersity. You can find out the IP address of your computer on Windows by following the instructions on this page. This will display the Adobe flash based interface TVersity offers for navigating the media library. If this page does not load, chances are you forgot to change your firewall settings such that TVersity can act as a server.
2. Once the page loads, you can start navigating your media library. At this point the media library is still empty since you haven’t yet shared any media, however you will be able to access online content from the TVersity content guides. Select the Audio option, then the TVersity Audio Guide, you should see a list of Internet radio stations that are included in your media library for demonstration purposes. Click on any of the radio stations and you should be able to play them (it may take up to 30 seconds for playback to start so please be patient). During playback you can move the pointer down the screen to get the usual playback controls. You can click on the stop button to stop the audio and go back to the menus. You can also pause the audio despite the fact that it is streaming live, because the TVersity server comes with built in support for time shifting.
3. Go back to the menus (by stopping the audio) and use the UP button at the top several times to go back in the menus all the way to the top level menu. Alternatively move the cursor on the screen to the top and a toolbar will be displayed. Click the home icon on the toolbar and you should go to the top level menu. Select now to the Video option and then TVersity Video Guide. You should see a list of Internet TV stations included with TVersity for demonstration purposes, select one of them (like the 300k version of ManiaTV) and use the right arrow to start playing it. After a few seconds the playback will start. Please note that in order to play it TVersity is streaming this station to the PC, converting it on the PC to Flash Video and streaming it to the Wii. During playback you can use the playback controls to rewind or fast forward (you cannot go forward beyond the latest point in the stream that was already converted to flash video).
4. Once you share media from your home network (see step-by-step instructions further below) you will be able to stream it to the Wii as well.
5. Congratulations! You have successfully installed the server and used it to play online content on your Nintendo Wii.
6. Please note that the above procedure works on the Sony Playstation 3 as well, however the PS3 also supports UPnP A/V (see instructions below) which can deliver a superior user experience, therefore is the recommended way to use the PS3 with TVersity. If you do decide to test the PS3 using the Flash interface, please note the following:
   • You will need to first adjust the display setting of the PS3 to 480i/p or standard NTSC/PAL, otherwise video playback will stutter (due to performance limitation of the Adobe Flash player running on the PS3).
   • Navigation on the PS3 is done via the arrows, you will only need to use the X button once to give focus to the browser window, and afterwards you only need to use the arrow keys on the left side of the game pad. The left and right arrows allow you to go in and out of menu options and to start playing audio/video, while the up and down arrows let you scroll up and down.
   • Unlike the Wii, you can also download media files to the PS3 hard drive (and have TVersity automatically convert them to a format the PS3 can play) navigate to the media you wish to download and have it highlighted then move the cursor up to the top area of the screen, once the toolbar is displayed click the download button and select from the menu the PS3. This will start a conversion (if necessary) of the source media to a format the PS3 can handle and in the same time it will download this file to the PS3. Once the download is complete, exit the web browser, go to the video section of the PS3 menus and the video should be there, click on it to play it.
   • If downloaded media does not play it may be because the PS3 will refuse to play videos that do not have an audio track. TVersity might produce such videos if the audio track on the original video is such that TVersity cannot convert it. If you experience this problem, you can overcome it by installing a directshow filter that will allow TVersity to decode that audio track (for example DVD videos typically use AC3 audio so they require the AC3 filter for decoding).
   • An alternative interface for downloading media files can be accessed by pointing the web browser to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/lib (note the lib at the end instead of flashlib). This will display a lean HTML interface (designed for mobile devices like the Sony PSP). You navigate this interface just like any web page and can download files to the PS3 hard drive by clicking on them. As mentioned above, when files are downloaded (as opposed to streamed) they can be at up to 1080p resolutions and they can be played with any PS3 display setting.

For owners of a UPnP A/V / DLNA Device (including the Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3)

1. The media server should automatically be discovered by your UPnP / DLNA media player. Some players do this discovery each time they are turned on, others need to be explicitly put in a discovery/search mode. If this is the case for your player, please put your player in this mode.
2. If you are using the Xbox 360, it will discover TVersity when you set it to access music, photos or videos from a computer. You may need to first disconnect from the previous media server you used (done via the system blade) and to disable media sharing via WMP11/WMC, or else the 360 will keep reporting that no servers were found on the network.
3. Please refer to this Troubleshooting section if you are having difficulties with automatic discovery.
4. As the media player discovers the TVersity server you should see the TVersity Media Server appearing on your display. At that same time the server is discovering the make and model of your media player so that it can better serve it. The TVersity media server can discover automatically many different devices, however if your device is not on the list of automatically discovered devices you may need to manually set your device make and model from the TVersity GUI (if your device does not appear at all in our list of devices, chances are that it will still work if it indeed supports the UPnP AV or DLNA standard and so you need to select from the list a device that has a similar set of capabilities to the one you are using in terms of the media formats it supports).
5. At this point the media library is still empty since you haven’t yet shared any media, however you will be able to access online content from the TVersity content guides. Use your remote to navigate to Audio and then to TVersity Audio Guide and you should see a list of Internet radio stations that are included in your media library for demonstration purposes. Click on any of them and after a few seconds (the time it takes to buffer some data off the Net for playback) you should be able to listen to the radio station on your Stereo/TV. At this point you can pause the station, rewind and then fast forward it, despite the fact that it is streaming live, because the TVersity server comes with built in support for time shifting.
6. Xbox 360 users, will not be able to navigate the entire audio hierarchy provided by TVersity since the device has been designed to access only specific portions of one’s music library. In order to overcome this, TVersity will show under saved playlists not only your music playlists but also Internet podcasts, under songs not only your music tracks but also Internet audio streams. The 360 does allow full library navugation for photos and for videos.
7. If you wish to better organize Internet radio stations on the Xbox 360, you can place them in a playlist. Then set the Xbox to access music from a computer, navigate to saved playlists, select the TVersity Audio Feed and play one of the radio stations that are listed there.
8. On the Playstation 3, in addition to streaming media, you can also download media to the PS3 hard drive by selecting some file, invoking the options menu and choosing the “copy” operation. This can even be done on entire folders. As the copy is taking place, TVersity will automatically convert the media that would otherwise not play on the PS3.
9. Also on the Playstation3, you may occasionally get an error message saying that the access to the media server has been denied. In most cases you can safely ignore this message, since the Playstation 3 is simply not patient enough for data to be sent to it. When TVersity converts media to a format compatible with the PS3, there is a few seconds delay before data becomes available and during that time this error message may be displayed. In some cases the PS3 will display the error and then play the media, in other cases it will simply go back to the menus, or display a second error message claiming that the media is unsupported. In the two latter cases you simply need to try playing again and it should work. With Internet video (as opposed to files located on your home network) the delay is not just a few seconds but rather it can be up to 30 seconds. With Internet audio it can be up to two minutes and more. This is because the PS3 insists on getting a lot of data (roughly 1 Mb) before initiating playback. If after that period of time you still get an error message, chances are TVersity is not able to convert that particular video. In most cases this can be fixed by installing a missing directshow filter. For more information please refer to the support forums.
10. Congratulations! You have successfully installed the server and used it to play online content on your UPnP / DLNA device.
11. Please note that videos that need conversion to play on your device will be converted such that the result will have a maximum resolution of 400×300. This will produce a VHS quality video and therefore if the computer running TVersity is fast enough (P4 2.8 or a modern dual core) we suggest increasing this value to 640×480. This will produce DVD quality videos. People with Core 2 Duo or faster machines can set it to 1280×720, and TVersity will generate 720p videos for them on the fly (assuming the source video is HD).

Sharing Internet Media and Home Media from the computer on which TVersity is running

1. You can share media files located on your hard drive by using the GUI. Please locate the TVersity desktop shortcut icon and double click on it, this should open the TVersity media management application. From this application you can control the media server and change its configuration as well as add new files, folders or URL to your media library. Anything added to your media library is shared by the media server with any networked device you have on your home network.
2. The easiest way to add new items to your media library is to click the large plus button in the GUI and select from the menu that opens the type of media you wish to share. This will open a dialog box in which you can enter the rest of the informaiton required to describe the media you are sharing. For files and folders you can browse for the file/folder path by clicking the browse button, for URLs you simply paste them into the relevant text box and give them a name and then click submit. (please note that due to limitatations related to running inside a browser the GUI can only browse for files and not for folders, therefore even when you wish to browse for folders, you will be required to select a file from that folder and then when the file selection window is closed and you are back at the sharing dialog box, this file will be automatically removed from the pathname).
3. You can also share URLs and media files located on your hard drive by using the command line media sharing utility provided with the TVersity Media Server. Please refer to this FAQ question for step by step instructions on how to do that.
4. You should now be able to play the newly shared media on your media player. If it does not play, you are missing a codec for those videos, once installed you should be able to play these files. To find the right codec, either google for it or submit a question to the TVersity support forums.

Sharing Media from other computers on your home network

1. The TVersity Media Server can stream media files from network shares to your media player, however you will need to change the default log-on account the TVersity Media Server service is using to some other account that has administrative rights on your machine. Please refer to this FAQ section for step by step instructions on how to do that.
2. You can share media from network shares using the GUI or the command line utility just like you did when sharing local media, however network share pathnames cannot use mapped network drive letters and instead they must include the name of the computer in which they reside, e.g. \\george\movies is tha path to the movies network share on a computer called george).
3. You should now be able to play the newly shared media on your media player.

Sharing Media with a remote installation of TVersity or with Podcast managers like iTunes / iPod

1. You can publish portions of your media library and subscribe to them via podcast managers like Juice (formerly known as iPodder), iTunes or another installation of TVersity. The first thing you need to do is decide what portion of your media library you wish to publish. Let’s assume you have a folder with videos of your kids that you wish to share with your parents, we will show you how to subscribe to this folder from iTunes and have it kept in synch with an iPod (all the necessary conversions between the file format produced by your camcorder and the format an iPod can handle will be taken care of in this process with very little effort).
2. Assuming this folder was shared already via TVersity (as explained above) you should browse your media library in a web browser (via http://localhost:41952/lib) and navigate to the relevant folder. Right click on the RSS button and select from the menu Copy Link Location on Firefox or Copy Shortcut on Microsoft Internet Explorer.
3. Open iTunes, go to the Advanced menu and select Subscribe to Podcast. In the windows that opened, paste the RSS URL you copied from the web browser and click ok.
4. iTunes now shows this folder in the Podcast section and will start downloading the first video. In order to make sure that these videos can be played in iTunes, TVersity converts those videos if necessary to an MPEG format .
5. You can now play this video via iTunes and as you add new videos to the folder they will automatically be added to iTunes as well.
6. If you wish to synchronize these videos with an iPod, you will need to have iTunes convert them to an iPod friendly format by selecting these videos, going to the Advance menu and selecting Convert (iTunes version 6.04 is needed for video conversion). On your next iPod synchronization the videos will be added and made available for playback.
7. In a similar way you can also synchronize audio files with the iPod, without worrying about their original format. TVersity will convert almost any existing audio format (including FLAC, Wavpack, Ogg Vorbis and many more) to mp3 on the fly while iTunes is downloading your files.
8. If you would like to use a remote installation of iTunes, it is recommended to first establish a VPN between your home network and the receiver’s home network and then email your RSS feed URL to the receiver (replacing the localhost with the IP address of your computer on the VPN). Once the RSS URL is available the receiver needs to follow the same exact procedure as described above, to subscribe to it. If you can’t or do not wish to establish a VPN using your firewall, you can use a free service like hamachi. Alternatively you can open the TVersity port (41952) on your router/firewall for incoming connections and use your public IP address or a dynamic DNS instead of the localhost in the RSS URL. Step by step instructions for the setup of port forwarding with a specific router make and model, are available at portforward.com.
9. Instead of using iTunes, you can subscribe to the RSS feed from a remote installation of TVersity, this will allow the receiver to access the published media from their networked device of choice. TVersity, unlike most Podcast managers, will not only add new media as it becomes available on the RSS feed, but it will also remove media when it is removed from the feed, essentially synchronizing the relevant portion of the media library between the two sites. In addition to that TVersity allows you to synchronize not only audio and video feeds (as in iTunes) but also image feeds.
10. Congratulations! You have successfully installed the server and used it to syncrhonize media with iTunes, with the iPod and with a remote installation of TVersity.

Congratulations!

You have successfully installed the server and used it to play online content as well as content located on your home network and to synchronize media between two remote locations. Enjoy and don’t forget to drop us a line telling us about your experience with the TVersity Media Server.