Topic: Tversity - Stream content from your PC to your PSP/Xbox360

[iPPi]

So I discovered a little nifty program called Tversity, http://www.tversity.com/

It basically sets your machine as a server, and allows portable devices to stream content from your machine onto your device.  I've only tried it with the PSP and the Xbox360, and I've gotten it working for the most part.  The PSP isn't capable of streaming video, but you can set it to stream music from your machine to your PSP using the RSS feed and it works like a charm.

But the primary focus is the 360.  Basically, a lot of people bitch and complain because the 360 doesn't support the chief video encoding formats used widely, DivX and XviD.  The 360 only supports WMV.  What Tversity does is it transcodes your DivX and XviD video on the fly to WMV and streams that to your 360.  Pretty cool; it does need a fairly powerful machine though to do HD transcoding though.  Anyway, I've currently gotten some videos to work and can stream and watch it on my 360, but a lot of full-length videos do not work for me. 

Tversity is still in beta though, but thus far, it's been very promising and stuff.

So, if you're interested in watching your media that resides on your computer on a larger screen or something, check this thing out.

[scottws]

Yeah, I heard of this the other day.  There is also something called Transcode 360, which operates on a similar concept.

[iPPi]

The problem with Transcode360 is that it requires Media Center Edition since the 360 needs the MCE to work.  I'm running XP Pro on both of my machines, so Transcode360 doesn't work for me.

[poomcgoo]

TVersity is what I use and it really is great.

[scottws]

The problem with Transcode360 is that it requires Media Center Edition since the 360 needs the MCE to work.  I'm running XP Pro on both of my machines, so Transcode360 doesn't work for me.

Ok, now that I looked into it you're right, you need MCE for Transcode 360.

But, you also said "since the 360 needs the MCE to work."  That's not true.  You can use Windows XP MCE, or you can use Windows XP with Windows Media Player 11, Zune, or Windows Media Connect.  I use Windows Media Player 11.

Edit:  Does Tversity replace the sharing capability of MCE, WMP11, Zune, and WMC, or is it used in addition to one of those products?

[iPPi]

TVersity is what I use and it really is great.

Do you have any problems with it?  I'm currently unable to get most of my larger video files working.  I mean, I get some 700MB DivX/XviD files working, but the bulk of them don't work.  The Xbox just freezes for like 1 minute and then it says it lost its connection to the PC.  I'm at a loss as to why that is happening.

And scott, I'm not entirely sure how it works... I just know it does

[Antares]

Awesome.  I've been looking for something to do exactly this.

[poomcgoo]

Yeah, I actually had a problem with one of my larger files.  Most of what I've been watching are tv shows though, so the biggest those files can get is a little over 300mb.  I've yet to have a problem with these, maybe due to their smaller size?  I don't know either, I just know it works and its sweet.

I've also been taking advantage of streaming the music from you PC, too.  It's awesome how easy the MP3 player is to use, even in a game.

[Cobra951]

It seems like a bigger pain than it needs to be.  I guess if your Xbox is hooked up to a big TV away from your PC, it makes sense to go through it.  You can also play WMVs from a USB device, such as a flash memory card.  I did that recently.  I also used SD cards to play music on the Xbox before I had my PCs set up in here.

[iPPi]

It is a little bit of a hassle because the Xbox doesn't support anything besides WMV and MPEG2.  If it supported DivX and XviD, it'd be all good.

[scottws]

Ok, I set up this TVersity thing.  I actually got it to play a 98-minute movie.  But I can't seem to get it to play anything in an OGG container.  The documentation says that if it plays in WMP, it should work on the Xbox, but I'm getting messages that the video I'm trying to play isn't supported.

[scottws]

Eh.  I don't like it much.  It's a great idea, but in implementation it doesn't really seem to work all that well.  Some videos work sometimes and then not others.  Videos that should work don't, even short ones.  The MediaServer.exe service seems to crash a lot.  I set it to restart itself up to two times upon a crash, but even that doesn't help much.  And there doesn't seem to be much consistency.

Like I have 3 Family Guy Episodes that I encoded.  I encoded them all at the same time.  All are in the OGM container with DivX video and Vorbis audio.  One plays.  For another it says that it is not supported.  The third crashes the MediaServer.exe service.  I don't know if it's TVersity itself or my computer or what.  But I'd say less than half of my videos play.

I tried creating a new administrative user and making the service run under that user, as the FAQ for TVersity recommends.  I even uninstalled all my codecs and DirectShow filters and reinstalled them under this user and it didn't seem to make any difference whatsoever.

[iPPi]

Yea it's a hit and a miss since it's still in beta.  I'm hoping that they fix a lot of the current issues and in the near future we will have a product that is worth using.

[scottws]

It's also weird that the interface is Flash-based.