Media Streaming around the home: TVersity

If like me, you have bought an Xbox 360 and alot of tv shows and films on a computer, you might want to consider streaming them around your home. Now, the 360 has many options to do this, but there are problems with some of them.

You can connect through the Media Center OS or Media Player. Obviously, you would need to pay out money for the Windows Media Center or the Premium versions of the V word (that rhymes with Mister).

Media Player is free for all versions of Windows and if you upgrade to version 10, you can use the Media Connect functionality to do so. This is not the greatest solution as you can come across problems with the encoding of the videos (DivX, Xvid etc aren’t natively supported). You can use TransCoder but it’s clunky design means you have to select Advanced on the video you want, then scroll down to Transcoder then wait till it has streamed enough for the video to start.

So after a couple of days searching on many websites, I stumbled across TVersity. Install it on your master computer (that with all the media on), then configure a couple of firewall settings and it is complete! It allows you to use the Xbox menu system to view the folders that you have added to the library of the TVersity program.It also allows you to stream to Wii, iPhone, PS3 and any web browser enabled PC. It can play DivX files and no need faffing around with the menus.

5 Stars!

Easy like a Sunday Morning.

I shall be testing out TwonkyMedia in the short future as I would like to setup Linux on my box, as TVersity isn’t available for Linux I feel this is the next best choice.

Future of Gaming?

About a year ago I gave up upgrading my PC to play the latest games, Crysis was just a rumour and Stalker had actually been released. It took me too much time to find out what the latest technologies were and far too expensive for me to buy the parts. Although, I did enjoy both the research and the putting together.

So I bought myself an Xbox 360. I know, I know, there are many reasons why PCs are better than consoles and vice versa. I am not going to go into that debate. I do like the simplicity of a console and the (if you don’t get a red ring of death) one off payment for the console hardware. Again, I know, I know that there will be a new console out within 5 years etc etc.

However….

More and more Gaming Companies are turning to Server-side rendering. Basically, instead of your PC doing all the maths and graphics processing, the company pay for large servers to do it for you. The servers then give you a video stream of the game. Like an interactive film, if you will. With the ever increasing bandwidths from Internet Service Providers, this can be dealt out in two different flavours: Standard Definition and High Definition.

LivePlace are releasing a competitor to Second Life, that will allow you to connect via any internet device and experience a photo-realistic world. See this article posted by TechCrunch

OnLive on the other hand are hosting games on their servers, offering a (possibly) subscription service. All you do is buy the box (“cheaper than a Wii”) and any TV or PC can play your favourite HD quality games such as Crysis or F.E.A.R. See Gizmodo Article

Fantastic! Is this a possible end to the endless upgrading of PCs? We’ll have to wait. It will all depend on the price I suppose.