TVersity

In short TVersity has been a success. Nomad gives it a 4 out of 5 recommendation. There are some niggling issues but hopefully future software updates will cure these.

TVersity has a different processor load profile from the other media servers I have tried. It runs at 100% for a period and then drops right off. However the good news is that the videos play without stop/starting and without loss of sound. It looks like TVersity works by building up a buffer and then stopping for a while until the buffer needs to be refilled. Obviously someone has optimised the performance such that keeping the media player supplied with data has priority. I am still having some problems with very high definition files (say 50MB per minute) which sometimes lose audio. I think this is very likely due to the limitations of the wireless system and may well be cured by going to a hardwired connection.

TVersity does transcoding well. It has solved the problem of the M4V suffixed files that would not play. I have been able to turn off the batch file I created to rename these files. I am also using TVersity regularily to replay MOV files. TVersity does not handle FLV format files, but then none of the other servers I tried managed to cope with them either.

TVersity provides a 'date added' folder and by selecting todays date you can find all the current videos. This saves hunting round all the feeds to find whether there are any new videos. Using the 'date added' folder in TVersity is now the standard way that I watch video.

Tversity seems to work fine with my photos. However, for some reason Tversity seems to be having trouble finding the audio files on my PC (in aac format). Possibly it does not support aac. It will play mp3 audio files without a problem. To find the albums I have ripped I still need to keep Kiss PC-Link running.

So far I am only using the free version of TVersity. The Pro version (29.95 dollars) of TVersity also provides capability to download content, including that from BBC iPlayer and Hulu (US only at present). I have not yet tried this side of things out. In fact TVersity can handle RSS video feeds as well which means that Miro could be redundant. I am not ready for anything that radical yet, but it is a possibility.

http://tversity.com/