How to watch content from your computer on your TV using TVersity

These days just about everything used in a home theater, from DVD players to video game consoles to amplifiers to the televisions themselves, is some type of computer. Because they are computers, many of these devices have capabilities far beyond their originally intended purpose. D-Link, for example, makes a line of DVD players which can also play videos stored on your PC, and DirecTV’s DVR can be used to listen to your music collection.

Like anything else that deals with technology, though, these devices don’t always play nicely together. Many of the devices have special quirks or requirements that make it difficult for them to interact with each other and trying to overcome those obstacles can be a frustrating process. That’s where TVersity come into the picture. Let’s check it out.

TVersity is a free application which can take just about any multimedia source (photos, music, video) as its input and can convert it on the fly to just about any multimedia format. We’ll use a problem I ran into as a real-world example to help understand why that’s necessary and how it all works.

Learning through Example

My main TV is located in my living room and is connected to a DirecTV DVR box. The latest version of the firmware for my DVR allows me to stream video from other locations in my house so that I can watch those videos on my TV. The problem I have is that the DVR can only handle video which is in the mpeg format and I have a fairly large library of videos which are in other formats (like avi, flv, wmv, xvid, and divx). TVersity allows me to watch all of those videos through my DVR by converting all of the my videos to the mpeg format which my DVR expects. How?

Understanding UPnP and DLNA

Before we can understand how TVersity works we’ll have to have indulge in a little bit of alphabet soup. UPnP stands for “Universal Plug and Play” and DLNA stands for “Digital Living Network Alliance”. Catchy names, aren’t they? DLNA is really just UPnP with a tighter set of rules regarding audio and video — for our purposes they mean pretty much the same thing so we’ll just treat them that way and call the whole thing “UPnP”.

The whole idea behind UPnP was to come up with a standard where different types of multimedia devices could talk to each other and exchange content over a home network. Devices which can display content are called “renderers” and devices which can provide content are called “servers”. In my example my DVR box is a UPnP renderer and the TVersity software running on my PC is a UPnP server.

When a UPnP device (in this case my DVR) first accesses my network it identifies itself to all of the other UPnP devices on the network. This introduction is known as the “discovery” phase. As part of that discovery phase the device also tells those other UPnP devices what its basic capabilities are. In the case of my DVR it says something like “Hi. I’m a UPnP renderer, my model number is HR20-100, and I’m capable of playing music, displaying photos, and playing video.” (Needless to say, that’s not an exact translation.) At that point the UPnP servers respond to the introduction and tell the DVR something like “I’m a UPnP server and I have some music, photos, and video which I can send to you.”

Filling in the Gaps

Although the UPnP discovery phase lets my DVR know where to go to get its content, it doesn’t paint a complete picture of what the DVR really needs. You’ll note that my DVR said “I can play video”, but what it really needed to say was “I can play video, but it needs to be in mpeg format.” That’s where TVersity comes into play.

TVersity maintains its own catalog of different UPnP enabled devices and their capabilities. In my case when my DVR says that it’s an HR20-100 TVersity looks up that device’s capabilities and sees that the video needs to be encoded into an mpeg format. Although TVersity comes with a long list of supported devices there are more and more UPnP devices appearing every day. If you happen to own a device which isn’t in TVersity’s list you can always just add its information to TVersity’s catalog (an xml file named “profiles.xml”).

Delivering the Goods

At this point TVersity has all of the information it needs to send the video I’ve requested to my DVR. It accomplishes this by transcoding the video from one format (let’s say that it’s a wmv video file) to another format (the mpeg stream which my DVR needs). My DVR doesn’t know that any of this is happening — it just thinks that the UPnP server it’s connected to (TVersity) has some mpeg video files that it’s making available. How that’s accomplished showcases another aspect of TVersity’s power.

TVersity handles this transcoding by making use of a library of codecs which it installs as part of the normal TVersity installation. We can think of these codecs as the engine which TVersity uses to translate the wmv file on my PC to the mpeg stream required by my DVR. Although TVersity has the necessary codecs to handle transcoding the most common file types out of the box there are additional codecs available on the TVersity web site to handle just about any other video format.

Using those Cores

Transcoding a video file can be a very CPU-intensive operation. Fortunately, TVersity is a multi-threaded application, meaning that it can take advantage of the processing power available in the newer dual-core (or even quad-code) processors by splitting up the workload across all of the available cores. In my case TVersity is capable of using my quad-code Intel Q6600 CPU to transcode high definition wmv files (720p) to high definition mpeg files without ever pushing my CPU above 50% utilization. There are many factors which dictate how much CPU is required, including the format and resolution of both the incoming and outgoing streams, so your mileage may vary.

Configuring TVersity

Configuring TVersity is a pretty straight-forward process. You have to tell TVersity where to go to find your multimedia (audio, video, and photos) files. Those locations can be on the PC where TVersity is running or through a network share. TVersity also gives you the ability to grab additional content from the internet (like YouTube videos or your favorite podcasts).

If you happen to be using a rendering device which TVeristy supports out-of-the-box you’re pretty much done at that point. If not, you’ll have to make some changes to the profiles.xml file to tell TVersity how your device is going to introduce itself and what requirements it has when it comes to consuming media.

Getting Started

There are more and more devices appearing on the market which have UPnP/DLNA capabilities built in, and just about any of these can use TVersity. These devices include everything from DVRs (like my DirecTV box) to DVD players to televisions. If you’ve purchased a home theater component over the last few years you may already have one of these devices in your living room. Do you own a Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Sony PSP, or even an Apple iPhone? Those devices are all capable of accessing media through TVersity, too.

Even if you don’t have a UPnP device in your living room you can still use TVersity on your computer. TVersity itself includes a UPnP client so you can browse your multimedia library and play content right within the application. Other software, like the ShowTime component of Nero’s DVD burning suite, can also act as a UPnP client.

Wrapping it Up

So that’s TVersity. TVersity allows you to sit in your living room and access the photos, music, and video which are stored on your computer or available through the internet. It’s free for personal use, it’s easy to use, and it does what it’s supposed to do. Check it out.

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