TVersity client app

Just saw this on berry review, anyone have a chance to try it out yet?

https://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/62602


http://www.berryreview.com/2011/10/2...your-playbook/

by Ronen Halevy on Oct 27th, 2011

FileArchiveHaven has released a TVersity client for the popular TVersity server that many people use. In case you don’t know TVersity is a free server to install on your PC that lets you stream video to devices like the Xbox, PS3, and now the PlayBook. TVersity is a DLNA compliant sharing server in other words and this new “Connect to TVersity” app lets you stream videos, audio, and pictures to your PlayBook. The crazy part is that this PlayBook app is not limited to use to TVersity and actually works with any standard web based DLNA server. The only benefit of TVersity server is that it pre-converts videos to make sure they are playable on the PlayBook due to compatible video types.

Sounds cool right? With Connect to TVersity and your TVersity server setup you can:


•Stream Audio files
•Stream Video Files
•Stream Photos
•UPNP / DLNA
•Supports Subtitles

I have not had a chance to try out this app yet since I have not been home but I will definitely be checking it out. Send us screenshots to our tip line if you get it working! Let us know what you think of Connect to TVersity if you pick it up in App World for $1.99. They also confirm that they have tested it on PlayBook Beta OS 2.0 and it works!


PS: I have had limited success in the past getting the PlayBook to simply work with TVersity without a client by just going to http://<tversity ip address>:<port>/flashlib/ but hopefully this is better!

Works great. I tried a few different video files and flawless!

Originally Posted by lexsteryo

Works great. I tried a few different video files and flawless!

Sweet so dlna server support now.

Originally Posted by Foreverup

Sweet so dlna server support now.

I posted this app this morning :) I have some new icons and screenshots coming for it and I'm putting together a service pack (why not) that has some tips for troubleshooting. I'm glad most people are successful so far. One person had problems (on my reviews) but I have no way to contact them :( and they didn't email me.

I just wanted to say: thank you for your support guys. It means a lot, because this money is going to go back into developing both this app and more free apps. I promise you, if you have *any* problems I will do anything I can to help out. And yes, if you purchase and it absolutely won't work I will refund.

Testing:

It has been working very well for me - and I tested the heck out of it on OS 1.6, 1.7 and 2.0. It should be backwards compatible all the way to 1.0. I even tested it over the internet from my home to work a few times to make sure everything is cop-esthetic. I did various tricks to slow down my router and stuff at home, and it seems to recover itself nicely.

History

Anyway, all my other apps are free - they helped to create this one. If someone is short on funds, I certainly recommend using the browser instead. The one major difference with this, is I was able to squeeze out a bit better of a framerate than the stock browser and put some more effort into the stability of it with a mass-load of error trapping.

So my reference numbers are suggesting you really should have a better experience with this app even while running it.

But again, please do let me know if yo have any hiccups. I love TVersity and I appreciate everyone's support with this purchase. :). Also, I do take feature requests. And if I can't add a feature, I will say why.

~Ed

Im kinda disappointed by this, I think the description is a little misleading. I was actually expecting a DLNA client, all this is doing is loading the flash tversity page in a webstageview (browser). Nothing to do with DLNA here. The server is transcoding to a format the flash player can display.

I don't care about the money I spent, but to the dev, I think you should be a little more forth coming in your app description of what your app actually does, lots of people are going to be mislead thinking they are really getting a DLNA client.

I thought I mentioned a few times inside the app that you can do this other (including free) ways? But fair enough on the DLNA. Its designed for any web-enabled DLNA client. If you have a specific DLNA web-server it isn't compatible with - please let me know and I'll see what I can do to add support for it. As long as it does transcoding to flash, it should work. Otherwise it might take more work.

Its certainly something that can improve as we go forward. True DLNA is going to be tough because RIM has locked down some of the ports pretty tightly for me through AIR.

I have thought about creating a freeware web-server to release with it but realized TVersity does it better than I could anyway.

Originally Posted by KermEd

I thought I mentioned a few times inside the app that you can do this other (including free) ways? But fair enough on the DLNA. Its designed for any web-enabled DLNA client. If you have a specific DLNA web-server it isn't compatible with - please let me know and I'll see what I can do to add support for it.

Its certainly something that can improve as we go forward. True DLNA is going to be tough because RIM has locked down some of the ports pretty tightly for me through AIR.

Theres no such thing as a web enabled DLNA client lol. Just like ORB, SubSonic, RemotePotato etc. all it's doing is transcoding videos to a format that Flash can support (or in RemotePotatos case Silverlight). By that logic it means Youtube is a DLNA server ;)

Point proven by a previous poster saying we now have DLNA support. I have nothing against your app, I think you should just be clear that it's nothing to do with DLNA, it's a web launcher essentially (hey I did the same thing for ORB so nothing against it ;) )

And yes true DLNA isn't going to be possible as AIR on the PB doesn't support UDP connections, I thought you might have been using AIR native extensions and the NDK to do the heavy lifting.

Nothing against your app at all, but have a look at SonicAir for the PlayBook, he did a great job of implementing it. You could probably do something similar with the TVersity API and create a full featured app that way. And if you really want to get adventurous make a Plex app :) I'd pay good money for that. Also have a look at 'VLC-Shares' I hacked together an app for myself using JWplayer and some custom ffmpeg settings for it, but it would be another great streaming solution people might be interested in.

If you need any help with any of it let me know, I've spent countless hours working on streaming on the PlayBook.

Originally Posted by Shao128

Theres no such thing as a web enabled DLNA client lol. Just like ORB, SubSonic, RemotePotato etc. all it's doing is transcoding videos to a format that Flash can support (or in RemotePotatos case Silverlight). By that logic it means Youtube is a DLNA server ;)

Point proven by a previous poster saying we now have DLNA support. I have nothing against your app, I think you should just be clear that it's nothing to do with DLNA, it's a web launcher essentially (hey I did the same thing for ORB so nothing against it ;) )

And yes true DLNA isn't going to be possible as AIR on the PB doesn't support UDP connections, I thought you might have been using AIR native extensions and the NDK to do the heavy lifting.

Nothing against your app at all, but have a look at SonicAir for the PlayBook, he did a great job of implementing it. You could probably do something similar with the TVersity API and create a full featured app that way. And if you really want to get adventurous make a Plex app :) I'd pay good money for that. Also have a look at 'VLC-Shares' I hacked together an app for myself using JWplayer and some custom ffmpeg settings for it, but it would be another great streaming solution people might be interested in.

If you need any help with any of it let me know, I've spent countless hours working on streaming on the PlayBook.

No worries - I don't take any offense at all. Your right, a lot of the info I copied from the feature list of the server.

When I submit my next Service Pack I'll clean-up the text to make clarifications. But yeah, if I was to put together a full native DLNA application I would need to build it from square one in the NDK - which isn't OS2 compatible. I would need to charge a lot more than 1.99 for it to offset the development costs, because that would be a month long project.

I'll be honest - it didn't occur to me that it would be taken out of the context of it being used for TVersity or other web streaming. It is still possible to create a DLNA-like device through this by building a DLNA connector that feeds to TVersity, which in turn would feed to the device. Edit: I could hobble something together to make a nice alternative to true DLNA? But I think it would be a bit confusing.

Anyway, feedback taken - good points. And I will take your advice on it :) I honestly don't want someone to buy this for the wrong reasons.

Originally Posted by KermEd

It is still possible to create a DLNA-like device through this by building a DLNA connector that feeds to TVersity, which in turn would feed to the device. Edit: I could hobble something together to make a nice alternative to true DLNA?

Actually, that is a fantastic idea. Have a PC software that will connect to any DLNA server and do the conversions, then stream to the PB. Actually, hmmm, VLC supports uPnP, that might actually work.... Ive used VLC streaming with JWPlayer on PB and it works. Lots of different options, but I think you should definitely look at this a little further :)

Originally Posted by Shao128

Actually, that is a fantastic idea. Have a PC software that will connect to any DLNA server and do the conversions, then stream to the PB. Actually, hmmm, VLC supports uPnP, that might actually work.... Ive used VLC streaming with JWPlayer on PB and it works. Lots of different options, but I think you should definitely look at this a little further :)

Well, I'm going to put in a request right now to change the terminology. I worry your right and people are latching onto this thinking its truely DLNA ready. When I get something decent running for a DLNA 'connector' (Java maybe? Something multi-platform?) it will at least give people an option.

Anyway, I submit the change request now. I submitted some new information earlier too to clarify some things so its better to do it soon.

Edit: Request submitted. I changed the DLNA web-server, looking at DLNA better your right the terminology is wrong. I also clarified under features that the Server supports DLNA for devices other than the PlayBook making it a convenient one-stop solution for some people. I also clarified the web-browser alternative in the description. Both my earlier changes and current changes are pending.

~Ed.

Now if we can get a functioning playon app. Playon supports netflix therefore (via paid subscription of playon) we can get netflix on our playbooks

Originally Posted by erandhawa

Now if we can get a functioning playon app. Playon supports netflix therefore (via paid subscription of playon) we can get netflix on our playbooks

i read an interesting article on them a bit ago. This actually looks plausible. I will take a look at it tomorrow. I don't mind signing up for an account with them to test it and get it working.

the program works great, im having an issue with audio from videos. Music plays fine,but im not getting any audio from videos. Any ideas?

I have DLink NAS device 323, with built in DLNA server, from my PS3 I can play all files on my NAS via DLNA, from my PC i can just browse to NAS share (support SMB and NFS)

for the longest time i did not find anything for my playbook, until recently ES File explorer for android converted into bar and loaded on OS2, WOW, i can connect to my NAS as SMB and click on a media file and it plays flawlessly on my playbook, for media files approx 1GB, andSMB starts to download them for local caching which is time consuimg but fine with me. only problem with this is that i cannot forward, rewind, as soon as i do that it starts caching process again,

I really wanted to download your app but after reading this thread I will wait until you have DLNA work around in place, and hoping that andSMB example will help in the process as well

sorry im a noob. how do you configure this app to see(use) the dlna server? or where is a tutoral?

im also a total noob when it comes to this stuff. can someone post an "idiots guide" to how to set up the app? i cant get the app on my playbook to find my laptop where all my media is stored and dont know what to put in the server part.

I bought the app, it connects fine. That's great! However, playback of mp4 files I tested was kind of jerky. Maybe this was due to load of other background programs running on the serving PC? Is there a way to increase the frame rate to smmoth out the video performance? And, how does one enable simultaneous playing of .srt files? I am hearing impaired and need them. Thanks for your efforts on this! :)

I actually just put this up on the blog yesterday (.set files). This should help set you up with SRT (TVersity and PlayOn troubleshooting tips | File Archive Haven).

Aim interested in the MP4 files though - that would mean TVersity was probably stuttering while transcoding. The best advice I can think of, is to run your TVersity media server and press Control+Shift+Escape.

Go to your running list of applications and look for the TVersity Media Server in the list.

Right click and change the priority to the next setting above normal. This should give the media server a bit of a boost when using it but would slow down other PC activities...

You could lower some of the quality settings but Imo you usually have to lower them quite a bit to get a good speed increase.

If you get lost looking for the setting, let me know.

Ed.

Speaking from a network perspective - Are both of your computers operating via wireless? I strongly reccommend the server being plugged in via an ethernet cable.

Also: What is the processor/ram running on the server?

I am possibly a bit confused by the interrelationship between the PB, Playon and Tversity. If I understand correctly, the idea is to load Connect to Tversity on the PB with the Connect to Tversity app from the PB App Store, also install Playon to my home computer and then use Connect to Tversity on the PB to connect to Playon on my home computer. All that is correct? Also, I assume that having Tversity on my home computer is not related or necessarily relevant to all this?

Regards, John

Originally Posted by Noari1

I am possibly a bit confused by the interrelationship between the PB, Playon and Tversity. If I understand correctly, the idea is to load Connect to Tversity on the PB with the Connect to Tversity app from the PB App Store, also install Playon to my home computer and then use Connect to Tversity on the PB to connect to Playon on my home computer. All that is correct? Also, I assume that having Tversity on my home computer is not related or necessarily relevant to all this?

Regards, John

John,

For PlayOn, you don't need a TVersity server, you JUST need the PlayOn PC software, plus you must leave that PC on. TVersity works well for PlayOn, BUT you can also use PlayOn's mobile webite to view your PlayOn content at http://m.playon.com. And another good option is the TabletTV app by Scrid2000. A benefit of TabletTV is you get access to many OTHER webstreams. :)

Thank you for the response. I just got back from the local Starbucks and tried CtT(Connect to Tversity) on my PB, connected to Playon and watched a Netflix movie from my instant queue and watched a short Hulu Plus tv show. It worked fabulously! I always leave my computer running 24/7 so that is not an issue. With Netflix and Hulu available and the new OS, I truly have no use for my ipad. This is great. I will definitely make a contribution to the designer of CTT.