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Failed Getting TVersity to Stream to Xbox 360

December 8, 2006 at 2:22 pm - by Dale Dietrich

Categories: New Tech

After achieving success streaming videos converted to .wmv format with VLC (download here) to my Xbox 360, several people recommended I try the recent release (v. 0.9.9) of TVersity (download and system requirements here). TVersity holds the promise of transcoding and streaming most any video (in any format) to the Xbox 360 – assuming your PC has the hefty horsepower needed (mine does).

Initially, after reading the many comments in the support pages I figured this was going to be too difficult and didn't bother.  Since then I've seen articles popping up all over th net (see Sources below) touting TVersity as the second coming of video streaming to the 360.  I wonder how many of these bloggers actually tried to install it! :)

So, reluctantly I dug in, got out the notebook and pen (actually my tablet PC) and spent the better part of a day trying to install this program and get it to work.  I failed!  I can definitively conclude that this program is not ready for prime time. If you are a software and network engineer (or just plain lucky), you may be able to get it to work. I couldn't, and I suspect the average user won't be able to either.  

I followed the detailed installation instructions (here and here), I forwarded ports in my router, I downloaded and installed codecs and other recommended software/drivers (FFDShow, latest AC-3 filter, latest Quicktime Alternative). I followed ever jot and tiddle of the instructions and dutifully followed the suggestions in the TVersity/Xbox 360 forum – no TVersity for me!  

I could get it to work on my PC. I could get it to see all my videos and play them – apparantely an important sign of success – or so say the instructions. This is no biggy though as WMP11 can already play all my videos in all formats that I use (I had long ago installed all the relevant codecs on my 'puter). I got the localhost:41953/lib to work (though I didn't understand why this is required since it seems to be a duplicate browser-based version of the standalone .exe application).  It looked very promising at this point. 

But from there it went down hill. At no time could I get my Xbox to see this service.  I enabled and disabled sharing through WMP 11, among many other things.  My Xbox 360 just staired at me like a dog wagging its tail wondering what I wanted.

Alas, as a good computer user I deinstalled all the stuff I installed, and I reset my computer to the restore point I set prior to this adventure.  I'm now back to where I was.  The  VLC converted videos are detected and play, once again, through my XBox 360. 

If you have had better luck then I, please post a comment and let me know what your secret sauce was.  I couldn't find anywhere in any description, FAQ, support document etc. exactly what the user experience is supposed to be on the 360 once this is all working. I know it takes time for movies to start streaming.  Does anyone know if you can pause, rewind or fast forward through videos with the Xbox remote when using TVersity? If you can't the exercise is, to my mind, pointless.

What's next for me? I'm waiting for the new TiVo Series 3 software updates (expected any time soon) before I try anything like this again. Those updates along with TiVo Desktop Plus 2.4 are supposed to let me do the same sorts of things with my TiVo Series 3 that TVersity is supposed to do. 

Sources: Gizmodo | Joystiq | PVRWire | DailyTech | Team Xbox | TVersity Development Blog

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  • blah
    It's because he was using windows media plyer at the same time.. and when he didn't.. well just stupid :-D
  • Oz
    Hi

    I had whole heaps of issues getting my Xbox 360 to work with TVersity, and had 2 things outstanding that fixed mine. I'd already turned off my firewall, but I don't think that was an issue as I'd allowed TVersity to act as a server anyway, but, after seeing suggestions on here, I turned off uPNP on my router, and that was part of the solution.

    The other thing might just have been me... I'd tried using the Media Centre PC software first and made sure that worked. Like most people I don't have all my content in MS obligatory formats so plumped for TVersity. However, I was trying to access TVersity the same way I did Media Centre on my PC - using the Media Centre detection on the Xbox 360. That failed repeatedly even with all the changes I'd made to the Xbox, the router and the PC. I then stupidly, or so I thought, looked at my media libraries and, hey presto, there was TVersity listed and all my content! I've since tried the Media Centre detection again, and it still fails, so I guess TVersity is supposed to work this way.
  • Hello! I know this threads old but i found it so I thaught I'd say how I got mine to work. I was having the exact same problem. My 360 would see the WMP server but not my TVersity. After tryng allsorts of different settings and many re-installations it all came down to one simple and stupid thing.

    Even though my Windows firewall had the exeption of TVersity I turned it off and it started working. I then added the correct port in to the list of exeptions and turned it back on. WORKING FINE. I figure the firewall exeption was wrongly allocated to a differnt port. Maby this will work on other firewalls.
    Also i had selected X-box 360 (as appost to auto detect) on the TVersity GUI settings.

    I also found that you can have both the WMP server running at the same time as the TVersity and they will both be found, and come up as 2 differnt computers on the 360.

    Hope this helps anyone
  • Nathan Clarke
    This is going to sound really stupid, and if I read it myself, I'd think I was an idiot,
    but after messing around with every setting I could find, and having no luck, I got angry, restarted the XBOX 3 times in quick succession, and it worked. Makes no sense. My friend had the same problem, tried the random angry restarting, and it worked again. I don't know if it just works for me, but I thought that my irrational comments might help.
  • Tim Morton
    I had the same problem late night when installing TVersity, got it all sorted at about midnight.

    You're xbox 360 must have the fall update installed or you'll never be able to get the video's from a computer. You'll only see the option once the update is installed.
    It's all working now, streaming and transcoding my avi files to the 360 as we speak.

    Hope you give it another go, it's a pretty good little product especially if you've only got an XP machine to serve video from. If it could fast forward and rewind it'd be the end of my old xbox and xbmc.
  • Paul
    Had the same problems. Turned off UPNP and worked. Thanks Andrew.
  • Andrew Patterson
    I think i know why it didnt work on your machine, Dale. Try turning off upnp on your router(s), for some reason this worked for me... im assuming theres a bug or two in this program.
  • Eatpizza
    I got it detected after I put the IP of the computer that runs TVersity in the settings. The field where you can specify the port. That was optional and after I tried I got it working.
  • Eatpizza
    I'm so frustrated with Tversity .......
    I've spend 10 hours trying my N800 to detect the server :-(
    I try to use Canola to get media from my computer, I try SimpleCenter and it detects it immediately, I try Twonky and it detects it immediately. I try Tversity and no way.
    With our without firewalls, there no way to get it detected. Alpha I would call it, not even Beta.
  • Jay
    hi again,
    have been using tversity for a while now. while it is a beta, it's really buggy, but it works just fine. for trans coding, you must remember that the correct codec has to be installed.
  • lostalaska
    Yeah, I just stumbled across TVersity last night. I got as far as having the Xbox 360 correctly seeing the TVersity share point after disconnecting and reconnecting my 360 to my networked computer. When I go to play a file (transcode) it doesn't seem to do anything and after about a minute it kicks back an error on the 360. Anyways, it was late last night when I started this little project so I'm still hopeful I can get it working after work today. I downloaded a wmv file and I was going to load it off my pen drive to my computer and prove i can at least stream a .wmv (no transcoding) file to my 360 from WMP11. If that works then I guess I'll have to spend some quality time in the settings of TVersity, or maybe see if I can get it to stream to my PSP.

    In theory TVersity is a great idea, in reality... well, its still just beta so hopefully it will be a bit smoother when it hits the big "1".
  • I haven't tried this since my original blog post but I can confirm that my Windows Firewall WAS shut off when I did this test.

    I have since installed Vista 64-bit and have had successes streaming .wmp content to my 360 with Windows Media Center. So far no luck with .mpg content to the 360 that is supposed to be supported. I expect to blog about this at some point in the future.

    ...Dale
  • feiz
    wow! i was having the exact same problem, wmp 11 worked but tversity wasnt working. as harry s. pointed out, turning off the windows firewall let the 360 detect the tversity program! thanks harry!
  • Jay
    hi, just to say it works a treat. 3 minuets and it's all working fine. not tried video yet but in good spirits and have high hopes
    good luck all!
  • Harry S
    I was having the same EXACT problem then I went to control panel and disabled the windows firewall, i do not have UPNP enabled on my router and do not even need port forwarding everything works fine
  • Alex
    Works.
    Disconnect from PC and reconnect on xbox360
  • Kevin
    Dale, Im with the same exact problem..I read your blog and it is as if i where writing..detects my WMP11 streams VLM converted through there but does not even find Tversity..and I totally agree with It having 2 unecesary user interfaces. If you get it up and running let me know.
  • Gabriel
    I successfully installed TVersity and managed to set the streaming/transcoding thing up a couple of weeks ago. If the 360 was not detecting your server, I can think of two problems atm:

    1. Could any of your routers be discarding UPNP packets preventing discovery of the service? I reckon you said WMC/WMP11 work, but I do not know if these use UPNP for server discovery or some kind of weird Microsoft protocol.

    2. Since you had previously streamed videos to the 360 using VLC, I assume your 360 already had your PC in its "list of known PCs". Thing is, once the 360 discovers a PC with media content, it remembers the method used (i.e., the application which was streaming the media such as Windows Media Connect, TVersity, etc.) and always look for such method (program). If you do not delete the computer from the "list of known computers" before searching for the new TVersity server, it won't find it.
  • Thanks for the personal attention Ronen.

    Firewall:

    I have XP SP2's firewall turned off because I rely on my router as a firewall. I port forwarded the port on my router as the instructions said, so I'm confident there was no firewall issue.

    Multiple Interfaces:

    I only have one NIC in the computer I installed, I don't use loop back's on this particular PC, so I don't know which multiple interfaces of which you speak.

    One unique aspect of my setup is that I have two wireless routers. My 360 connects to a Wireless A+G router (I use A) which is then hardwired to another Wireless G router which my primary PC is connected too. I do this because I have more devices/computers that require Ethernet connections than the four ports that are free on the back of any router - I effectively use one router as a hub (the G router). That said, Windows Connect and WMP11 work through this and connect to my 360 with no problem and Xbox Live also navigates through this with no issue. So I don't see how that could be a problem.

    I did not start a support forum question, I knew the option was there. I just know that having been down this path with other programs in the past that don't have the time it would have taken to figure this out. I spent several weeks getting Simplicity to work and put the poor good souls on that forum through an awful lot of hoops before we collectively figured it out. This was going down the same road.

    If the TiVo Series 3 does not get me where I want to go with the next software release, I may set a weekend day aside to give it a go again.

    Thanks for answering the question re ff/rwd. That's interesting - certainly better than the results I'm getting with VLC converted files!

    ...Dale
  • I am very sorry to hear about your experience. I can assure you that many people were successful. It sounds like you were really close and in fact had one of two possible pronlems:
    1. You did not enable TVersity to act as a server on your firewall or on Windows firewall (or on both if you use more than one).
    2. Your machine has multiple network interfaces and hence due to a known (and well documented) issue you need to explicitly set the IP corresponding to the network interface on which TVersity is to communicate with the 360, in the settings tab of the GUI.

    Here is a link to the troubleshooting section on our website that covers all that:
    http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.tversity.com/faq.ht...

    Finally, regarding your question about FF/Rew, you will be able to do it once the conversion is done. Playback during the conversion is possible but without FF/Rew.

    I hope this helps, btw did you start a thread in our support forums? We would have been very happy to help in that case, and still are as you can see.
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