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TVersity Media Server Changelog

What's new in TVersity Media Server 3.5

Nov 20, 2014
  • Add support for Xbox One in both Pro and free versions (but of-course only the Pro version will transcode for it).
  • Some fixes to the Roku profile to avoid delivering videos over 3mbps (the Roku can’t handle higher bitrates very well).
  • H.264 compression now allows higher resolutions than before so that 720p and 1080p sources will remain as such.

New in TVersity Media Server 3.4 (Oct 2, 2014)

  • Add support for twitch (Pro only).
  • H.264 encoding via Intel Quick Sync Video is now 25% more efficient thanks to pixel format conversion optimizations.
  • The admin web address brings up the HTML5 GUI instead of old Flash GUI.
  • Fix crash when indexing some MKV files with chapters.

New in TVersity Media Server 3.3 (Sep 18, 2014)

  • Keep track of media files that lead to a crash during library indexing (typically due to those files being corrupted) so that they can be skipped in subsequent indexing. Also, the indexing is resumed automatically once the media server restarts. Given that the restart is automatic too, the software is now self healing in those crash cases.
  • The HTML5 web interface for accessing the media library was mistakenly used on iOS devices, this is now fixed by returning the iOS specific interface .
  • Fix issue with PS3 where MP4 with H.264 HD and AAC surround was not playing (issue introduced in 2.7).
  • Some minor GUI fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 3.2 (Aug 21, 2014)

  • The web interface for accessing the media library has been replaced with an HTML5 interface that can play your media within the browser (for best experience please use Chrome). This is the same interface used for casting media to Chromecast but with the added capability of playing content in the browser
  • Bug fixes and minor improvements: Sharing media from Windows explorer now open the new GUI (and not the old one)
  • Improved error messaging in several cases (e.g. when attempting to share a mapped network drive or a network path which is not accessible to the server)
  • Hide the iTunes entry in the media source page of the GUI
  • In the HTML5 media library interface, display the title at the bottom of video items and not just when hovering on them

New in TVersity Media Server 3.1 (Aug 9, 2014)

  • Do not automatically unshare a folder when a USB drive on which it resides is no longer available - this feature is removed due to requests by many users.
  • Do not transcode the MOV format for Chromecast when its codecs are supported by Chromecast.
  • Add context menus (right click menus) in the media sharing page of the GUI.
  • The media sharing page of the GUI now allows drag/drop of links from the browser address bar as a way to share them (previously only drag/drop of files and folders was allowed).
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fix possible corruption of media transcoded to WEBM (for Chromecast) once cached. The corruption lead to subsequent playback attempts (which were served from the cache) to fail.
  • Fix a rare file corruption (osb.xml) when auto-updating it. This corruption prevented from the service to start and required users to re-install in order to workaround it.
  • Various small fixes in the HTML5 interface used for pushing content to Chromecast.
  • Fix issue on Windows XP, where the GUI could not be run properly and also starting the sharing service from the GUI failed.
  • Fix GUI issue in settings page where the refresh time could not be changed.
  • Uninstaller cleans some files that were previously left when uninstalling the software.

New in TVersity Media Server 3.0 (Jul 16, 2014)

  • Re-introducing a free version, which is identical to Pro but cannot transcode audio and video and retire the Basic version.
  • Introduce an all new user interface, which is HTML5 based and significantly simplified.
  • Hardware accelerated H.264 encoding via Intel Quick Sync Media, allows 3 times faster encoding (up to 1080p) at half the CPU consumed by software encoding (Pro only).
  • Add support for Chromecast:
  • An all new, search centric, HTML5 interface is available for navigating the library and selecting media to play on the Chromecast.
  • Play every format on Chromecast via on-the-fly transcoding to WEBM/VP8 (Pro only).
  • Add support for Roku:
  • The built in Roku Media Player app is now fully supported.
  • Play every format on Roku via on-the-fly transcoding to H.264 and HLS streaming (Pro only).
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fix issue with persistent HTTP connections which resulted in HLS streaming to iPhone occasionally failing (with the iPhone error message: “cannot load media”).
  • Fix issue with off-screen browser where occasionally the audio was not delivered to TV and instead played on the PC running TVersity.
  • Many other bug fixes, including some rare crashes.

New in TVersity Media Server 2.7 (May 2, 2014)

  • Basic & Pro:
  • Add support for Bravia TVs
  • Better DLNA compliance all around for increased compatibility with devices not officially supported
  • Eliminate the browser toolbar from all versions
  • Add support for transcoding ALAC via the DC-Bass Source filter
  • Can utilize the LAV filters for transcoding when present on the system
  • Restore support for serving subtitle files to devices that change the file extension of the resource URL
  • Synching with iTunes library did not work when the library included Podcast items that were not yet downloaded - this is now fixed
  • Many other bug fixes, including some crashes in edge cases

New in TVersity Media Server 2.6 (Aug 7, 2013)

  • Fix issues with YouTube and other sites where occasionally the video would not play and a white screen would show instead.
  • Add support for Canadian TV (globaltv.com and ctv.ca).
  • Add support for einthusan.com.
  • Fix MShare.exe crash with videos that had multiple audio tracks or subtitles.

New in TVersity Media Server 2.5 (Jun 12, 2013)

  • Pro:
  • Add Pandora support (note that a separate account must be used for each radio station since there is no way to switch between stations).
  • Basic & Pro:
  • Fix toolbar issues outside the US.
  • Fix bug with license key validation and properly respect license key grace periods.
  • Other minor fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 2.4 (Mar 15, 2013)

  • Pro:
  • Fix YouTube playlist support.
  • Fix audio missing issues with some web content when Flash 11.4 or higher is installed.
  • Eliminate some rare visual artifacts for some web content.
  • Fix auto centering of visible area around video player for some web content.
  • Add Crackle and Crackle authentication.
  • Fix Hulu authentication.
  • Basic & Pro:
  • Better Win 8 support.
  • Fix folder capitalization bug.
  • Fix edge cases with regard to duplicate upnp:icon properties.
  • Fix failure to return icons and art for certain devices and also to play web content (this issues arose due to overzealous security checks that were failing valid requests).
  • Many other fixes for rare bugs and crashes.

New in TVersity Media Server 2.3 (Sep 3, 2012)

  • Fix loss of audio with premium web content when using Flash 11.3 or newer.
  • YouTube is now supported in the Pro version only since YouTube prohibits direct access to the media URLs (the Pro version is using a server-side web browser and therefore does not need to access the media directly).

New in TVersity Media Server 2.2 (May 25, 2012)

  • New Features:
  • Full support for various Sony Google TVs models.
  • Avoid transcoding blu-ray movies with devices that support them.
  • Improved support for transcoding Ogg Vorbis files.
  • Restore the ability to enter user/password for Hulu (required to access Hulu plus by subscribers.)
  • Restore support for RMVB.
  • Bug Fixes:
  • USB drives and network drives are no longer removed from the library after a reboot.
  • PS3 no longer stops playing Hulu videos once the 2GB mark is reached.

New in TVersity Media Server 2.1 (Apr 30, 2012)

  • New Features:
  • Import iTunes content automatically and stay in synch with it (DRM protected content is excluded).
  • Support additional Samsung TV models.
  • Support WTV files (the newest video format used by Windows Media Center for recordings).
  • Transcoding for iPad will now generate 720p videos when the system is fast enough and source video is HD.
  • Experimental support for Sony’s Google TV (various TV models).
  • Bug Fixes:
  • Fix “always transcoding” bug with Xbox.
  • Fix off-screen browser audio issues with Flash player version 11.2.
  • Various other minor fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 2.0 (Apr 30, 2012)

  • New Features:
  • Major re-write of the transcoding engine such that:
  • it works correctly disregarding the codec pack installed and even when codec hell is prevalent on the system.
  • The engine can now utilize Windows Foundation codecs and demuxers and not just DirectShow (Windows 7 only).
  • The engine now converts only audio or only video when possible, thus requiiring lower system resources and maintaining the original quality of the source materials.
  • The engine chooses the most appropriate audio language (for MKV and DIVX) when multiple audio tracks exist with different languages and the most appropriate subtitle language (for MKV) when multiple subtitle languages exist.
  • The engine takes into account the system capabilities when determing transcoding paramters by executing a transcodng benchmark the first time the software runs after an installation.
  • Support WPL playlists.
  • Support latest firmware version of WDTV Live.
  • Basic version supports again embeddable YouTube videos (Pro version plays everything including vevo music videos).
  • User accounts are now supported for YouTube, Flickr and Picasa and multiple types of content are important per account (and kept in synch). Hulu queue is no longer supported since Hulu has eliminate the RSS feed for the queue.
  • Better handling of concurrent reads and writes to the media library database through the use of WAL journaling mode in sqlite.
  • Video thumbnails are now generated for many formats.
  • Disconnecting storage devices (like USB sticks and mobile hard drives) will automatically remove their media from the library (assuming it was shared).
  • Nightly refresh is randomized over a couple of hours to avoid hitting web content sites by many users at the same time.
  • Bug Fixes:
  • Fix failures of photo transcoding due to missing ImageMagick DLLs.
  • Fix various tag extraction issues by moving to taglib 1.7.
  • Fix rare crashes related to thread safety of ffmpeg.
  • Various improvements and fixes related to parsing RSS/ATOM/RDF/OPML feeds.
  • Fix errors when manually setting the device to Xbox, this is now supported again.
  • Fix http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/18603/
  • Various other minor fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.9.7 (Jul 30, 2011)

  • Fix regression in indexing time introduced in 1.9.6 and speed indexing up to become faster than it was in 1.9.3 by a factor of 1.5 to 2.
  • Windows Media Player is no longer mis-detected as a certain Samsung TV model.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.9.6 (Jul 18, 2011)

  • Add device profiles for WDTV Live.
  • Add device profiles for various Samsung TV models.
  • Add device profiles for Android 3.0 tablets (test with Asus Eeepad Transformer TF101). Plase note that trancoding for Android requires the Pro edition, and only Android 3.0 or higher is supported.
  • Add user contributed device profile for Logitech Revue.
  • Add user contributed device profile for Windows Phone 7.
  • Update user contributed device profile for LG BD930.
  • Faster thumbnail generaion for photos.
  • Better support for MKV and AVI transcoding.
  • Support WEBM files (transcoding requires separate installation of WEBM directshow filters available here).
  • Installation wizard now allows choosing a friendly computer name to use when discovered by other devices (i.e. this name will be displayed on TV when detected by a game console or other TV connected devices).
  • Perform server side buffering for live streams to avoid stutter on devices that cannot deal with such videos properly (like the PS3 that assumes the video on demand scenario only).
  • Run a CPU benchmark after installation to determine optimal transcoding settings for the system.
  • Menus created from RSS/ATOM feeds are cleaner (less duplicates, and no unnecessary nesting levels).
  • Installation wizard properly configures the system for decoding of MPEG1/2 and DV (assuming proper decoder are installed), and for downmizing of multi-channel audio to stereo so that transcoding can succeed in such cases.
  • Media library indexing gives priority to local files and folders (over Internet content).
  • Better handling of high bitrate peaks when transcoding such that playback freezes are eliminated or at the very least reduced.
  • Installation wizard now configures the Windows firewall on both private and public networks when dealing with Windows 7.
  • Move to latest version of ImageMagick which eliminates some rare failures to transcode photos. It also means that we do not need to modify the global ImageMagick registry key and hence we do not interfere with a normal ImageMagick installation.
  • Prevent Windows from entering sleep mode when some media is streaming.
  • Bug Fixes:
  • Return “text/xml” as mime type of device description document as required by the UPnP standard.
  • Allow pausing playback for up to 4 hours (as opposed to the 2 minute limitation in previous version).
  • Server can now gracefully shut down even when something is streaming.
  • Fix video indexing by album and by genre.
  • Fix server side browse videos to continue streaming without issues even when the audio stops in the middle.
  • Fix some rare crashes related to image format conversion, detection of changes in IP addresses assigned to machine, tracking of file/folder changes, enter/exit sleep/hibernation mode and more.
  • Various other minor fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.9.3 (Nov 25, 2010)

  • All editions:
  • New browser toolbar that includes a menu of supported web content sites (facilitates content discovery) and a “subscribe” button (enables 1-click addition of web content to the media library).
  • Monitor folders for changes and automatically reflect these changes in the media library.
  • Support more than one TVersity instance on the network with the Xbox 360 - this is thanks to the fact that each instance now generates its UDN.
  • Monitor changes to network interfaces on the computer and handle those changes correctly.
  • Properly handle power management events (sleep, hibernate, resume) and shutdown in terms of SSDP.
  • Up to 7x faster indexation of photos.
  • Service starts correctly when user name (and hence installation path) includes non English characters.
  • Corrupt AVI files can no longer cause the indexation process to spend many minutes on one file - we timeout after 5 seconds per file and skip it.
  • Software was mistakenly transcoding mp3 above 128kbps when used with the iPhone - this is no longer the case.
  • Album art is now supported for WMA and not just MP3.
  • Deliver higher resolution album art when available.
  • Playlists were not indexed by folder until the second time the library was refreshed - this is now fixed.
  • Simplify and improve the installation wizard:
  • Eliminate the configuration wizard (its functionality was merged into the installation wizard).
  • Make sure the user has admin rights.
  • Remove firewall rules when uninstalling.
  • Warn users when skipping installation of ffdshow or when unchecking the firewall checkbox.
  • When installing for the first time, the service was always set to automatic start, even when the relevant checkbox was unchecked - this is now fixed.
  • Fix some rare crashes as well as many additional minor bugs.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.9.2 (Aug 12, 2010)

  • Restore YouTube support (after changes to embedded video handling by YouTube).
  • DVD quality YouTube videos - add support for 480p YouTube videos (the maximum currently offered when embedding videos), fall back to 360p when 480p is unavailable and then to 240p when 360p is not available.
  • Other minor bug fixes based on end-user feedback for 1.9.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.9.1 (Jul 18, 2010)

  • Remove the Ask toolbar and Babylon, in preparation for offering a TVersity toolbar for spontaneous subscription to web content (coming soon).
  • Add some user contributed device profiles to profiles.xml.
  • Transcoding of FLV with H264 is supported.
  • Transcoding of videos in MPEG2 transport streams is supported.
  • When transcoding VOB fix a bug where sometimes the wrong audio track was chosen in a multi audio track VOB (always take the first one, which is typically English).
  • iPhone and iPad now move to next item automatically when playing music.
  • iPhone and iPad new and revamped web interface with support for keyword search.
  • Move to ffmpeg 0.6.
  • Various bug fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.8 Beta (Feb 26, 2010)

  • Update and expand YouTube support to include subscriptions, favorites and playlists by user (in addition to user video uploads which were previously supported). Also support adding YouTube content by search queries (replaces the “by tag” category which YouTube has obsoleted).
  • Various minor bug fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.7.4 Beta (Jan 20, 2010)

  • Add support for mydamnchannel.com

New in TVersity Media Server 1.7.3 Beta (Jan 12, 2010)

  • Pro edition - Bug fixes and minor improvements
  • Fix video playback termination after returning from commercial breaks in premium videos (including Hulu).
  • Fix rare audible artifacts after returning from commercial breaks in premium videos.
  • Fix incorrect video window offset for some premium content sites, which resulted in a trimmed picture.
  • All editions - Bug fixes and minor improvements
  • Fix corrupted creation date for photos.
  • Improved Windows 7 support.
  • Add support for flix.co.il.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.7.2.1 Beta (Sep 23, 2009)

  • Bug Fixes (all editions)
  • Fix yet another Windows manifest issue.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.7.0.0 Beta (Sep 10, 2009)

  • This is a bug fix release, full notes coming soon!

New in TVersity Media Server 1.6 Beta / 0.9.11.4 (May 25, 2009)

  • Indexing many MP4 files no longer results in memory leaks (and ultimately a crash).
  • Upgrade to Sqlite 3.6.14 to eliminate rare cases of library db corruption.
  • SSDP discovery did not work on machines with long host names (11 or more characters).

New in TVersity Media Server 1.0.0.11 RC7 (Jan 20, 2009)

  • Bug Fixes
  • Task bar icon is no longer displaying the Initializing message indefinitely.
  • Reading tags (like genre) from AAC files has been further improved to handle files with bad size header in their ilst atom.
  • Flash interface (used on PCs, Wii and any device with Flash7 compatibility) allows arrow key (and mouse wheel) navigation on home page beyond first 3 items

New in TVersity Media Server 1.0.0.10 RC6 (Jan 5, 2009)

  • New Features
  • Simplified menu structure on TV requiring less steps to reach any given menu option.
  • Faster menu navigation on TV, thanks to reduction in metadata size delivered by TVersity.
  • PS3 displays date for photos.
  • Change default video resolution for transcoded media from 400×300 to 640×480, this reflects improvement in computer processing power over the last few years. If your computer is not fast enough (at least core 2 duo 1.6 Ghz) this resolution will need to be decreased.
  • Bug Fixes
  • Fix display of high resolution photos on the PS3.
  • Handle correctly standard genres (as per ID3v1) in AAC files.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.0.0.8 RC5 (Nov 28, 2008)

  • New Features
  • o Media source dialog box now has a new checkbox (when “Advanced” is enabled) that allows turning on/off featuring of media in top level menus.
  • o TVersity, by default, no longer modifies metadata (title, artist, album, etc.) for readability. As before it is a configurable setting.
  • o User messages were completely rewritten for better clarity and consistency of terminology
  • o Add a user message for new device detection.
  • o On Windows Mobile devices, the web interface once again allows playing all items on the page as a WMP playlist.
  • Bug Fixes
  • o Re-transcoding after download completed was occasionally failing - this is now fixed.
  • o An error message at the end of playback of youtube videos was displayed by some devices (like the DIRECTV set-top-boxes) - the number of cases in which this happens was reduced drastically.
  • o Playback of certain Internet media was prematurely terminated on some devices - this is now fixed.
  • o Fix crash on RSS feeds that have no file name in the URL.
  • o Transcode status was reported incorrectly when serving media from a cached version of a previously transcoded content - this is now fixed.
  • o UPnP:Browse was returning wrong number of children in some cases - this is now fixed (special thanks to the folks at LINN for reporting it).
  • o Fix “Not Authorized” issue with Denon 3808 receiver (uses Philips SLA profile) that used to happen when turning the unit on and attempting to use it with TVersity after using it successfully the previous time it was on.
  • o Many additional minor bug fixes.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.0.0.7 RC4 / 0.9.11.4 (Oct 25, 2008)

  • Support for PS3 firmware 2.5
  • YouTube URLs that expire are now automatically re-acquired, eliminating the need to do a refresh of the media source
  • Support for Atom feeds generated by the new YouTube Data API
  • Support for YouTube Playlists (e.g. check this Start Trek playlist). Just add any YouTube playlist URL to TVersity and you are subscribed to it
  • Support for YouTube H.264 videos, devices that can play H.264 but cannot play FLV will now get H.264 from YouTube instead of a transcoded version created from the FLV
  • Support for the high quality videos on YouTube, TVersity will always try the high quality version first and only when not available fall back to the low quality one
  • Support for funnyordie.com video pages. Add for example this page URL to TVersity

New in TVersity Media Server 1.0.0.6 RC4 / 0.9.11.4 (Oct 23, 2008)

  • New and Improved
  • Support for PS3 firmware 2.5.
  • YouTube URLs that expire are now automatically re-acquired, eliminating the need to do a refresh of the media source.
  • Support for Atom feeds generated by the new YouTube Data API.
  • Support for YouTube Playlists (e.g. check this Start Trek playlist). Just add any YouTube playlist URL to TVersity and you are subscribed to it.
  • Support for YouTube H.264 videos, devices that can play H.264 but cannot play FLV will now get H.264 from YouTube instead of a transcoded version created from the FLV.
  • Support for the high quality videos on YouTube, TVersity will always try the high quality version first and only when not available fall back to the low quality one.
  • Support for funnyordie.com video pages. Add for example this page URL to TVersity.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.0.0.5 RC3 (Sep 29, 2008)

  • GUI did not start on some machines, this should now be fixed for all users.
  • Fix DSM 510 profile as per user feedback.

New in TVersity Media Server 1.0.0.4 RC3 (Sep 21, 2008)

  • New Features
  • Raw digital camera image support (crw, cr2, nef, nrw, mrw, orf, raf, dng, erf, x3f, dcr arw, raw, kdc).
  • Feature some Internet content during installation to raise awareness for Internet video support in TVersity. This content, if subscribed to, will be available at the root menu of devices.
  • Navigation by Folders and by Podcasts is now available at the root menu of devices that have such a menu. These new menu choices combine audio, photo and video items, all in the same place.
  • The file extensions mts and m2ts (used for AVCHD videos by HD camcorders) are now recognized and can be streamed to PS3.
  • Public media sources are now aggregated in a global repository and will soon be used to offer new content search and discovery features.
  • Devices
  • Added a user contributed profile for the DSM 750.
  • Bug Fixes
  • Music menus on Xbox 360 were not working.
  • Some DVD videos were transcoded even when it was not required.
  • Some iPhone videos were transcoded even when it was not required.
  • A rare sqlite crash was solved by upgrading to the latest release.
  • A rare pthreads crash was solved by upgrading to the latest release.

New in TVersity Media Server 0.9.10.7 (Jul 20, 2007)

  • Apple iPhone Support
  • Point Safari on the iPhone to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/iphone to see this in action. When using an EDGE connection use http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/iphone/edge. In both cases xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the machine running TVersity.
  • You can access your home media collection in the home and on the go however in each of these cases a different IP address is needed and you may need to establish a port forwarding in order to access it on the go.
  • When video transcoding is needed the iPhone cannot start playback until the entire conversion is completed, this is a restriction of the MP4/MOV/3GPP containers when streamed over HTTP (and since the iPhone does not support RTSP/RTP there is no way around it at the moment).
  • Bug fixes and more
  • Transcoding of audio formats (such as FLAC and OGG) to PCM (for Xbox 360 and DirectTV HR20) was broken in one of the previous release and is now fixed.
  • The iPod/iTunes profile now creates MP4 videos that are compatible with the iPod. This is unlike the MPEG1/2 which was previously used and with which iTunes needed to do another conversion before copying it to the iPod.
  • Fix rare crashes occurring when stopping the sharing service while some files are being downloaded in the background.
  • Fix a rare hanging during media library construction when reading AVI files with certain pecularities in their header.

New in TVersity Media Server 0.9.9.2 (Jan 17, 2007)

  • RSS Feeds
  • Transcoding
  • Media Librray
  • Windows Vista compatibility
  • Bug fixes and more