Tversity on Your Xbox 360 - How to Stream Videos from Your Computer to a Tv, but is it Worth It?

While doing some maintenance on my computer yesterday, I came across a forum where someone suggested that Windows Media Player 11 is terrible and that the real deal is with this program called Tversity. I could understand the techno nerd's debate, as I myself have had many, many squabbles with Media Player 11, and all I ever wanted to do with it was stream content from my office computer to my Xbox 360. The problem with Media Player 11, or the Windows Media Connect, was once I enabled "sharing" it would lock up on me and crash. After numerous hours of searching forums and the net for answers, I decided for the alternative: Tversity.

Tversity, as their web site (http://tversity.com) boasts that four million others have more than likely gone through my dilemma and sought out easier ways to stream content to their Xbox 360 (or PS3 or even Wii). Here is the program in a nutshell folks: Tversity lets viewers watch full movies, television episodes and clips that are streamed from popular websites along with movies, pictures and music from your own computer. All of this content can be viewed on any networked computer, television or gaming console - even other devices such as smart phones, PSP's or pretty much any digital media receiver. This concept is something that I have been fairly obsessed about as of late, especially if you have read my previous article on the Xbox 360 and Netflix.

So, the way this program works is that you can download it for ABSOLUTELY FREE off of their website. Once you download it, you go through a bit of configuration on your computer. It helps if you have a bit of a techno background (especially codes and file formats). Once it is ready to go, you will learn that Tversity has certain "channels" that you can subscribe to from some of the most popular streaming places around. Primarily Hulu and You Tube, but also G4, BBC and even Marvel. Within each channel, they have certain folder options that become automatically updated from the master site. So, let's say I subscribe to the "Most Viewed" folder under the You Tube channel. Whenever there is a new popular video uploaded to You Tube, it will automatically come into my Tversity library and I can watch it right then and there.

What I also REALLY like about Tversity is the Hulu access in itself. Before you read any further, I heavily recommend all of you to go to www.hulu.com, set up a quick account for yourself and add a bunch of clips into your queue. Now, let me just tell you techno fans, I became a fan of Hulu when I saw that I could watch the entire series of my childhood favorite Exo Squad right from my computer. Unfortunately, I couldn't get that comfortable in my desk chair and really wanted to see Exo Squad on my television - but didn't know of the technology. Luckily, Tversity stepped in and they are working with Hulu so that I can pick and choose the content that I want to watch, when I want to watch it.

The way Tversity works to get your content is that you can copy and paste the URL code or the RSS feed of a video clip from a site and upload it to the Tversity library/server. Tversity claims you can pretty much use ANY video on the internet and upload it, but that wasn't the case for me. I wasted a lot of time getting other videos off the internet that weren't from the premium sites like Hulu or You Tube. BUT I was able to go to the Hulu site, and there I visited the Family Guy page. I clicked and dragged on the RSS icon next to Family Guy, and it uploaded to the library/server. So now whenever I turn on my Xbox, a folder will appear as "Family Guy." Underneath it are a few full episodes, but plenty of clips. The downside of it is that the Xbox 360 will only have a "feed" of fifteen clips per folder. But the cool thing is that for now on, whenever new content of Family Guy gets uploaded to Hulu, it will automatically appear under my Tversity library and show up on the folder of my Xbox 360.

Now to cover some of the downsides of the Xbox 360/gaming console and the Tversity relationship: First off, you will always need to have a computer running to communicate with your gaming console. The Tversity site claims that there are quite a few backup hard drives that can act as the server to communicate with your Xbox 360 or whatever console/media server you have hooked up to your television. I myself have yet to purchase a backup hard drive, but I can assure you, that I will be getting one so that I will not always have to a have a computer on. Although the cool thing is that you can access your Tversity library via the "master computer'" IP address or through the Flash site. SO this program might be the most beneficial to you if you had a lot of content on your computer that can be streamed to your television.

And now for the other major downside of the Tversity: its performance and reliability. Now, like I said earlier, this program could be much more beneficial to you if you have some technical know how, since you might have to just "tweak" some of these settings to meet your needs. But I myself have spent a decent amount of time troubleshooting and reading forums, that I couldn't even be satisfied.

One of the most frustrating things is that the Tversity program will more than likely suck up all of the resources on your computer slowing it up immensely. It becomes VERY frustrating when you are trying to search for a URL code on a web site and just clicking from one window to the next in order to copy and paste something takes about a minute. I had to go under the "services" folder within my computer just to make it somewhat operational and easy to navigate on my computer. Although my desktop is nearly ten years old, this might be smoother for some of the newest computers.

Okay, so now I got all of the files and tv shows that I want on my Tversity library - I now need to stream them over to my Xbox 360 in the next room. I ended up running back and forth from my living room into my office trying to get the two to communicate. The Xbox 360 did show the files from my computer as well as the numerous folders from my Tversity account. I did have to download a free update to my Xbox 360 in order to view some of my videos and music from my computer - but the Xbox doesn't support the codecs of movies that I made with Microsoft Photostory. Also, I found a lot of times that if the Tversity library was being updated, and if I did anything else on either of my sources, it would kick out my connection. Even though the Tversity site states the Xbox 360 is set to automatically detect the Tversity server on your computer, I had many, many "kick outs" and bad connections.

Now lets get to the real nitty gritty of the program - "what is the picture quality like?" Well, I'll tell you that the picture quality was pixilated, blurred and choppier than even the roughest of seas. I watched content from my own computer, which was a bit distorted, and I'm not going to go on and on about the techno aspects (such as double buffering) of it, since you can just find out like I did and skim through the enormously long FAQ on the Tversity site. The content that was through Hulu or You Tube would skip footage every five seconds or so. So let's say you saw a guy sitting at a table eating breakfast, the audio would be continuous, but the next time you see him, he could be at the door and leaving the kitchen. Terrible picture quality. Again, it can take even more tweaking of the Tversity properties on my part if I wanted to waste more time, or possibly contact my Linksys router people to configure my brand new Wireless G router to get the most bangs for its buck. But I also read many other forums that were full of people suffering the same dilemma. Mainly due to the fact that footage needs to be buffered twice in order to reach your television. So if you want great instant streaming quality for tv shows or movies - I say go with the Netflix account.

And I have a few final little gripes about the technological issues associated with this program. I'd like to start off with when I uploaded the program to begin with; I was no longer able to listen to sound on my computer. The program does something to your sound card that requires stereo mixing. So on top of my communication issues between my computer/Tversity and the Xbox 360; the Tversity sucking up a ton of my resources on my computer causing it to go very slow; AND now no longer having sound - I was getting immensely frustrated. So I then had to troubleshoot my computer in order to get sound back up. Then again, this just might be because my computer is a little bit older - I'm sure if you have Windows Vista, you might not have to deal with this dilemma as I had.

Also, I wasn't too crazy with the interface and organization of the files through my Xbox 360. I did quite a bit of experimenting with this yesterday as well, and I actually like the fact that you do somewhat have the power to organize (at least more so than the options for Netflix on the Xbox 360). So like I said earlier, you can get a feed of the show, which will show up as a folder on your Xbox 360. But you can also begin to upload individual clips and episodes, which got dumped into an Internet video folder, and really no where else. So let's say you have the fifteen files that came in off the top for the Family Guy feed, but then you go through the one hundred or so clips and perhaps you want one of them to go into your Family Guy folder. Instead, I ended up having a little bit of Family Guy here - and a little there.

There is really no detailed information when you click on a file on your Xbox 360 (at least the length of the episode would be nice or even a small summary). And when a video is done being played, let's say a Hulu web window will appear and ask something along the lines of, "if you liked this, perhaps you'll like these recommendations." Unfortunately you can't move your cursor over them, only with the option to play, pause, stop, rewind/fast forward. But that should be a little bit different on the Wii, since you can actually navigate through web pages.

Well folks, that is all I got to tell you today. Hands down, I think this is an AWESOME concept and I think it can be highly beneficial to you with some techno background, a fairly decent (and not too old) computer and perhaps even a backup hard drive so that you can access these files whenever you want - not when your computer is running and being sucked up by Tversity. If I had to, I would have a device that was hard wired to the net, hoping to get the best picture - and I would really like a device that has the files stored directly and into the tv - cutting out the middle man. I mean, does anyone know of a fairly inexpensive device where I can surf the web, store files and get it to directly plug into my television/stereo receiver. I almost feel like I should stop going through all of these techno pains, and just get a few A/V cables and a wireless keyboard/mouse so that I can hook up my lap top to the computer. Oh, the pains of a techno nerd L