The latest release of the Universal Media Server "TVersity" just keeps going from strength to strength. Release 0.9.10.1 (April 19, 2007) is the first to provide Video transcoding-streaming support for the PS3, Wii and Nokia N800 with video-transcoding-downloading for the Sony PSP.These new features are in addition to already supporting Video Transcoding-streaming to the Xbox 360 and various UPnP Media player devices such as the DLink DSM 520.
In this blog post I will concentrate on providing an overview on the Improved Flash GUI Library Browser and Player which can "in theory" be accessed from any web based device that supports Flash 7 by pointing a web browser to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/flashlib (where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the computer running TVersity)
First the Player GUI is very similar to any other Media Center Style interface where I was running it on an XP PC and found that I could use the mouse buttons and scroll wheel and/or Arrows & Return key to traverse the interface and select and play items.
1a) My Audio, with access to personalised Local & Internet Audio.
1b) My Photos, with access to personalised local & Internet Photos.
1c) My Video, with access to personalised Local & Internet Video.
2) Playing Audio, Note how the playback bar appears at the bottom of the flash window indicating both visually and with data the time of the track being played etc.
3) Playing Photos, My Flickr, Scanning photos held in Flickr on the internet.
4) Library & Player GUI, Navigation and Icons.
When we move the mouse into the top left of the Library & Player window, a navigation bar appears.
- Up arrow takes us up one level at a time from where we are. (The left arrow achieves the same result)
- Home Icon takes us back to the very top menu.
- Play Icon plays selected item. (The return key achieves the same result)
- Disk Icon allows us to download & save the media to the device, transcoded in a number of different formats. Please Note: That this option is very powerful as we we have the ability to quickly transcode any media being served by TVersity into a format and save on the local device (Not necessarily in the format for that device, perhaps we want to give a copy to a friend ;-)
- Question Icon provides infomation on available Keyboard key interactions.
5) Playing Video
Note how the playback controls indicate the current playback position in video being played but give no idea on the final length in time of Video File. This is because TVersity is currently transcoding and is unable to confirm overall length in time information. (Subsequent playbacks of a fully transcoded file will provide the overall length (Time) of Video file.
This Blog Post is to be enhanced and improved with additional information and perhaps more screen grabs, so do pop back for another look. If you have any questions about a feature and I can clarify and/or provide more detail I will do it.
1 comment:
I don't want to complain, as it looks like a huge amount of effort went into TVersity, but looking at the screenshots, all I can think is "could you have tried any harder to rip off the AppleTV / Frontrow UI? If I were an Apple UI designer, I wouldn't know whether to be flattered or pissed that so many people out there are duplicating my work, rather than inventing something new themselves.
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