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TVersity Media Server - Quick Start Guide

Before You Start

1. Please make sure your system complies with the minimum system requirements of the
software.
2. Please make sure that no previously installed copy of the software is running on any of the
machines on your home network. Only one instance of the software should run on your
home network at any given time with no instance running prior to the installation.
3. Please uninstall all versions prior to V0.8 of the software from the computer on which you
intend to install the software. Version 0.8 or higher can be upgraded in which case it won't
be necessary to uninstall it. In fact, it is recommended to avoid uninstalling V0.8 or
higher, since otherwise your shared URLs will be lost and won't be copied over to the new
installation.

After Download

1. Please locate the setup file you downloaded and make sure it has a '.exe' suffix. On some
systems, due to certain security software/practices one will find the file with no suffix, in
such a case please rename it so that the '.exe' extension is restored.
2. Run the setup file and go through the installation wizard.

After Installation

1. If you have a personal firewall running or the Windows firewall is running please make
sure that the executable MediaServer.exe located under the installation folder of the
software (c:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server by default) is allowed to accept incoming
connections on the port used by the media server (which is by default port 41952) (it is
not necessary to specify the port on most personal firewalls, however your system will be
more secure if you do so).
2. For transcoding purposes you will need to make sure you can play in Windows Media
Player all the media formats you wish TVersity to handle. If you cannot play some format
via Windows Media Player you will not be able to play it via TVersity and so you will need
to install additional directshow software components to overcome this issue. Please refer
to the TVersity download page for a list of possible add-ons you may need.
3. In addition to that, you may need to change the log-on account of the TVersity service (by
default it is set to the local system account) to a user account in which Windows Media
Player was installed and in which you intend to install additional directshow components
(these are necessary in order to provide decoding for the media formats you need). Please
refer to this FAQ section for step by step instructions on how to do that. If you have no
intention to play online media and to do any kind of transcoding then you can leave the
log-on account as is, otherwise leave it as is for now and later on if you experience
transcoding issues, consider changing it.
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 4. At this point make sure the server is running and responding by opening the following URL
http://localhost:41952/, which will start the TVersity GUI. Once the GUI starts click on one
of the category icons on the left side to see the various sources of content from any given
category. New installations will have all the categories empty except the audio, image and
video feeds, which will have some sample content.
5. You may want to know that you can access the TVersity GUI from any machine on your
network by replacing the localhost in the above URLs with the IP address or name of the
machine running TVersity.
6. The first time you run the server after a new installation it does a full refresh of your
media library. Even new installations require a refresh since the media library comes with
some sample online content. During this refresh the browsing of your media library (via a
web browser, UPnP device, PDA, PSP or any other device) may result in an error due to a
known issue with the TVersity server, and so it is best to let the refresh complete before
moving to the next step. Once the spinning wheel at the top right corner of the TVersity
GUI disappears the refresh of the media library is done and at that point you can safely
move to the next step. You can now browse your media library in a web browser from the
TVersity GUI or by using the URL http://localhost:41952/lib.

Sharing Internet Media and Home Media from the computer on which TVersity is
running

1. You can share media files located on your hard drive by using the GUI. Please locate the
TVersity desktop shortcut icon and double click on it, this should open the TVersity media
management application. From this application you can control the media server and
change its configuration as well as add new files, folders or URL to your media library.
Anything added to your media library is shared by the media server with any networked
device you have on your home network. Alternatively, you can open the GUI by clicking on
the followinf URL http://localhost:41952/.
2. The easiest way to add new items to your media library is to click the large plus button in
the GUI and select from the menu that opens the type of media you wish to share. This
will open a dialog box in which you can enter the rest of the informaiton required to
describe the media you are sharing. For files and folders you can browse for the file/folder
path by clicking the browse button, for URLs you simply paste them into the relevant text
box and give them a name and then click submit. (please note that due to limitatations
related to running inside a browser the GUI can only browse for files and not for folders,
therefore even when you wish to browse for folders, you will be required to select a file
from that folder and then when the file selection window is closed and you are back at the
sharing dialog box, this file will be automatically removed from the pathname).
3. You can also share URLs and media files located on your hard drive by using the command
line media sharing utility provided with the TVersity Media Server. Please refer to this FAQ
question for step by step instructions on how to do that.
4. For version 0.7 or older, please make sure you restart the TVersity Media Server after the
media sharing utility is done. You can do that from the command line or by invoking the
appropriate action from the TVersity menu in the Windows start menu. For version 0.8 or
higher this step is no longer required.
5. You should now be able to play the newly shared media on your media player.

Sharing Media from other computers on your home network

1. The TVersity Media Server can stream media files from network shares to your media
player, however you will need to change the default log-on account the TVersity Media
Server service is using to some other account that has administrative rights on your
machine. Please refer to this FAQ section for step by step instructions on how to do that.
2. You can share media from network shares using the GUI or the command line utility just
like you did when sharing local media, however network share pathnames cannot use
mapped network drive letters and instead they must include the name of the computer in
which they reside, e.g. \\george\movies is tha path to the movies network share on a
computer called george).
3. For version 0.7 or older, restarting the service is required after the command line utility is
done, and the service should start using the newly configured log-on account as explained

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 in step 1 above. For version 0.8 or higher this step is not required as long as the service is
already running with the newly configured log-on account.
4. You should now be able to play the newly shared media on your media player.

Congratulations!
You have successfully installed the server and used it to play online content as well as content
located on your home network and to synchronize media between two remote locations. Enjoy
and don't forget to drop us a line telling us about your experience with the TVersity Media Server.

Note
If any of the steps above resulted in errors or seemed to have failed, you should refer to the
Troubleshooting section of the FAQ for help. If you still cannot find a solution to your porblem,
please use the Support Forums to search for a solution or to post a description of your problem in
order to receive assistance from the TVersity community and/or from the TVersity team of
develpers.

Screenshots

TVersity's GUI

The following is a step-by-step scenario designed to demonstrate the power of the TVersity Media
Server. Please take the time to go through it in the right order since each step is building on
previous ones. For your conveience screenshots of the TV screen are provided for each step
making it easy to visualize the user experience delivered by the TVersity Media Server. The
screenshots were taken from a TV screen with the DLink DSM320 media hub connected to the TV
and the TVersity Media Server configured as its media server.

1. The Home Screen

This is the home screen of the DLink DSM 320,
we are about to the enter the Video menu and
explore it.

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2. The Video Menu
This is what the media hub shows when the
Video option is selected. You can see that
instead of just showing the videos located on
one's computer we have here a choice of "My
Video", which once selected will indeed show the
videos on the home network, a choice of "My
Online Video" which is where my personal lineup
of Internet video channels is located (The user
has full control over the stuff that shows up in
this area and can add almost any video URL or
channels from the TVersity Video Guide), and a
choice of "TVersity Video Guide" which includes
hundreds of channels accessible by different
criteria. These last two features are exclusive to
the TVersity Media Server and are not offered by
any other media server in the market.

3. The TVersity Video Guide

This screen shows the online content available
for playback. This channel guide is designed to
demonstrate the uniqueness of the TVersity
software with respect to online content. It comes
as is with the current version of the software,
and right now it cannot be modified, and it does
not get automatically updated. This is all going
to change in future versions of the software,
where the selection of channels will grow and all
the channels will constantly get updated. In
order to demonstrate the diversity of Internet
based content enabled by the TVersity Media
Server, we chose to include here hundreds of
live TV channels from around the globe, the
famous indie movie Star Wars Revelations, the
new music video channel ManiaTV which
happens to be broadcast exclusively on the Net
and more. This channel guide was created by
the TVersity channel-bot, an innovative crawler
based on which TVersity will launch a new
service that organizes audio and video content
on the Internet into searchable, easy to navigate
channels. The combination of this service with
the media server software will bring to reality
the promise of TVersity, to turn any media hub
(or for that purpose any networked device
capable of playing audio and video) into the set-
top-box of the Internet.

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4. Selecting a TV station by Country
Selecting "TV from around the World" reveals an
alphabetical list of countries. Each country when
selected will reveal the channels available for
streaming for that country.

5. About to check what TV stations are available

for Italy
We navigated down the country list all the way
to Italy.

6. TV stations for Italy

This is the first page in the list of of TV stations
available for Italy, since we wish to play CNBC
Italy and since it is listed first on this page all we
need to do is hit the play button on the remote.

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7. Watching CNBC Italy
Enjoying foreign TV channels in our living room
has never been easier or more fun.

8. The Home Screen

Back in the home screen we are about to enter
the Audio menu.

9. The Audio Menu

This is what the media hub shows when the
Audio option is selected. You can see that the
structure resembles the Video menu, and here
again instead of just showing the media located
on one's computer we have a choice of "My
Audio", which once selected will indeed show the
audio on the home network, a choice of "My
Online Audio" which is where my personal lineup
of Internet audio channels is located, and a
choice of "TVersity Audio Guide" which includes
thousands of radio stations and other Audio
content accessible by different criteria. We are
just about to select the Audio Guide and see
what's inside.

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10. The TVersity Audio Guide
Here we can see a sample of Audio channels
designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the
media server. Like the Video guide this is just a
small sample of what is coming up soon.

11. About to enter the Internet Radio Menu

We moved one page down, browsing through
the available channels spotting the "Radio from
around the World" menu.

12. Inside the Internet Radio menu

Here we demonstrate how content is indexed by
several different criteria and how this indexing
makes it easy to navigate and find what one is
looking for. We have here an option to browse
through all the Radio stations or to browse by
region or language. In the future a search by
keyword(s) will also be possible and it will make
it even easier to find relevant channels in an
ever growing content guide.

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13. About to browse by language
We decided we wish to select a station by
language and we are about to enter that menu.

14. Browsing by language

Here we see an alphabetical list of languages
and we can choose the one we need.

15. About to enter the English Radio stations

menu
We scrolled down in the language menu until we
reached the language we were looking for.

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16. Radio Stations in English
Here we have a list of radio stations in English
from all over the world.

17. Found a station we wish to play

We scrolled down the list, exploring the stations
until we found something we wish to play.

18. Playing a radio station

Hitting the play button on the remote, we can
start listening to the radio station. By now it
must be quite clear what it's like to use the
content guide, in the future it won't be
necessary to browse through such a big guide
from the TV. Instead, one would navigate
through the guide using a new application, the
TVersity Media Browser (which will be running
on a PC or over the web) and will use this
application to personalize the channels that
meet his/her interests. The personalized
channels will be available for access on one's TV
or from any computer over the web. Later on
this same lineup of channels will be made
available on mobile devices thus allowing one to
access their personal lineup of channels on the
go.

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19. Browsing Radio stations by region
Finally, this is the menu for browsing radio
stations by region, and with that this step-by-
step scenario is concluded. If you like what you
see so far, then feel free to download the
software and give it a spin, and if you like the
software please consider making a small
donation.

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