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Angry Xbox Modders Join Together in Class Action Lawsuit

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:45:44 -0600

Up to 1 million Xbox modders were pretty pissed to find that they had been banned from Xbox Live following the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the biggest launch in entertainment history. The mass ban was intended to prevent pirated copies of the highly anticipated game from spreading, a notion Microsoft will now have to defend in a class action lawsuit filed against the company.

"Although modification of Xbox consoles is arguably against he terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft 'conveniently' timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfar 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game," says AbingtonIP, the Texas-based law firm who filed th suit.

According to the lawsuit, the timing of Microsoft's widespread ban may have resulted in more Xbox Live subscription sales than if the bans had taken place before the release of Halo 3: ODST and CoDMW2. The lawsuit also claims that some of the bans locked out users who had modded their consoles for reasons other piracy.

Microsoft is Okay with In-game Advertising, Says it Will Continue to Thrive

Bart Salisbury — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:45:54 -0500

They’re there. You know they’re there. And they aren’t going away. Certainly not if Microsoft has a say. “They” are in-game advertisements, which have been steadily creeping into the on-line gaming experience. And right now they are generate buckets of cash for Microsoft, and show the potential of generating buckets more.

Massive, the on-line gaming advertising arm of Microsoft, uses a dynamic process to inject ads that “enhance” the online gaming experience. According to JJ Richards, at the Microsoft Advertising Blog, “Our research indicates that most gamers like advertising in the game because it adds to the realism. Imagine playing a Major League Baseball game with no ads behind home plate, next to the scoreboard or on the outfield wall - not very realistic. Now imagine the outfield with up-to-the-minute ads you just saw on television or read in a newspaper - the latest movie release, television show, or a new car model. That is much more realistic.” Massive’s objective is to place ads where you would expect to see them in everyday life, while taking care not to degrade the game-playing experience.

On-line gaming is a logical step for advertising because of the audience: 18-34 year old males, who spend a lot of time gaming (and have become harder to reach by traditional means). Richards claims that Massive is able to reach “40 million Xbox and PC gamers in 31 countries worldwide.” And apparently in-game advertising works. Microsoft reports that 72% of gamers recall seeing the ads, and 65% say that such ads standout more than traditional advertising. Whether this translates into actual sales Richards doesn’t say.

Bucking overall Internet advertising revenue trends, Microsoft reports that its revenues are up, with first quarter sales targets exceeded by 100% just a month into the fiscal year. Screen Digest expects in-gaming advertising revenues to reach $1 billion by 2014.

Custom Firmware Rocks! How to Hack Gadgets with New Software

Alex Castle, Norman Chan, and Dave Murphy — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:30:00 -0500

While we're big fans of the proven awesomeness of open-source software, we don't automatically download every free application that's labeled as an open-source project. What make more sense is the use of open-source as the tool that effects some kind of massive or otherwise unreachable change in a common device. Case in point is open-source firmware, named not for any philosophical belief behind its creation, but because few would want to heft the banner for these changes themselves. After all, creativity comes from a wide range of sources and inputs--as does software testers. You sure wouldn't want to be the one person working on third-party iPhone firmware, bricking device after device in a quest to add additional functionality that Apple didn't first design.

But that kind of unintended funcitonality is the sole benefit to open-source firmware. Throw those aspirations of community membership and open-source allegiance out the window: You want to increase the power of your device akin to a Sim tinkering his or her hardware to gain mechanical skill points. There's no shame in that. In fact, you can accomplish much by adopting third-party firmware in place of standard manufacturer packages. For example, building increased sound codecs into your MP3 player of choice, or adding on-screen level meters to your digital SLR. You can even turn your router into a bridge, perfect for extending the range of your neighbor's wireless signal so you can thieve his connection from additional locations in your apartment. You can also brick your device.

We jest, but only partially. For the danger of running third-party firmware--safe as many of the packages can seem to be--is that you could render your device of choice unusable. It happens to "real" firmware upgrades; it can happen to "unofficial" firmware upgrades as well, only I venture that you'll probably find more problems in the latter scenario than with a manufacturer's tried-and-tested update. But still, the benefits can often outweigh the risks, especially if you're looking to extend your legacy devices with additional features. An entire ocean of open-source firmware fixes awaits your perusal -- we take a look at some outstanding examples of open-source firmware, and teach you how to install them on your own gadgets!

MP3 Players

For most people, an MP3 player serves a pretty narrow purpose: it plays music, maybe a video here or there if you’ve got a newer model, and might have a handful of applications. All in all, though, MP3 players are rarely treated as anything more than tiny, portable jukeboxes, which is a shame, because as gadgets they’ve got the potential for so much more. That’s why, in this article, we show you how to install custom Rockbox firmware and breathe new life into your trusty old MP3 player.

Sony's PSP

For as long as Sony’s PlayStation Portable has been on the market, it’s been a juicy target for hackers. With burly hardware (for a handheld) and a gorgeous screen, it just begs to play homebrew, and lots of PSP owners have cracked their devices to do just that. Unfortunately, Sony has had other plans for their handheld, and has released dozens of firmware updates and several hardware revisions to make it harder to hack the PSPs handheld.

As such, there’s no one hack that works on all PSP, and in fact some PSPs are completely unhackable. There is, however, one fairly easy method that works on most consoles, which is what we illustrate in this article.

BIOS

OpenBIOS and Coreboot are two examples of the open source world's answer to proprietary BIOS firmware. Flashing your motherboard with either of these can be an anxiety-inducing process, but you should be able to tap into faster loading speeds if you're successful. Everyone wants a speedy, netbook-style BIOS loadup, right?

Routers

Third-party router software has been around for a while, but we can’t help but keep recommending it to users who want to add undocumented features to their home network. Our favorite router firmware package is still Tomato, which we favor for its compatibility with a wide range of router brands and models, user-friendly interface, and powerful feature set. We show you how to upgrade your router’s firmware to the newest version of Tomato and then configure the Quality of Service settings to manage your network traffic.

E-readers

Yes, you can even get open-source firmware for your electronic reader. The pickings aren't vast, but firmware like OpenInkPot can update your device with new settings and better performance, as well as give you access to additional software reader options, eliminate the necessity of DRM for your device, and even add Wi-Fi capabilities to a network-incompatible E-reader.

Point and Shoot Digital Cameras

We love point-and-shoot pocket cameras for their small size and ease of use, but we lament their relatively paltry feature sets when compared to more expensive DSLR models. The good news, for owners of the popular Canon PowerShot cameras, is that your consumer-grade gadget can be upgraded with custom software to endow it with professional features like RAW image recording and live histogram feedback. CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) is an easy-to-install software package created by a savvy group of programmers to supercharge the Canon PowerShot. We show you how to safely install and configure this free firmware add-on with no risk to your camera.

SLRs

The Canon 5D Mark II camera is pretty impressive in its own right, given the kind of video that this full-frame, digital SLR can shoot. But don't let it be said that accomplishment ever got in the way of open-source innovation. That's where the open-source firmware package Magic Lantern comes into play. Amongst the features it adds to this jam-packed camera include on-screen audio meters (ideal for the amateur filmmaker), manual gain control, zebra stripes, and crop marks for different aspect ratios.

Digital Media Players

Western Digital's WDTV is kind of like a magic media streaming box. You plug any USB storage device (Flash key, portable hard drive, etc) into its two USB ports and it'll play any movie, picture, or audio file that it finds, outputting your media to your big screen TV via HDMI. Western Digital has done a great job updating its own official firmware to boost compatibility with almost every media format you can think of (yes, including MKV packages with subtitles), but the open-source offering takes the WDTV's functionality even further. B-Rad's WDLXTV firmware adds support for USB optical drives, USB hubs, limited ethernet connectivity, custom GUIs, and an application package that turns the WDTV into a mini-server!

Anything Else?

This is just a brief introduction to the world of open-source firmware. Hopefully it's gotten you stewing about all the different electronic devices you can hack in the comfort of your own dwelling. But just in case you need a little more inspiration, is anyone else out there running open-source firmware that deserves mentioning? Leave a comment to help flush out the list for your fellow readers!

Rumors of a Possible Converged Microsoft Handheld

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:15:46 -0500

Update: Gizmodo has already debunked this rumor. Sorry guys.

~~Reports have claimed that Microsoft is currently in the developmental process of creating a mobile platform that mixes many elements of the Xbox and Zune – earning it the nickname “xYz.”~~

The rumored handheld is reported to be “unlike anything on the market today … think of a mashup of the Sony Mylo, the PSP, and the iPhone… errr, the iPod touch; [the MS handheld] doesn’t need access to a phone network. Although the Microsoft handheld is definitely a converged device, this is not a Zune Phone. Microsoft won’t compete with its Windows Mobile customers.”

The device will supposedly be based off of Live Anywhere, for the most part. “There will be a single online marketplace; the lines between the Zune, Xbox Live and Sky marketplaces will blur when the handheld launches.”

Given that both Nintendo and Sony have strong footholds in the handheld gaming sector, it seems like a natural progression for Microsoft to move here as well. Let’s just hope that this rumored handheld takes less pages from the book of Zune and more pages from the book of Xbox.

The Top Transcoding Apps for Watching Content on Consoles

David Murphy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:00:00 -0600

We're not going to make any comments about your multi-platform setup at home, because it's okay to accept that your PC can live alongside your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or Wii without major squabbling between the systems. But what do you do when your devices want to interact with each other? How do you get all of those movies, music albums, and Internet feeds on your PC to show up on your console and television set?

There are a bunch of solutions on the Internet today for streaming media from your PC to your console of choice. But that doesn't mean all of them are good. In fact, you'll never know whether a given tool works for you unless you spend the requisite half-hour installing it, configuring it for streaming, firing up your console, trying to connect to your PC, et cetera. It's a process. But at least allow us to do our part in reducing your streaming nightmare. We've rounded up a batch of our favorite freeware applications for streaming media from a PC to a console, as well as a handy encoding tool in case you still can't get your huge movies to work just right.

Combined Community Codec Pack

What it does: To watch most movies on your PC, you need the appropriate codec. These are the programs that allow you to encode and decode videos--without the right codec for your video, you'll be staring at a black screen on both your TV and your PC. Further complicating the matter is the fact that thousands of codecs exist in all kinds of versions and modifications for all types of video and audio. While it's actually recommended that you piecemeal the appropriate codecs together as to not overly clutter your system, we'd rather error on the side of caution. The Combined Community Codec Pack is a one-shot install that doesn't overburden you with features, options, or installation packages. It's easy to uninstall if you need to, and contains the default codecs that should allow you to watch a large majority of possible encodes.

Download it here!

The PS3 Solution: ps3mediaserver

What it does: This no-fuss transcoding application is geared for the PlayStation 3. It allows you to stream movies of all kinds, including support for AVI, MP4, TS, and MKV files. You also get lossless 5.1 transcoding for your DTS-based movies, a must-have for audiophiles and their beefy home entertainment systems. The program comes with barebones support for pulling in Internet feeds as well, giving you the ability to pull up your favorite Flickr images, Internet TV feeds, and Web radio.

Download it here!

The Wii Solution: Orb

What it does: While Orb also functions well with the PS3 and Xbox 360, it's ideal for use on the Wii. The program simply offers more features and a slicker interface than the comparable Tversity. Video quality on the Wii will be less than that of the PS3 or Xbox 360, as Orb converts your computer's media into a Flash-based format for play through the Wii's Internet Channel. But it's the best you're going to get on this console. Orb streams your music and your videos, even letting you view the picture of a webcam attached to your PC. The application also supports Internet video and audio feeds, as well as syndicated content like podcasts and RSS feeds. You can even play Flash games!

Download it here!

The Xbox 360 Solution: TVersity

What it does: We've covered this one before, but this is one application that has survived the test of time. Set up TVersity on your PC, and you'll be able to connect to your computer just like you normally would via the Xbox 360's interface. The key difference, however, is that you'll now be able to stream a wider variety of movies and formats than what is normally allowed by Xbox 360's strict, native support. Tversity also supports no-frills Internet audio, video, and photo feeds. However, unlike a solution like Orb, Tversity doesn't require you to sign up for an external service. And we flat-out enjoy the power user functionality of this powerful transcoding application.

Download it here!

Throwing in the Towel: GOTsent

What it does: Some of the trickiest files to play on your consoles are those encoded in the MKV format. The Matroska Multimedia Container usually combines an H.264-encoded video file with AC3/AAC/DTS audio tracks, and this package is quite incompatible with both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems. Since these files can reach the extremes of HD quality, transcoding them becomes a nightmare of an issue as a result of the processing power of the host computer and the available network bandwidth. GOTsent helps you convert MKV files into other supported formats. It takes some finagling, but it'll have you up-and-running when the Matroska format would otherwise leave your TV in the dark.

Download it here!

Rip DVDs for Playback on Your iPhone, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, AppleTV, or Any H.264-Enabled Player

Will Smith — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:00:00 -0600

It’s hard to believe in the iTunes era of blink-and-you-miss-them CD rips, but in the mid-90s, ripping a CD was a time-consuming process, fraught with peril. Ripping a single disc to 128kbps MP3 could take 8 hours on a 200MHz Pentium! Fast forward a decade, with faster hardware and better software and CD ripping is so mainstream your mom does it.

Ripping DVDs and transcoding the video stored within into more efficient formats involves an order of magnitude more scary math than ripping audio CDs. A machine that will rip the latest Miley Cyrus CD in moments could take hours to extract and convert your copy of AVP to an iPod-friendly format. However, with the right software, a quad-core equipped PC, and a little know-how, you can cut your disc rip time from hours to 20 or 30 minutes. There are still plenty of tricks and traps for first-time rippers, but we’ll show you the basics, then walk you through the secrets of ripping power users everywhere.

However, the first thing you need to decide is simple: what player are you ripping your discs for? Are you ripping for a portable player, like the PSP or iPhone? Would you rather stream to device in your living room, like the Xbox 360, PS3, or Popcorn Hour? Are you simply interested in making an archival-quality DVD rips, in case you lose your collection? More likely, you’re probably looking for a combination of all three of these things. We’ll show you how to rip your DVD to a file suitable for streaming that consumes a fraction of the disk space of a DVD but maintains full video and audio quality. Then you can take that file, and convert it for whatever other devices you might have, like a PSP or an iPod. For the purposes of this story, we're going to focus on DVD rips. Getting ahold of unencrypted high-defintion video legally is still pretty tricky. We'll update with Blu-ray ripping info as ripping Blu-ray gets easier.

With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s get started.

Determining Your Target Player

There are several different factors that determine the compatibility of your ripped video files. The resolution of the video, the video and audio codecs, the container format used, and even more esoteric things like the framerate can affect whether your video will work on your device of choice. If you just rip discs as you need the content and then delete files afterward, simply rip to the target of choice. However, if you want to build an archive of ripped movies, we recommend that you use open, widely-supported codecs and containers at the native resolution of the DVD, and then transcode the files as you need them to lower resolutions and bitrates. Naturally, we’ll show you how to do both.

Your player selection also impacts your choices when it comes to audio tracks and subtitle support. While the most common container formats, mp4 and mkv, support multiple track and subtitle streams in one file, few players will work with multiple audio tracks, and an even smaller subset will work with subtitles. That means you need to rip a single audio track—typically the main movie’s English soundtrack—and burn the subtitles into the video, rather than leave them as separate streams inside the container.

Bitrate is a little trickier. Most hardware players will handle whatever bitrate you select, especially if they're designed for high-definition playback. Both consoles and the AppleTV support high-definintion files, so they're more than capable of playing DVD-resolution video at whatever bitrate you choose. However, the higher a bitrate you choose, the larger the file will be. From our testing, we found the sweet spot for most movies to be around 2000kbps average, but we cranked it up to 2500kbps for movies with a lot of action. If your hardware supports high-profile H.264 (Xbox 360, PS3, and the Apple TV do, but many portable players don't), you can get away with a lower bitrate. With 1.5TB hard drives available for about $180 now, we'd rather rip at a too-high bitrate to ensure maximum quality video than save a few hundred MB of disk space.

We typically recommend ripping to the MP4 container, it’s widely supported on both streaming devices and portables. Furthermore, the tools for manipulating the streams within the file are established and easy to use, which makes it easy to transcode your video to a less supported format for a specific player.

A Word About Subtitles

Typically, DVDs include multiple subtitle streams that serve different purposes. Nearly every DVD has some English subtitles, even non-foreign language movies. It’s important that you understand the difference between subtitles and closed captions. Subtitles are simply the dialog from the movie written across the bottom of the screen. Closed captions include subtitles, but they also include audio cues that help people with impaired hearing enjoy the movie fully.

While closed captions are present on almost every disc, many English-language movies also use subtitles to show what a character speaking a foreign language is saying. On some discs, these subtitles will be hidden in a separate stream, while in others, they’ll be mixed in with the closed-captions, but marked so that the DVD player only shows the proper captions. Regardless, it’s crucial that you get the proper subtitles for all the films you rip. Otherwise, you’ll never know what Jabba or Greedo are saying in Star Wars, and watching a long expository scene in another language without the benefit of subtitles sucks.

In practice, the first English subtitle track is typically the one that includes subtitles and forced or otherwise, while the second subtitle track is the one that includes closed captions.

Bypassing Copy Protection

The first thing you’ll need to do when ripping a DVD is remove the copy protection. Most discs use a variant of the Content Scrambling System (CSS), but many also use other techniques to make it more difficult to extract the video from the disc. Although DVD ripping apps, like HandBrake and AutoMKV aren’t updated as frequently as new copy protection schemes come out, there are a pair of utilities that are dedicated to stripping copy protection—AnyDVD (€49, www.slysoft.com) and DVD43 (free, www.dvd43.com).

Both apps do a fine job, although AnyDVD justifies its high price by bypassing new forms of encryption extremely quickly after they appear. Both of these apps serve as on-the-fly disc decrypters, stripping copy protection before your ripping utility or playback software even knows the disc is present. Want to rip an unencrypted disc to hard drive? It’s as easy as copying the contents of the disc’s VIDEO_TS file to your hard drive once you’ve installed AnyDVD or DVD43. Regardless, before we continue, you should install one or the other of these apps. AnyDVD is free to try for 30 days, while DVD43 is always free.

Ripping Your First Disc

For simple, high-quality rips of any kind of content, it’s tough to beat Handbrake. We like Handbrake for a few reasons—its built-in presets make it very easy for anyone to use, it does a good job of detecting the proper video, audio, and subtitle selections, and it has never failed to successfully rip a DVD, and we’ve ripped hundreds of discs.

To rip your first disc, drop it in your drive and click the Source button in the top-left corner of the Handbrake window. If you’re using AnyDVD or DVD43, you can safely ignore the prompt asking for the location of VLC. If you aren’t, you’ll need to download VLC. Unless you have multiple optical drives, the disc in your DVD-ROM should be one of the listed options. If it’s not, select the choose a folder option and navigate to your optical drive. Handbrake will take a minute or two to scan the contents of your disc, and will do its best to determine the appropriate titles and chapters on the disc. Handbrake’s generally spot on for movie DVDs, although you’ll probably need to manually select the proper chapters and titles for discs that contain TV shows (more on ripping TV shows here).

After Handbrake’s familiarized itself with your disc, you need to select the proper output preset. For streaming to or playback on, the Apple Universal preset is terrific. It looks great, and works great on the iPhone, newer iPod Classics, and the Apple TV. For streaming to the PS3, Xbox 360, or pretty much anything else, we typically recommend a modified PS3 preset. If you don't care about the details, you can just choose Handbrake's default PS3 preset, which uses the H.264 video codec to encode your disc’s video at its native resolution using 2500kbps variable bitrate that’s also compatible with the Xbox 360. It automatically downmixes your disc’s 5.1 audio to a 2.0 Dolby ProLogic II stream.

Once you've selected a preset, make sure that both the two-pass encode and the turbo first pass options are checked on the video tab. Then flip to the Audio/Subtitles tab and ensure the proper subtitle and audio selections are checked. If the movie includes some subtitles, you should select the first English subtitle track and check the Forced Subtitles Only box. If you’re not sure, it’s best to go ahead and check it. Don’t worry, if the disc is mastered properly and there are no subtitles, it won’t affect your rip at all. Once you’re happy with your settings, you can press the + button in the preset window to save your profile (we recommend giving it a different default name than the others). Unfortunately, caption settings aren’t saved in presets, so you have to manually set them each time you rip another disc.

Before you can start the encode, you need to tell Handbrake where to save the finished rip and what to call it. You can save the resulting file anywhere on your hard drive. Once you’ve done that, press the Start button, and your encode will start. Depending on the number of cores you have and the speed of your processor, encoding could take anywhere from 40 minutes to several hours.

Ripping Multiple DVDs at Once

Because the transcoding process takes a lot of time and monopolizes your CPU, it’s helpful to queue up several discs to be transcoded at a time when you’re not using your PC. You can do this by copying the full DVDs to your hard disk and then queuing several movies in Handbrake to transcode one after the other.

If you’re using AnyDVD, you can start the DVD ripping tool by right clicking the tray icon and selecting rip DVD to hard disk. Tell the app where to save the disc’s contents and click copy. You can do this for as many discs as you have hard disk space to hold. Then open Handbrake and click the source button. Point the app to the folder that you copied your discs to, and select the first one. Instead of selecting Start when you’ve selected the proper profile and tweaked your audio and subtitle settings, click Add to Queue. Repeat this for each disc you’ve copied to your hard drive, and press Encode when you’re ready to start transcoding.

Ripping TV Show DVDs

Ripping TV shows is a little trickier than ripping a single large movie, but it’s similar to the procedure we just outlined for queuing multiple discs. Different studios use different techniques, but the basic idea is the same. First you need to load your DVD in Handbrake. Then, find the individual episodes in Handbrake’s source section. The easiest way to to find episodes is to look at the playtime for each chapter or title. Typically 30 minute TV shows are around 23 minutes and hour-long shows are about 46 minutes. Once your settings are right and you’ve found the right titles, you can add each individual episode to the queue. Make sure you assign each one a unique name, or Handbrake will overwrite the old episodes as you rip new ones. After the episodes have been ripped, you’ll need to make sure that each one is properly named, frequently the first title on the disc isn’t the first one that’s listed in the menus.

Converting Your Ripped Files to Another Format

By now you should have quite a few movies and TV shows ripped in a high-quality archival format. However, many devices won’t play videos encoded at this resolution or bitrate. Lucky for us, Handbrake makes it easy to convert videos to other formats. All you need to do is load the video you want to convert using the Source menu, and then choose the appropriate preset or output settings for your player and transcoded away. You can even queue multiple files for conversion.

Playback and Streaming

Now that you’ve ripped your DVD collection, how do you stream the videos into your living room? The easy way to stream MP4 files to your Xbox is to install the Zune Marketplace software, which you can download at Zune.net (whether you own a Zune or not). Once you add the videos to the Zune software and enable sharing, you’ll be able to open them using any Xbox 360 on your home network.

If you want to stream to a PlayStation 3, it’s a little more complex. Fortunately, we have a how-to that explains exactly how to use TVersity to stream video from your PC to your PS3, Xbox 360, or any other UPNP-enabled device. It can be a little tricky to get TVersity running properly, especially if you’ve installed a ton of codecs on your system.

We’ve also heard great things about PacketVideo (formerly known as TwonkyMedia). We haven’t tested Twonky since the 4.4 version came out, but it has strong reviews from the community and might be worth trying out. It offers many features that are comparable to TVersity, and is reportedly easier to install and run to boot. If you’ve had trouble getting codecs working with TVersity in the past, PacketVideo is a great option.

If you just want to watch the videos on your PC, there are lots of options. If you have a recent version of WinDVD or PowerDVD, either of those apps should play the videos with hardware acceleration to boot. A good free alternative is VLC, which should play pretty much any video file you throw at it.Or, if you don't mind fiddling with lots of codec incompatibilities, you can install one of the codec packs that float around the Internet, like CCCP, and play your movies in Windows Media Player or Media Player Classic.

Now go enjoy your movie library!

How To: Stream Any Video to Your Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii

Will Smith — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:22:18 -0500

Whether you ripped your entire CD and DVD collection, purchase DRM-free content online, or you acquire your media from less legitimate sources, we'll show you everything you need to know to stream your audio, video, and pictures to any console you own.

The secret to streaming on all three platforms is a little program called TVersity. TVersity is a a standalone media streaming utility, designed to stream video to devices that support a number of different protocols, including UPNP, DLNA, and Flash video. The driving goal for the folks behind TVersity is to let you stream your media to any network connected device using the software. While it's still in beta and is in constant development, TVersity works reasonably well now; although it can be tricky to configure the first time.

The reason we love TVersity is that it automatically converts your content into the proper format for easy streaming, on the fly. This is important because none of the streaming boxes actually work with all the common audio and video formats. While the PS3 can play MPEG1 and MPEG2 video, it can't play WMV formatted files. The Xbox can play WMV, but chokes on many Divx and Xvid files. The Wii can only play Flash movies, using the downloadable Opera browser.

Getting the TVersity service working properly, and then configuring it for the best image quality is tricky, but it can be done. We're going to start by configuring TVersity and the codecs you'll need on your system, then we'll jump to console-specific sections after that.

Getting TVersity Installed and Working

Before you can stream your first video, you need to get TVersity working properly. All the software you need is free, and it's fairly easy to use. Before we begin, you should download the software you need: Tversity, ffdshow tryout, and (maybe) the Codec Sniper. Download them, and then come back.

1. Clean out your old codecs

The number one problem for users of TVersity is incompatible or conflicting codecs installed. Usually, these are a result of people installing software that includes “every codec you need”, such as the K-Lite codec pack. While you can try Tversity, and it may work, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle if you just clean up your codecs before you start.

First, go to the Add/Remove Programs control panel, and uninstall any codec packs you find in there, as well as utilities like AC3Filter, Xvid, and Divx. Additionally, some apps, such as Nero, also include codecs. You'll need to uninstall them as well (for the time being) you can safely reinstall them when everything's working. When you've uninstalled everything, reboot the PC and then try to view a movie using the missing codecs, if Windows Media Player complains that the codec is missing, you're on the right track and can continue to the next step.

If your video plays, you'll need to run the Codec Sniper, and manually delete the offending codecs from your system. To remove a codec, simply click on it, and select delete. Only delete codecs affiliated with your codec packs and other codecs you manually installed. Deleting the wrong things here can really break your system so be careful. You'll need to reboot for any changes made here to take effect as well. Once your codecs are clean, and your videos won't play anymore, you can move to the next step.

If you can't get rid of all the codecs using Codec Sniper, you may need to back up your important data and reinstall Windows. While we had good luck cleaning out the codec cruft on several machines, we had one test rig that just wouldn't work with TVersity at all.

2. Install ffdshow

When using ffdshow, stick with the Stereo default—other audio options don’t seem to work with TVersity.

There are a couple of different codec options you can use. If you primarily want to stream MPEG4-based media, Divx, Xvid, and the like, ffdshow is the best option. (If you want to stream more advanced H.264-based codecs, you'll need to use a more comprehensive codec pack though. For that, we recommend the CCCP. If you install CCCP, you don't need ffdshow and vice versa.)

The secret weapon that will let TVersity transcode all your video is ffdshow. Ffdshow is a kind of universal codec, it works with most of the MPEG4-based codecs, and also lets you decode Dolby Digital and DTS audio streams. Install the software, selecting the default options for everything. Make sure you choose the default audio option for ffdshow (Stereo - 2 speakers), regardless of your actual speaker config. TVersity doesn't seem to work well with the other options.

After you've installed ffdshow, you should be able to once again view your MPEG4 (Divx and Xvid, mostly) videos in Windows Media Player.

3. Install TVersity

TVersity must run as a service, with its own login and password, to access media on a network share.

Now it's time to install TVersity. You can use most of the installer's default options, except for the TVersity Codec Pack, which you do NOT want to install. When you're asked if you want to install the TVersity codec pack, uncheck that box. You've already installed all the codecs you need. Vista users will see an error that the TVersity service didn't start properly, so you'll need to manually start it using the shortcut in the TVersity Start Menu folder.

If you want to stream media that's stored on a network share—another machine, a NAS box, or a Windows Home Server—you need to configure the TVersity service (a service is an application that runs even when no one's logged into the machine) to run as a user who has permission to access the network share. You'll need to do that even if your network share is configured to allow everyone access—services which log into the local system account are denied access to the network. To change the login information, go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services, and then scroll down to the TVersity service. Right-click on that, and go to the Log On tab. Click the This account button, and set it to use a username/password that has permission to access that network share. You'll need to restart the service after you've changed the login info, you can do that on the General tab by pressing Stop and then Start.

4. Add Media to TVersity

When adding media to TVersity’s library, be sure to indicate at the bottom of the screen what type of content you want streamed from the folder.

This is the easy part. You'll want to open up the TVersity client on your media streaming machine, click the big green + sign, and add the folders that contain your media to the machine. It's really important that you tell TVersity which type of content to expect in each folder—if it adds all the images in your music directory, your photo section will quickly get clogged with all the album art on your rig. That's no fun at all.

After you've added your media, it will take TVersity a while to search all your folders and add everything to its library. Take a ten minute break to walk the dog, make a snack, or something else. TVersity doesn't work particularly well while it's scanning your library, so it's important that you take a minute or three.

5. Test Streaming With Your Console

If it's been ten minutes, you should be able to test out your streaming setup. Now, you should skip ahead to the section for your Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or Nintendo Wii.

Stream to Your Playstation 3

Before we go any farther, you should confirm that your Playstation 3 can see the TVersity server and can stream video from it. Once we've done that, we'll work on optimizing video quality. The PS3 delivers great video and audio quality, but it can be a little tricky to configure.

Fire up your PS3 and go to the Video blade. You should see an entry at the top of the list that's YourPC'sName: TVersity Media Server. If you don't, you should verify that your PS3 is connected to the network, and that your PC's firewall is either disabled, or you've given TVersity permission to listen on port 41952. Additionally, you need to enable UPNP broadcasts and Multicast on your router. If you have an older router, you may need to update the firmware or actually replace the device with a newer model.

Once you're connected, browse to the Video item, then the My Video Item, and then click All Video and browse down to one of your videos. If you followed the instructions, you should be streaming video to your PS3. It will be crappy, low resolution video, but it will be video. With everything working properly, we can tweak the visual quality in the next step.

6. Crank Up the Visual Quality

TVersity’s default settings are fine for wireless connections, but a wired connection and increased visual-quality settings offer the most satisfying results.

The maximum visual quality you'll get from your streamed media is dependant on two different things—the quality of the network connection between your PC and the actual speed of your PC. You see, transcoding is tough work and streaming media is network intensive. TVersity's default settings work reasonably well on an 802.11g network, but the resulting video looks terrible. You'll be hard pressed to stream even DVD quality video across wireless—at least until there's an 802.11n-based solution for streaming video.

Assuming you have a wired network between your PS3 and your PC, you can really ratchet up the video quality. To do that, you'll need to open up TVersity's profiles.xml file, which contains the settings that TVersity uses to determine the proper format to use when streaming to different devices. You can find it at c:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server\profiles.xml. Open the file in notepad.

You only need to adjust the PS3 section, so press ctrl+f to open the find dialog, and search for Playstation. That should take you to a line that reads <friendlyName>Sony Playstation 3</friendlyName>. Scroll down until you see the <transcodeTarget> section, and change ”video/mpeg16” to ”video/mpeg2” in both the video= and onlineVideo= sections. Save and close the profiles.xml file, and then go back to the TVersity client.

Click on the Settings tab, and then go to the Transcoder page. We recommend that you adjust these options one at a time, then save your settings, restart the service (Advanced menu, Restart Sharing), and test playback to ensure that one change doesn't bork your setup.

The first thing you'll want to do is adjust the maximum video resolution, so that TVersity doesn't automatically downconvert your ripped DVDs to a lower resolution. We recommend 1280x720, which is equivalent to a 720p signal. This setting will let you play DVD-quality content at its native resolution, with no conversion or artifacting. If you experience network performance problems, it's a good idea to lower this setting to 640x480 or lower.

Now, we're going to adjust the settings to maximize quality. If you're on a wireless network or have a slow CPU, your performance will suffer if you enable these settings. First, make sure the box labeled Use DirectShow for Windows Media Encoding is checked and the codec is set to Windows Media Video 9. This will improve performance and quality of the video the system outputs. Finally, set the transcoder to optimize for Quality, the Compression setting to Minimum, and set your connection speed to Wired (100Mbps), with the quality set to Excellent. Click Save at the bottom of the page and then restart the TVersity service by going to the Advanced menu and clicking Restart Sharing.

7. Watch Streamed Movies

All you need to do is fire up your PS3 and go to the video tab. Your TVersity server will be near the top of the list of sources, and will contain your PC's name. Drill down through the menus to find the video you'd like to watch, and click the X button to view it. Now you're streaming video across the network!

8. Troubleshooting

If you're having trouble getting streaming working, there are really three possible problems: codec issues, bandwidth problems, or PC performance problems. If Codec Sniper and Add/Remove programs didn't fix the problems, it's probably easier to back up your rig and reinstall Windows from scratch. Reinstalling Windows sucks, but troubleshooting codec problems is even worse.

If your CPU and network bandwidth aren't sufficient to transcode your video in real-time, you can use the PS3's Copy feature to transcode and copy the video to your PS3's hard drive. To do enable that, all you need to do is select the video and press the triangle button. Go down to the Copy option, and be prepared to wait a while. Copying your movies to disk is really the only viable option for Wi-Fi users if you want to watch your movies at anything approaching decent quality.

But wait, there's more! Be sure to check out our selection of cool TVersity hacks at the end of this story

Stream to Your Xbox 360

With the Fall 2007 Xbox Dashboard Update, the 360 now has full support for native Divx and Xvid streaming. While you can stream through Windows Media Connect, you'll also be able to stream other, unsupported formats if you use TVersity. Before you can do that though, you should test video playback on your 360 using the default settings. Fire up your Xbox, and go to the Media blade. Select the Video Option, then press X to select your source. You'll need to select the option labeled TVersity on <yourPC'sname>:1.

If you don't see that option, you need to open a port on your firewall, or possibly disable Windows Connect on your server PC. Windows Media Connect serves a similar function to TVersity, which can cause conflicts. To disable Connect, open up Windows Media Player on your PC, and press Alt to open the menus. Then go to Tools, then Options, and click on the Library tab. Click Configure Sharing and then uncheck Share My Media. You may have to restart your PC to see a change.

Once your Xbox is connected to your PC, you can go to Media/Video section and browse to view a video. Assuming that works, move on to the next section. If it doesn't, you probably need to go back and take another look at the installed codecs. If there's nothing obvious wrong on the codec front, you should skip ahead to the Troubleshooting section.

6. Increase Your Visual Quality

The maximum visual quality you'll get from your streamed media is dependant on two different things—the quality of the network connection between your PC and the actual speed of your PC. Transcoding is tough CPU work and streaming media is network intensive. TVersity's default settings work reasonably well on an 802.11g network, but the resulting video looks terrible. You'll be hard pressed to stream even DVD quality video across wireless—at least until there's an 802.11n-based solution for streaming video.

To make your adjustments, open the TVersity client and click on the Settings tab. Then go to the Transcoder page. We recommend that you adjust these options one at a time, then save your settings, restart the service (Advanced menu, Restart Sharing), and test playback to ensure that one change doesn't bork your setup.

The first thing you'll want to do is adjust the maximum video resolution, so that TVersity doesn't automatically downconvert your ripped DVDs to a lower resolution. If you're on a wired network, we recommend using the native resolution of your set. Typical resolutions are 1280x720 (720p) and 1920x1080 (1080p). If you're streaming to a standard-def set, you can leave TVersity at its default setting. By using the native resolution of your TV set, you'll get the best possible image quality, without forcing TVersity to resize your video on the fly. If you experience network performance problems, it's a good idea to lower this setting to 640x480 or lower.

7. Watch Streamed Movies

All you need to do is fire up your Xbox and go to the media blade. Click on the Video entry, and drill down into the My Videos path until you find something good to watch. Now you're streaming video across the network!

8. Troubleshooting

Unfortunately, for Xbox users with crappy networks, there isn't an easy way to copy an already converted movie to your hard drive. For whatever reason, Microsoft doesn't allow that. On the other hand, if your CPU isn't up to the task of encoding in real-time, you can help that by increasing the hard drive space available to cache already-converted movies. To do that, to Settings in TVersity, and increase the amount of disk space to give more space to converted files. Then, start viewing a movie. While it may fail at first, if you give it a few moments to get a buffer built up, you should be able to start watching on a second attempt.

But wait, there's more! Be sure to check out our selection of cool TVersity hacks at the end of this story

Stream to Your Nintendo Wii

Unfortunately for Wii owners, the Wii just isn't a great streaming device. However, if you've installed the Internet browser, which supports Flash, you can actually watch video using the Wii. Setting it up is quite simple. If you've gotten to this point, all you need to do is point the Wii browser to the proper IP address and port.

To find your IP address, go to the Control Panel and open Network Connections. Right click on your network connection, and go to Status. Look for the Details button and find your IP address there. Then go back to your Wii, and go to this URL: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/, where you replace the xxx's with your PC's IP address.

We experienced mixed results, and because the Wii is pretty barebones, it was tough to tell what was causing the problem. In reality, this isn't something you're going to use on an everyday basis. It's more a cool hack at this point that anything else. Hopefully, Nintendo will add a video streaming channel with a dedicated UPNP browser at some point in the future.

There's not a ton of troubleshooting to do if streaming to your Wii doesn't work. You're just out of luck.

Three Cool TVersity Hacks

As a tasty streaming media apertif, we have three quick 'n easy streaming hacks using TVersity. Enjoy!

Add Your Music Library to TVersity

Fancy music streaming boxes can cost a few hundred bucks, but using TVersity and your console, you can get the exact same effect using hardware you already own. All you need to do is tell TVersity where your music is stored by going to the File, Add Folder menu and browsing to it. You'll need to go to the Advanced menu and refresh the Media Library before your music will show up, but once it does you'll be able to listen to your own tunes, even while you're playing games.

Stream Your Favorite Podcast

We wouldn't dare suggest what you should use your streaming media server for, but if you were interested in streaming your favorite podcast (like the one hosted at http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337, perhaps?) you can set it to automatically download by opening TVersity and going to File and clicking Add Podcast/RSS Feed and putting the URL in. Again, that URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337, in case you forgot.

Once you've got the content on your server, you can stream it to your Xbox while you're playing games. Sure, there's a heaping helping of irony to listening to the Maximum PC Podcast while you play Halo, but we're not going to judge, I promise.

Stream Pictures from the Web

You upload all your photos to your favorite photo site, but you'd like to show them to your family on your big-screen TV. It's simple! All you need to do is find the RSS feed for the photostream you want to view and input it in the Add Podcast/RSS Feed dialog, just like before. They'll show up in the appropriate menus of your PS3 or Xbox 360.

Rumor: Next Xbox Stealing a Page from PC's Book, Becoming "Forward-Compatible"

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:31:01 -0500

Xbox Evolved -- a site claiming to have first broken the news that the Xbox 360's hard drive would be optional, way back in 2004 -- has heard from "incredibly reliable" sources that the Xbox 360's all-too-quickly approaching successor will be forward-compatible.

Wait, what?

"Forward-compatible," the avant garde cousin of "backward-compatible," apparently refers to the Xbox 361-plus-infinity-plus-one's ability to act as a performance-enhancer for Xbox 360 games.

"This isn’t a side effect of textures being cleaner and upscaled resolution, this is a new animal completely," reads the article. "Imagine playing Gears of War 3 on your Xbox 360 it looks and plays good right? Well imagine that the year after it comes out you go out to buy the next Xbox and it looks even better, it plays even better. Features in the new controller are utilized with the game, the graphics do not only look sharper, but the draw distance is better, the speed is better, framerate, and there are even new features, perhaps even levels via DLC for the game on the third-generation Xbox."

"GoW3 is of course an example of what this could mean, past the forward-compatibility information, Xbox Evolved has not been given any other information about the next generation of Xbox."

So yeah, it's just like a PC. Get a new machine? Old Game X gets a new coat of paint. And while we certainly think this sounds like an interesting feature, we hope Microsoft doesn't get too caught up in new features to remember little things like focus-testing.