Since buying a new router the other day, I decided to muck around with streaming video from my PC to my Xbox 360. It used to be that you needed a PC running Windows Media Center for this, but as of last fall you could use a Windows XP-based PC with the right software – for example, Windows Media Player 11 or Microsoft’s Zune software. In theory, one could download various TV shows and video clips from the Internet and enjoy playback on a 360.
Except there’s a bit of a drawback: the 360 only understands the Windows Media Video (WMV) file format and codecs. Occasionally, I find myself needing to download a show from the Internet when my somewhat buggy DirecTV DVR messes up, and those aren’t WMV. Furthermore, video conversion is generally a pain.
Enter TVersity. It’s an Xbox 360-compatible media server with the ability to transcode video from almost any format to WMV on the fly. No need to pre-convert anything – I just call up a video via the 360, wait a few seconds, and bam, I’m sitting on my couch and enjoying it on my TV instead of trying to watch it while uncomfortably huddled around my computer monitor.
Combined with this handy DirecTV-Xbox 360 remote hack, watching video files just got a whole lot more painless for me. Huzzah!