TVedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
TVedia |
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 Browsing music by album |
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| Developer: | 8 Dimensions International LLC |
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| Latest release: | 4.2 / February 2, 2007 |
| OS: | Windows Vista, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000 |
| Use: | Media Center |
| Website: | www.8dim.com |
TVedia is a networked Media Center application running on PC under Windows operating systems. It costs $34.95 as of 13-02-07 and its overall functionality is similar to Microsoft's Windows Media Center edition. However, it can be installed on Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 or Windows Vista. It's also known to work on 64 bit Windows, but it is not a supported configuration.
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[edit] Feature Highlights
Like most media center software, TVedia provides 10-ft user interface to browse and playback music, video, and pictures. Large fonts and graphics are suitable for living room use with a remote control. Here are some of the main product highlights.
[edit] Dynamic user interface
TVedia uses a Flash like dynamic user interface. User interface components are animated, and flow smoothly when users take actions that change the content on the screen. User interface is overlaid transparently over the background even if there is any video or picture slideshow playing back. Unlike Windows Media Center edition and MediaPortal (both of which also features similar animated user interfaces), TVedia doesn't strictly rely on the existence of 3D accelerated graphics cards on user's PC. When 3D acceleration is available, it's used; when it's not available, it falls back to CPU based processing with lower quality animation (Windows Media Center disables animation in this case). The same technology is used to enable dynamic user interface over Windows Remote Desktop session, so the media center PC can be easily managed over the home network.
[edit] Media collection management
TVedia features a sophisticated media importer that can parse meta tags in the files, including ID3, Windows Media, iTunes, OGG/FLAC, APE, EXIF, and DVR-MS. When tags are not available, which is the case for many video files, and pictures, users can use the importer wizard to specify meta data by folder names and filenames, or provide meta data manually. The specifications are remembered for future imports. During importing, TVedia uses a combination of online services from Amazon.com and AMG to supply missing meta data and cover art. In the extreme case that there is no identifiable meta tags in the file or filename, an acoustic fingerprint recognition procedure is performed to identify the music track. The success rate under this extreme scenario is around 70%.[citation needed]
The optional file change monitor can even detect changes in imported files, and update meta data automatically, if the embedded tags or folder and filenames are changed externally.
The user interface also offers many methods to browse music, music video, movies, and pictures, either by meta tags, or by imported folders. The browse file function allows browsing directly on local disks even the media files have not been imported yet.
TVedia can work with very large media collections. It's known to respond well with half million records in the database, even though it's close to impractical to hold so many media files on a single PC. The speed is attributed to the use of a SQLite database as its media collection back-end, and its asynchronous user interface architecture. When returning a large result set, the records are streamed asynchronously to the user interface layer, so results are presented almost immediately.
[edit] Home networking support
TVedia is both a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) media server and a UPnP client. When the UPnP server is enabled, media collection can be shared to compatible UPnP devices on the same home network. The TVedia front-end can also automatically access contents on other UPnP media servers on the same home network.
A unique feature of TVedia's home networking support is that search results from multiple UPnP media servers are merged with local search content, so users don't need to specify which server to browse or search for the content. From users' perspective, all media files on the home network is a single giant collection.
Meta data are also roamed within the home network, so users can, for example, stop playback of a movie in one room, and resume its playback from another room shortly after.
[edit] DRM support
TVedia supports playback of both Windows Media DRM protected files, and iTunes Music Store purchased music (FairPlay protected), although iTunes Music Store purchased videos are still not playable at this time. By supporting these two popular digital rights management schemes, TVedia is able to centralize the management and playback of all of user's music collection.
[edit] Online service integration
Using TVedia, users can search and stream online videos from YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Grouper, and DivX.com. High definition content on DivX.com can also be streamed with a high speed Internet connection. Using TVedia, users can also access pictures on popular photo sharing site Flickr, and stream online radios from Live365. Its integration with Last.fm also provides music social network and recommendation service.
[edit] Open source front-end
TVedia's front-end is completely written in XML+JavaScript. A released SDK documents the interface methods available to the front-end. The source code of the front-end is available for end-users to modify for non-commercial use.
[edit] Comparison with other Media Center applications
[edit] Windows Media Center edition
Windows Media Center edition has traditionally been the leader in the media center software category, but it cannot be purchased separately to upgrade existing PCs; it only comes with new hardware purchases that meet Microsoft's Media Center certification process. TVedia fans also point to its support for a wider range of hardware as a major selling point.
The initial release of TVedia 4 has no Personal Video Recording function, even though it's expected to release a version with PVR support in the future, because TVedia 3 has basic PVR functions. TVedia does offer methods to switch between a PVR application and the TVedia's user interface, so it can be complemented by any PVR software in the market.
TVedia fans also claim it has better integration with online services, although this is hard to quantify.
TVedia uses translucent overlay when displaying user interfaces on top of playing video or slideshow, while Windows Media Center edition uses picture in picture.
When in windowed mode, Windows Media Center edition resizes the window and all user interface elements proportionally to the full screen, so the user interface is fundamentally still for 10-ft usage. TVedia, on the other hand, switches to a 2-ft mode that allows more user interface elements to be shown.
Windows Media Center edition's reliance on .NET Framework makes it less suitable for plugin development, while TVedia's use of XML+JavaScript is familiar to many developers. The open source nature of TVedia's front end makes it even easier to be modified.
[edit] Meedio
Meedio grew out of a free but closed source project named MyHTPC. It gained popularity not only from its freeness, but also from its architecture openness, even though it's a closed source project. By offering a similar open architecture, TVedia attempts to mimic the success of Meedio, and gain loyal followers. The effectiveness of its open architecture is yet to be seen.
Meedio was sold to Yahoo in 2006, and the new product named Yahoo! Go - TV offers much less functionality than the original Meedio product, and doesn't allow users to customize.
[edit] MediaPortal
MediaPortal is an open source HTPC project. Like Windows Media Center edition, it relies on .NET Framework, and like TVedia and Windows Media Center edition, it uses 3D animated interface. However, its core may not be well architected, because it consumes more than 100MB memory on startup, and the interface is sluggish even on fast PCs, compared with TVedia and Windows Media Center edition. Its media import function is less sophisticated as well, because of the lack of a large meta data database, which usually requires commercial licenses.
[edit] Others
TVedia also faces competition from other commercial media center software such as SageTV for Windows, and Beyond Media, from open source efforts such as MythTV and Freevo, both for Unix, and from standalone systems such as TiVo.
