Coming back to this thread after a while...

I'm now running a fairly successful media server installation that combines TVersity and Chorale.

I can:

- Play any video or audio file stored on the server's local hard disk or on shared network drives. Including my entire Rio-Central-hosted music collection, thanks to Peter's Chorale software.

- Play many types of video streams from the internet, such as YouTube videos and TV episodes, including Hulu videos.

- Play all of the above things on my Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or DirecTV DVR. Some of the videos play directly (if the playback device natively supports the codec), others get transcoded on-the-fly by TVersity.

There are significant limitations to all of the above, though. Part of the problem is that the spare computer I chose for the media server happens to be an old POS without decent memory or CPU. So the hulu videos are slideshows, and if something needs to be transcoded, you've got to wait for it to buffer and there is a slight degradation that happens in the transcoding process. If I were to upgrade the server, those problems would be mitigated.

For most situations, such as just watching an MPEG video file, it works great: No transcoding, things Just Work.

It was surprisingly difficult to get it all working correctly though! Here's some things I had to do:

- TVersity comes with a codec pack, but it wasn't enough. I needed to install CCCP as well, and I had to install TVersity and CCCP in the right order. I also had to install Quicktime and Real Alternative so I could get those codecs. And I had to tweak all of the codec settings (mostly just enabling video and audio codecs that were disabled by default). I had a collection of random video files of all different codec types, and there were many that stumped the system until I poked around in the codec settings to make them work. There are still a few holdouts that continue to stump the system, but for now it plays a majority of my files. The GSpot program that Bitt linked was invaluable in helping me locate the codec issues.

- The codecs can't handle it if you're remote-desktopped into the server computer with the option enabled to redirect the audio to your remote desktop client. This was the reason for all of my "Data is Corrupted" messages on the PS3. All I had to do was reconfigure my remote desktop session so that it didn't try to stream me the audio, and then the transcoders worked properly.

- Of the three devices, the PS3 seems to be the best at playing media. It plays the most media types and has the fewest problems with the streaming. The Xbox and DirecTV DVR sometimes mess up playback in various ways. Also, the Xbox can't see Chorale, but the PS3 can. Not sure why.

Anyway. Fun times.