Which one do you like better? Serviio vs Tversity Pro?
Each has its own Pros and Cons. One feature of TVersity that Serviio doesnt have is the ability to stream to a web interface. With TVersity, you can watch your movies within a browser window. If you have your router setup to forward TVersity's port to your TVersity server, you can view your movies over the Internet from a web browser. Serviio cannot do this. The reason I went with Serviio is that my media library was encoded and scraped specifically for XBMC. In my living room where the majority of my movie watching is done, I use a purpose built HTPC that is running XBMC. Serviio can read XBMC's XML files and correctly identify the movie, details, and coverart. This was critical for me and the reason I went with Serviio. Depending on your needs, you may find that other DLNA servers like PlayOn or TVersity work better for you.
So are you going to use Handbrake or similar video conversion software to convert the xvid .avi videos to mp4 files? I also so the same question marks for most of my videos that were on my WHS2011 server but due to busy spring days for outdoor work, haven't had a chance to follow up. I really would like to use my WHS2011 as the basis for my prime DLNA server. I have Playon.TV running on my main computer and it also works well with my Hopper. At least it did several days ago. Will check back in soon after I take another look at my Hopper. My 3 Joey's will have to wait. - Craig
If your movie library is already coded using xvid, you do not need to transcode your movies using Handbrake. Most DLNA servers have the ability to transcode your videos on the fly to match the supported codec of whatever device you are playing it on. Despite what you may read, you dont even need that powerful of a CPU on your server to do on the fly transcoding. I have a relatively weak Intel Pentium G620 CPU (dual core 2.6GHz) and it handles transcoding flawlessly.
Also, you will have no problem using your WHS2011 server as I am doing the same thing. You will just need to RDP into your server and install your DLNA server of choice. I have successfully tested PlayOn, TVersity, and Serviio on my WHS2011 server with no problems.
The codec support for Dish's DLNA implementation isn't that great and while having a 750Mhz processor is fine for driving the DVR and it's background functions. I don't think it's enough to handle the varied data streams coming from a file server.
The processor of the Hopper may not be able to handle natively streamed videos directly off a network, but if you use the on-the-fly transcoding features that most DLNA servers offer, it will work fine. I used Handbrake to transcode my Blu-Rays into high-bitrate MKV files using h.264. Many of my movies have average bitrates over 10Mb/sec, and Serviio on my WHS2011 server can transcode those videos to my Sony Bravia TV, a Seagate Free-Agent Theater+, and even my Android cell phone. I would suspect that the CPU in the Hopper is more powerful than all 3 of those devices. Serviio allows you to custom change the maximum video bandwidth of its transcoded videos. So if you still have skipping, you can just lower the max rate until you get to a point where it stops skipping.