PlayOn Followup

In a previous post, I mentioned how I was impressed with the PlayOn media streaming software. I was lucky enough to have someone from PlayOn post in the comments with a special deal:

"Just so everyone knows we are running a special to celebrate this release. From now until the end of the month you can get PlayOn for just $29.99. Just go to http://tiny.cc/C5WOJ and enter AUG10OFF in the coupon box to receive the special pricing.

As always you can also try us for 14 days for free. Get the trial here http://tiny.cc/9kHC3. Hurry though, if you want the special pricing you need to buy before August 31st, 2009"

Disclaimer: While the link will have me as a reference in the url, I am not receiving anything from PlayON. I suspect it is just for tracking purposes.

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PlayOn: Impressed

As usual, I am late to the PlayOn party. PlayOn is software that you put on your pc that will stream video to DLNA complaint hardware. What this means is you can watch Hulu, Youtube, netflix (others) through your Xbox 360,PS3, Wii and more.

I was skeptical at first, as these media solutions can be a pain to setup. There was a free trial of the software so I thought "Why not?" The software install was very easy and required no additional setup.

My testbed was going to be the Wii. In order to receive the PlayOn stream I needed to get the web browser. This was the hardest part of the whole process. To get the browser, you have to go into the Wii Shopping Channel, then to the Channels section. In there you will find the Internet Channel, which costs 500 points.

An Aside: I almost threw my Wii out the window when trying to buy more Wii points. Not only is entering all the credit card info a pain, if you make a mistake you have to start completely over! Who said Nintendo was user friendly?

Now that the Internet Channel is installed, I go to the main menu and open it up. Next choose a WWW site and enter playon.tv. That's all there is to it. My computer was discovered automatically and I was in the PlayOn menu.

Hulu is was the primary driver behind my interest, so I setup an account (free) and put some shows in the queue (Psych, Warehouse 13). On my computer, I opened up the PlayOn settings and gave it the Hulu account username and password. I walked upstairs to the Wii, navigated to playon.tv (make it a favorite) and it had my Hulu queue ready to watch.

It worked very nicely. In my case, the Wii is about as far away from the router as I can get, so it did have some choppiness. I plan on moving it to a closer TV soon though.

DLNA, the protocol used for device discovery, seems to be getting popular. TV's, DVD players and DVR's all seem to be jumping on board. Cell phones are even starting to support it (Nokia N95)

The software is cheap at $40. So if you want to watch Hulu, Youtube, netflix Instant anywhere you have one of these devices you should check it out.

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