Anyone else give this thing a try? It comes with a free 45 day trial (no point paying for it now since it's in beta) and will be a one time $30 fee after that. It's been kind of flaky for me on Netflix and Hulu since the last patch, but ABC and ESPN stuff seem to work ok. It seems like a potentially nice alternative to the god awful PlayStation store.

Anyone know of any free alternatives to this that run as well in the background on your computer? I'm mostly interested in getting hulu and netflix to stream to my ps3. If they work the kinks out by the end of my trial (likely since Netflix just opened up their API) I'll probably just pay the $30 bucks. If not, any suggestions?

http://themediamall.com/signupforplayonbeta/

10/4/2008 8:31:11 PM

http://lifehacker.com/396881/turn-your-xbox-360-into-a-streaming-netflix-player

use that on my 360, not sure if there's a similar thing for the ps3 though

[Edited on October 4, 2008 at 8:54 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2008 8:51:48 PM

Sadly my 360 is doing a month long tour of the UPS shipping system right now.

10/4/2008 9:34:30 PM

^^^i've downloaded it but my internet is currently too shitty to properly evaluate it

10/4/2008 10:16:30 PM

it works well. well at least ESPN and Youtube. nothing else is available overseas. boo

10/5/2008 12:09:07 AM

Apparently the problem I was having with netflix only happens when I do high quality using my laptop that's on wireless. if I use my desktop or laptop on wired ethernet I have no problems at the highest quality setting. I suppose it makes sense when you consider that I'm in an apartment complex with 21 detectable wireless networks around me and probably another 10 that aren't broadcasting SSID's and that it's using 5 mbps to and from the laptop to stream the highest quality stuff. Medium works fine on wireless though.

If they get hulu and cnn working in addition to the already working netflix, cbs, espn, and youtube I don't think I'll be regretting that I gave up on cable tv a while ago.

10/5/2008 3:21:47 AM

same here. tons of wifi in the area and my wireless is worthless.

10/5/2008 8:59:16 AM

I watched some stuff on Hulu (an episode of the Office and the beginning of a movie) last night with no problems. It takes a little while to buffer but not bad. It was like 2 am though so probably not as busy.

10/5/2008 10:04:01 AM

I'm really liking this. It works for the xbox, and I'm wanting to see how well it works on that too. I'm thinking I'll probably be more likely to use it on that (when I get it back repaired) since I have a harmony remote for it. Hulu and netflix being able to be used with my harmony remote in my normal tv setup instead of my old desktop will be really nice.

Also, it can record netflix shows it seems.

^Awesome, I'll give it another try. They said yesterday they were working on it.

[Edited on October 5, 2008 at 12:07 PM. Reason : ]

10/5/2008 12:06:41 PM

I haven't been able to watch a hulu clip longer than about 5 min. without it hanging on my PS3.

10/5/2008 3:21:35 PM

works for me on my ps3. buffer times suck though.

10/5/2008 8:24:12 PM

My internet connection is too slow to watch, but so far it looks like you can copy content to your PS3, so I'm giving that a try now.

10/5/2008 8:27:20 PM

my wifi is so bad that if i do a speed test in the PlayOn Settings on wifi, i get about 0.7mbps. If i do it while connected w/ a cable, i get 2.8mbps.

10/5/2008 9:16:39 PM

It doesn't help that wifi is only half-duplex (so recieving and resending the stream means you eat up twice the bandwidth) and that there are only 3 non-overlapping 2.4ghz channels. As the number of people in a building with wireless routers increases, the feasibility of streaming high quality and high def feeds over wifi seems to be evaporating.

10/6/2008 12:41:22 AM

oh yeah, i should point out that i did run cat5e cable to the living room for the xbox. that may have had something to do with the good performance i had. i'm not at home now but i'll try it again this week when i have time to sit down and watch a movie and see if it's the same.

10/6/2008 12:49:04 AM

This works on DirecTV's HR21 MediaShare btw.

10/6/2008 12:52:22 AM

^Cool- netflix opening their API was a good move. It works on a few other devices too- but I doubt all that many people have the HP MediaSmart TV.

Hulu and the individual network sites should follow suit and open their API's to make it easy for people to access their content. The only problem is the fear of people writing software that can record the shows...

10/6/2008 12:57:08 AM

^You can already copy the shows to the PS3. I have not tried to remove them from the PS3 and try to play them on a computer though.

10/6/2008 9:14:53 AM

"The folder could not be accessed. The content may have been deleted from the media server."

I'm getting that on the ps3, for both netflix and hulu. Youtube works fine. Anyone else having that issue?

10/6/2008 10:04:52 AM

I only had those issues with netflix when I was trying to do it over wireless. The 2.4ghz bands are apparently a bit crowded at my apartment complex.

10/6/2008 2:56:06 PM

i have no other wifi around me, but cant do netflix over wifi. hulu works great though, i wonder why its so different.


my ps3 and my computers are all wifi. if i run a cable to my computer will it help at all, or still be jerky because it is using wifi to get to the ps3?

12/27/2008 3:26:21 PM

needs HD streams for the love of god

12/27/2008 7:34:01 PM

Does this work well with the 360's NXE?

12/27/2008 9:09:30 PM

I haven't had any issues but you may want a second or third opinion

12/27/2008 9:16:00 PM

i think i have everything worked out now, seems to work great. i may just have to get a netflix subscription now.

12/28/2008 12:14:09 AM

trying this tomorrow

12/29/2008 9:31:27 PM

My only complaint is that it doesn't like fast forwarding very much. But you can just hit square for scene search and go right to where you want if you need to.

12/29/2008 10:34:22 PM

How well does this run off of netbooks?

1/20/2009 6:58:48 PM

i ran it off my laptop that vista gave a 3.4 to, 1.6GHz Intel Core Duo with 2GB RAM and it ran fine.

so not exactly a netbook, but it might give you an idea

1/20/2009 7:18:20 PM

I was looking at this as a way to stream hulu/netflix via popcorn hour.

ok, i really have nothing substantive to offer.

1/20/2009 10:03:39 PM

but we appreciate it nontheless

htpc ftw

1/20/2009 11:27:12 PM

sometimes hulu shits a brick when it gets to a commercial spot while watching via playon

1/20/2009 11:52:45 PM

This works on the popcorn hour, but not well at present. There seems to be some sort of bug that is causing things to cache on the PH. Basically, you can watch one, maybe two things before it shits the bed. If you want to watch something else, you have to reboot the playon software or the PH.

Syabas is apparently aware of it and are working on a fix. There is a new PH firmware coming out tomorrow, so maybe it is in there.

1/21/2009 12:14:53 AM

Quote :

"This works on the popcorn hour, but not well at present. There seems to be some sort of bug that is causing things to cache on the PH. Basically, you can watch one, maybe two things before it shits the bed. If you want to watch something else, you have to reboot the playon software or the PH."

Def. what I experienced.

1/21/2009 8:31:55 AM

hmm, glad that a new FW is out, i'll have to upgrade today and see if it fixes some other annoyances i have with motion jerkiness specific to Mpeg4 videos, and freezing around 50% when i try to rewind (requiring a power cycle).

1/21/2009 1:06:48 PM

errr that firmware is for the a-100? don't you have the a-110?

1/21/2009 1:12:21 PM

yeah, I should have pointed out that the PH firmware was for the A-100. Sorry about that.

I am hoping they will get the bug fixed with DirecTV. It sucks that having my DTV DVR on the network causes the PH to go into a loop. Seems like the problem is on DTV's side but they don't seem in a hurry to fix it.

1/21/2009 3:30:30 PM

I have the a110 for what its worth. I have the most recent FW.

1/22/2009 7:10:45 PM

Using it with the D-Link GSM-520 that I've had laying around unused for a while. Works pretty well so far with Netflix and Hulu (haven't tried the other ones yet). Will probably shell out the $30 to get it once the trial is up.

1/24/2009 7:43:54 PM

anyone having problems with Hulu? I keep getting "Data is corrupted"
on ps3

2/10/2009 10:44:37 AM

I had the same problem then: http://www.themediamall.com/drm

2/10/2009 11:11:18 AM

there's been a problem with the Hulu HD streaming - as a workaround for now you can set the quality to Low

2/10/2009 1:06:19 PM

ugh

i wish there was a more elegant solution

i hate the fact that it has to transcode everything to mpeg2 before it streams it out...

2/10/2009 6:34:10 PM