Play On, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. This is the third article on cutting the cord from cable TV, but is essentially a review on PlayOn. I love this product, and today we go in-depth on the setup and configuration. This article is longer and has more detail than I usually write about, but since I find PlayOn to be the the main piece of getting to my end-goal, if you are heading in the same direction as I am, this will show you all the configuration options. Of course the real answer is; Download the trial version and install it on your computer.
In my quest to rid myself of Comcast’s cable TV (I’m still using Comcast Internet), I had most of the heavy lifting done. From the previous two articles on this topic you already know:
I am using a WD Live HUB to access my local media, movies, TV shows and Music
I am using a WD Live HUB to access some internet services such as Pandora, Spotify, etc
I am still getting a few basic cable services over coax
I have tested the PlayOn demo and have a dedicated computer for the full install
So, now to complete the last piece of the puzzle: Purchase PlayOn, install it on the new server and start my cable fee life. It just so happened that when I was ready to buy PlayOn from Media Mall technologies, they were having a deal in which if you bought a lifetime license, they would send you a free Roku XD. PlayOn works as a server on a PC and then serves to a device that is a DLNA client. I already had the two Western Digital boxes (Live HUB and Live Plus) which would take care of this aspect, but there was no way I was refusing a Roku box. Just another piece of hardware that I wanted to test and play with anyways. Excellent.
PlayOn has several different licensing options. This was the pricing at the time that I purchased the product, although the options are still the same now, the pricing may have changed.
Monthly PlayOn License
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$4.99
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Annual PlayOn License
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$39.99
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Lifetime PlayOn License
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Roku XD
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$79.00
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Lifetime PlayOn License
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Lifetime PlayLater license
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Roku XD
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$129.00
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PlayLater is a DVR styled application that works in conjunction with PlayOn. I have installed it but have admittedly not yet had a chance to play with it at all. The reviews I have read have not been too positive on PlayLater, but it’s in its infancy still so who knows.
I decided to purchase the full $129 package, getting a lifetime subscription to both programs and the Roku XD. Okay, possibly a mistake paying the extra money for PlayLater before testing it out and really doing too much research, but I went under the assumption that these products would only get better over time, and I would be paying the entry level price which will most probably go up over time. And what the hell, I was getting a $79 Roku 2 XD in the deal anyways. Yah, I can justify almost anything when it comes to technology, but the way I saw it, the Roku offset the price of the licenses by over 50%, so I was doing pretty well.
Installation:
Probably the easiest install of any software I have done recently. Download the application. There is only one version of PlayOn, with the install files being around 30 megs. If you buy the license, you can enter it into the setup use if it for the length of the license. If not, you can use the product for 14 days. It’s a full version, so as I did, you can completely test out PlayOn to decide if it meets your needs. On the PlayOn site they write about the installing the demo version "It's all free to try and you can be up and running in under 5 minutes!” Well, that’s no lie. My install of the software took a little over 3 minutes not including download time. Installed the product itself (not including temp files etc while transcoding video) takes up 43 Megs. Fast, easy, clean.
Setup:
Let’s go through the setup options for PlayOn, so you get a decent understanding of how to quickly get this up and running, add the channels that you want and relieve yourself of Cable TV.
Basically, PlayOn sets itself up without much need for interaction on the user’s part. Once installed the application is setup as a service, which by default is always running so users can attach to it. When you open the app, you see eight tabs of options for the setup. By default, you are already up and running and can now connect from any DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) device. The PlayOn site lists the devices they have tested their product on, but it should work with any device that supports that protocol. I of course intended to use it with my WD boxes. The HUB can search for media servers on you network, attach to them and then are presented with all the channels you have installed. As long as the status is “running”, you are good to go.
Of course, the basic setup was not going to be enough for me, regardless, I want to know all the options I have at my fingertips so we proceed to work through the rest of the tabs.
Now we get to the actual stuff we’ll be viewing. The “Channels” tab has a list of all the default channels that are installed with your PlayOn server from the start. I think of these as the ones that just get you up and running. You can disable any that you don’t wish to see or use, Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) was the first to go for me, and there are some that require logins so I removed those that I wasn’t planning on paying for (HBO GO, Fox Soccer 2Go etc). there is a decent group of basic channels here including the basic networks, CNN, Food Network, but remember, these are on demand shows coming across the net, this is not live TV, and does not have every show you want on that network. It’s just a good starting point. PlayOn does serve up Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon on Demand if you don’t have a device that already has those as native apps. We’ll come back to an interesting note about HULU Plus later in this article. If you have no Cable or TV access at all, you can certainly find stuff to watch here, but this wasn’t going to solve my issues.
The Real Deal: Why I bought and love this product
Now we get into the meat and potatoes of the service, and the real reason to purchase it. The “Plug Ins” Tab allows you to add third party channels from a variety of different sources. The PlayOn web site has some of these (51 as of the writing of this article, and slews more at a few other great websites.
I have been using 3 different sites to find “plugins” or”scripts” to find the channels that will take the place of the cable stations that I no longer am purchasing. Most of these are free, although some cost a few bucks, but a channel can contain hundreds if not thousands of TV shows as subfolders to the main channel. The above picture shows a few that I have installed. TV Links, Watch Series and Yourtvseries all contain hundreds of TV shows sorted by either first letter, or by genre. Once you choose a show, underneath that is a list of all the episodes available, which is in many cases especially for current shows, is every season, and every episode. Not easy to search but incredible what is available. In the past few weeks of testing I have been able to choose some shows from the most recent network season, and one by one watch each episode, flowing smoothly to my TV, decent resolution, without ads. It’s like having everything you could want on demand. Other channels are focused on a single show. Such as VH1 Metal Shows. This station has two shows, “That Metal Show” and “Metal Evolution” with every episode available. There are hundreds of plugin channels available, some of each type, those that have hundreds of shows and episodes available, and some that are specific to one show. There are also a few plugins that feature live TV from various regions around the world. There are some amazing and generous folks out there writing these plugins, asking for either nothing, or a few bucks to use their scripts. You install these in the by downloading and running the script, and they are automatically installed on the “plugin’ Tab.
So where are all these shows coming from? Who are the folks hosting these “on demand” shows? Perhaps a question better not asked. Some of the channels simply go out and cull shows that are already available online. The VH1 script discussed above is a great example of this. “That Metal Show” has all the episodes available on the VH1 website. The scripts just aggregate these and give them to you as a channel. The channels that carry thousands of shows on demand, well let’s just say they go out to servers that have all these shows available in one format or another (AVI, MPEG etc) and serve them to you through PlayOn. I don’t know who, where or any other issues surrounding these channels, and I don’t want to. I just know that I can watch the TV shows I want, when I want to watch them.
Mobile: Taking your PlayOn on the road
One of the features I have become enamored with which was not in my initial requirements for cutting the cord, is that PlayOn has a variety of mobile clients. So how do I configure that? It actually takes care of that for you. Use your mobile device once on your local network, and you are automatically configured to now use the device from a remote location using an internet connection. All I can say is Fu**in’ amazing! You can use your laptop/Netbook by going to the website m.playon.tv, or use your IOS or Android device. In the past few weeks, I have watched several shows in my hotel room while on a business trip on my Netbook over WiFi, and watched shows while stuck on the runway for an hour in a plane on my IPhone over my cell network. Extremely cool, and unexpected for me. Like I said, not on my list of needs, but now that I have used it in several situations, I wouldn’t want to live without it.
Other Stuff:
The setup has a few other tabs that I won’t go too deep into at the moment. There is one for serving local media (My Media). I have yet to play with this (I’m sure I’ll get around to it at some point) as my local media is played on my TVs and Stereos via my WD boxes. There is a tab to setup sharing what you are watching or listening to on your social network conduits. You can select which ones you want to link to; Facebook, Twitter and MySpace (really, are there people still using MySpace?). You can also select which channels you want to let people you are using. Perhaps you want to blast out to the world with which PBS shows you are watching but now which ones from the cartoon network. Lastly there is the registration page where you will enter you license one you have purchased one of the options to enable the product past the 14 day trial period
Going Live:
So there you go; I have setup my PlayOn Server, I can now attach to it using my WD Live Hub in the living room and my WD Live Plus in the bedroom. With the WD Live HUB, you go to "Videos". choose "Media Server" as your content source, and you will see all the DLNA servers on your network.Choose your PlayOn server and attach. You will then see a listing in whatever view you have setup, of all the channels you have installed.
This is what the PlayOn station listing looks like on my Live HUB using the Black Mamba theme.
And Then Came Roku:
Media Mall has their free Roku XD fulfilled through Amazon.com. Their website has a whole bunch of legal mumbo jumbo about if there are issues fulfilling your order, you may receive a Amazon gift cars yada yada yada. Anyways, being local to Amazon here in Seattle, I received my Roku the next day after I had registered my PlayOn server with my license. I like the Roku interface better than the one I get from my WD Live HUB or WD Live Plus, and moving between channels is much faster. That’s due to the fact that the Roku is optimized for just a few things and the HUB is completely customized with themes and lot so of other stuff that slows it down, so in the end, it’s just a faster interface to get to the channels I want. Had Media Mall not been offering the Roku deal, I would probably be quite content using my WDs to access PlayOn. Now that I have the Roku hooked up in my living room, it is the only device I use for PlayOn. Although I have not used any of the other tested devices (there are nineteen that they have qualified and another Thirteen DLNA devices that they are aware that people are using), I can highly recommend getting yourself a Roku for the second half of your PlayOn setup. The interface works great, looks excellent, and as you can imagine, just the fact that PlayOn is bundling a Roku XD with the license should tell you enough about their thoughts on the cooperation of the two pieces.
This is what the PlayOn station listing looks like on my Roku XD
Issues
Sure, there are issues, if you can call them that. I go into technology with reasonable expectations, and I am well aware that TV coming across the Internet is not going to be at the same level as Hi-Def Cable TV or your BluRay player. I expect that there will be some issues I will have to troubleshoot, and some things will simply not work perfectly. That being said here are a few things to expect.
DLNA device necessary:
PlayOn is only half of your solution. The server makes the media available over DLNA, and now you need a device to push this to your TV. You could just watch on computer or attach that to your TV, but DLNA devices are so inexpensive these days that and a large percentage of people already have one. If you don’t, see if the Roku deal is still on at the PlayOn site and buy into the deal. For a list of supported devices go to http://www.playon.tv/supported-devices/
Play on is not in Hi-definition:
According to the PlayOn website, this is something that they are working on, but it would require a “beefy” processor. I would note that most internet based content is not in Hi-Def anyways. For me not a real issue. When I watch a sitcom, and most other standard TV or Video Podcast, I don’t need it to be in HD. For my HD needs, I can use the local media I own, HS stuff from HULU direct to my Roku, rent a BluRay, or watch HD local channels. For some an issue, not for me.
Real Time Transcoding:
"Transcoding just means converting the format of some media to another format. PlayOn is a "transcoding media server". We take media from online websites, which is often in formats like Windows Media, Flash Video, or H.264, and convert it to a format that your networked device can understand, often MPEG, as this is a reliable standard." Okay, so what does that mean to me? It basicaly means that you cannot fast forward through a TV show as the media has not been downloaded to your local machine. Its coming down from the net, and being modified on the fly, so you need to wait as it comes down. So you will watch the entire show without the option to fast forward through those boring love scenes. Perhaps you shouldn't be home on Saturday nights watching romantic comedies by yourself and this wont be an issue.
Reliability & Quality:
The native channels look great, work fine and are always (at least in my testing) up and running. That said it’s the third party scripts that make PlayOn such a great product. But… third party plugins written by developers who generously donate their time to write scripts that scrape the Internet to grab you TV shows, may not always work perfectly. First off, they are getting stuff from sites that may be down at any time, and the video is only as good as the source they are getting it from. For more recent shows and episodes, a third party plugin like TVLinks, may offer you a huge amount of servers from which to stream the episode from. Usually there is a percentage that explains the reliability of that server to get you the show you want to watch. I generally have had great luck, but I have come across a show I wanted to see where I had to try multiple different servers till I could get an acceptable quality picture that didn’t have to stop and buffer while playing. This has been rare for me, but does happen. If you want to watch show that comes up on your TV instantaneously and never have to think about it, just keep cutting your cable company that $80-$150 a month check.
Costs
I bought the lifetime PlayOn license including PlayLater, and a dedicated server to make this work for me. If you have a sufficient machine to run the software, don't buy PlayLater, and already have a DLNA complient device, you could do this for close to nothing.
PlayOn, PlayLater + Roku XD
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$129.00
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Dedicated Computer
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$200.00
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Total:
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$329.00
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Least Expensive Implementation:
You already own a PC that will host PlayOn
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$0.00
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You already own a DLNA device or have a PC connected to your TV
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$0.00
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PlayOn annual License
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$39.99
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Total:
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$39.99
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Conclusions:
I LOVE THIS PRODUCT. Is that a glowing enough recommendation? It’s like having every show you ever wanted to see on demand. The abundance of third party plugins makes the product amazing. Can I say there are no glitches? Nope. I have had to restart shows that stopped for unknown reasons, I have lost connections to servers mid show, but it’s all been just minor hassles, and certainly worth the $750 plus savings per year in cable bills. If you are serious about cutting the cable, PlayOn is the answer to still having access to all the shows you want to stay current with, as well as getting nostalgic with those old shows you remember from years ago. I’m sure you are just itching to catch few episodes of WKRP on Cincinnati.
Article IV of this series will be a report in 60-90 days of what life has been like using this solution plus the other pieces already installed. I don't anticipate too many changes in my lifestyle as with this setup I essentially have access to everything I did in the past plus a lot more.
Resources:
PlayOn Information
PlayOn Forums and sites to find Channels & Scripts
Roku
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