...but it's matured and become much easier. Hulu, Pandora, Comedy Central, CBS, Southpark Studios, etc on the xbox, ps3, or wii. My experience is only with the xbox, but they claim it works on the others too. PlayOn streams these sites and a ridiculous amount more to the xbox as a standard media share just like you can stream your music to the xbox.
It's as simple as downloading the PC software, giving it your login info for any streaming sites you want to use, and going to "PlayOn" under sources on the xbox's video library section. Seriously, took me about 15 minutes to set up and it just works; no complex configuration needed. It looks great too, so long as your PC has the balls to get the job done.
I've been using it with no major issues for a few days. The software costs $40 but you get a 15 day free trail to try it out before deciding to pay for it... but to me, it's way worth it.
I've been using it for the past year and it works pretty well. However, they're about to switch to an annual subscription-only service. Users who have already purchased a copy will still be able to use it (for everything except Comedy Central, which will become subscription-only), but new users will have to subscribe for an annual fee. I'm not sure when the subscription-only pricing will kick in. Here are the details from a recent e-mail:
ReplyDeleteThere are some exciting changes coming to PlayOn. We wanted to take a moment of your time to review those changes with you and make clear what will happen over the next few months. PlayOn is launching a new product (called "PlayOn Premium") which will be sold for $39.99 for the first year and $19.99 per year thereafter (annual subscription plan). In conjunction with this, we will no longer be selling the current version of PlayOn to new customers. BUT, as a current customer that has already purchased PlayOn, you do not need to buy anything new. The PlayOn you have today will continue to work, continue to be supported, and require you to spend no more money. Your version of PlayOn (which we are calling PlayOn Basic) will continue to have all of the content you currently have with one exception: the beta versions of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will be moved into the Premium version of the product when we launch full Comedy Central support in May. We released that portion of The Comedy Central content channel early (in beta) as a way to temporarily accommodate our customers after Hulu dropped those shows. We want to thank those of you that provided feedback and helped us to expedite a more stable version of this content channel.
Huh. I was going to check this out, but the annual subscription fee puts me off. It might be a good swap if I ever canceled cable, but right now that's not gonna happen.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I doubt my computer has "the balls" to handle it. My computer is older than both of my children combined. ;)
Well shit, this sucks. No way am I paying a sub fee.
ReplyDeleteHey Randy, it looks like the annual sub service doesn't kick in until May 20, so you could theoretically still slide in under the limit. Also, the system reqs seem to just say Windows and 512mb RAM so your box might be able to pull it off just fine.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking about buying the software before that date. My only fear is that when updates become required for things to work right, the old non-sub version won't get proper attention. Just a thought in case you wanted to know.