PlayOn on HD200 Amazon VOD (Unbox) Works!

[Brent]

For those of you with PlayOn and using SageTV HD200, the latest PlayOn update has beta support for Amazon Unbox VOD. I just tried it out and it works well.

Navigation still stinks for PlayOn in the HD200, but I use it for Hulu and a few other video options at the moment. The netflix streaming feature sort of works, but not very well. Amazon Unbox is pretty useful if you want to buy a VOD, just know it's in SD for the moment.

[otaku]

Brent, do movies (larger than 2gb) work for you via PlayOn in Hulu or Netflix? Do these files play under the Amazon VOD service in PlayOn?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by otaku

Brent, do movies (larger than 2gb) work for you via PlayOn in Hulu or Netflix? Do these files play under the Amazon VOD service in PlayOn?

Hmm. I don't know for sure. I played a couple of free VOD's but not sure on the file size. Let me check and get back to you.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by otaku

Brent, do movies (larger than 2gb) work for you via PlayOn in Hulu or Netflix? Do these files play under the Amazon VOD service in PlayOn?

Originally Posted by Brent

Hmm. I don't know for sure. I played a couple of free VOD's but not sure on the file size. Let me check and get back to you.

I checked last night and yes, on the Amazon VOD (via PlayOn) it doesn't even show files larger than 2GB.

The good news is SageTV already has a fix for this coming soon. Which will be very good news to PlayOn users and UPNP on the Hd200 in general.

[fyodor]

How is the quality? It's been my experience that content streamed from the Amazon website is much lower quality than the downloaded content

Am I correct in understanding that playon accesses the Amazon VoD website to stream the content? How can you tell if the source files are larger than 2gb?

I've been waiting forever for STV to support Amazon VOD, so this is a pretty neat development.

Originally Posted by Brent

I checked last night and yes, on the Amazon VOD (via PlayOn) it doesn't even show files larger than 2GB.

The good news is SageTV already has a fix for this coming soon. Which will be very good news to PlayOn users and UPNP on the Hd200 in general.

[Brent]

I'm a little busy this week, but I'll try to get more info soon. The Amazon VOD works only for downloads which do require you do download a purchased Movie/Show to your HTPC server first. No real streaming per se' as far as I can tell.

[fyodor]

I would actually prefer something that works with downloads since it's less sensitive to internet performance. I just thought that you needed DRM support (Cardea?) in the host device to stream to a client.

F

Originally Posted by Brent

I'm a little busy this week, but I'll try to get more info soon. The Amazon VOD works only for downloads which do require you do download a purchased Movie/Show to your HTPC server first. No real streaming per se' as far as I can tell.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by fyodor

I just thought that you needed DRM support (Cardea?) in the host device to stream to a client.

F

Well all I can tell you is I downloaded three different titles onto my HTPC server and then played each of them back on different extenders - all worked and really had pretty decent quality (HD would definitely be better of course).

I did not purchase a title though so I don't know if some have DRM and some don't. Just not sure at this point, but I wonder if the PlayOn is transcoding or something like that...

[fyodor]

How did it work? Is there an amazon unbox gateway /queue in playon or did you just navigate to them like regular files?

Thanks again
F

Originally Posted by Brent

Well all I can tell you is I downloaded three different titles onto my HTPC server and then played each of them back on different extenders - all worked and really had pretty decent quality (HD would definitely be better of course).

I did not purchase a title though so I don't know if some have DRM and some don't. Just not sure at this point, but I wonder if the PlayOn is transcoding or something like that...

[otaku]

I might be wrong here, but I believe PlayOn uses the IE engine to 'browse' to the sites (CBS, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon) and logs in using the username/password you set up. It then streams to the device almost the same way it would stream to your computer.

I'm not sure if I have all the technology right there, but I am pretty sure it is not playing downloaded files. It does transcode on the fly I believe, but there is an option to continue transcoding if you pause the video.

The way you can find out the file size is to use a UPNP browser. The only one I know of is SageTV itself, so if you telnet into the unit you can browse to /var/upnp/ to view the attached devices (including PlayOn) and navigate the directory structure there. A simple ls -a (if I remember right) should give you file sizes.

However, any movies that are greater than 2GB on a UPNP server right now show up as .m3u files instead of the .mpg everything else is showing up as, so their file sizes in /var/upnp will be in the KB range (as it contains the link to the actual .mpg I believe). The 2GB limit is assumed since no .mpg files are greater than 2gb (I've seen up to 1.7, 1.8) as seen in the SageTV onscreen browser.

Again, I am no expert, and some of the above is conjecture and assumption. The rest is first hand experience in trying to get files larger than 2GB to play over UPNP

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by otaku

I might be wrong here, but I believe PlayOn uses the IE engine to 'browse' to the sites (CBS, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon) and logs in using the username/password you set up. It then streams to the device almost the same way it would stream to your computer.

No, you're right-I set it up with a PS3 and it's definitely streaming through the Amazon web interface. As soon as I set it up, all of the videos that I've ever purchased from unbox/VOD were immediately available for streaming. The computer that was running the Playon server didn't even have unbox/VOD installed so there was no way it could have downloaded it.

F

[RedCoat999]

Is this accessable through SageMC on the HD 200 now?

[gplasky]

This is the forum for standalone or what is now being called Media Player mode. Not extender mode. So no-it doesn't work this way within Sage.

Gerry

[seidel]

I have installed PlayOn on my server and am running th HD200 in stand-alone mode. Under Videos I can see some CBS videos listed, but they never seem to actually play, the animated circle appears and then I wait forever.

There is also an entry for NetFlix, but although I have 7 videos in my "instant" queue, nothing shows up under NetFlix. I tested the PlayOn configuration as they tell you to, and it says that it is connecting to my NetFlix account just fine. Is there something else I need to do to get NetFlix to work on the HD200?

[gplasky]

Make sure you are running the latest beta firmware on the HD200.

Gerry

[ddialogue]

Originally Posted by seidel

I have installed PlayOn on my server and am running th HD200 in stand-alone mode. Under Videos I can see some CBS videos listed, but they never seem to actually play, the animated circle appears and then I wait forever.

There is also an entry for NetFlix, but although I have 7 videos in my "instant" queue, nothing shows up under NetFlix. I tested the PlayOn configuration as they tell you to, and it says that it is connecting to my NetFlix account just fine. Is there something else I need to do to get NetFlix to work on the HD200?

I had the same issue. There is an option to either show media files or show all files. Show media files appeared to be the default on my HD200. Once I changed it to show all files, I was able to list the videos in my NetFlix queue.