Plugin: PlayOn in Online Services (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon VOD, etc.)

[vitaliy_kh]

Hi evilpenguin,

I have only HD200 players (3 of them).
I did more testing and it looks like only watching HULU is not working.
Standalone mode is terrible. Navigation through the all these folders
is extremely slow and therefore not really useful.
In standalone mode downloading HULU episode for watching does not
report any errors but HD200 becomes 100% unresponsive – nothing is
working except for the Power button. In server mode – HULU times out
with my lovely error(-2) message (file is no longer available … ).
All other feeds seem to be OK in both, standalone and server modes.

Does all this mean Playon has a problem with HULU and this problem is
related to the Playon is running on WHS?

Is anybody else here running SageTV and Playon on WHS?

According to this forum it looks like Playon is OK with HULU if it runs
on other then WHS PCs.
Am I right?

Thank you,

- Vitaliy

[robogeek]

PlayOn works just fine on WHS if everything is setup for it to work. Make sure you have the most recent version of PlayOn installed and you may also need WMP11 and IE7 for it to work on WHS. WMP11 isn't shipped with WHS so you have to use google to find out how to install it in WHS. If you did the WHS updates and updated IE7 to IE8, that may also cause problems with PlayOn...see this thread:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...7&postcount=81

Go to your WHS machine and use Internet Explorer and go to the Hulu web site and try to watch shows that way. If Hulu content won't play through IE, then it won't work through PlayOn either. If IE prompts you to install plugins, install them, verify you can play Hulu content in IE, and then try to play Hulu content through SageTV.

[sungod]

Something that Playon mentions in their troubleshooting section is that you also need microsoft silverlight 3 or higher and microsoft.net 2 or higher.

Both are free and available from microsoft, but I kept removing silverlight, myself.

I just mention this in case its of any help to ppl with problems.

[evilpenguin]

I finally got the time emancipated my SageTV server from the construction zone that is my condo and check out the recent PlayON develoments i've been hearing about. At first Hulu didn't work and PlayON said there were no updates available, but if you click on settings->support, it'll give you a link to a special patch which fixed everything for me.

Also, updated the feeds to include 24, Human Target, Caprica, and (most importantly) BURN NOTICE!

[Peter_h]

Hey EP,

I'm still experiencing some problems with my setup. I am still getting the no videos found when accessing hulu links.

I thought everything was fine until tonight. When playon broke a couple of weeks back, I couldn't even play shows through the abc and nbc folders. However, after I applied the playon updates and and your early 1.6a update, i thought it was all fixed.

I can play Netflix movies fine. I can also play shows from ABC, NBC, etc. which I couldn't before. However, when I try to access the Hulu "popular this month" or "recently uploaded" there are no files found.

I am running the latest playon "patch" from the instructions you posted above, version 2.59.367862.

System Specs are

Windows home server - all latest updates
Sagetv 6.6.2.218

I have attached a log file for your review.

Thanks again for the great plugin and support.

-Peter

[evilpenguin]

I didn't bother updating the special feeds for Hulu, i'll do that tonight.

[Peter_h]

Awesome!

I'm glad that there is nothing wrong with my setup.

[vitaliy_kh]

Hi Everybody,

And BIG THANK YOU to all of you!

Finally my setup is back to live too.
That error regarding missing file was a Playon problem which was fixed by latest Playon patch.

- Vitaliy

[bclenney]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Also, updated the feeds to include 24, Human Target, Caprica, and (most importantly) BURN NOTICE!

Woo Hoo to them all!

[najames]

Originally Posted by vitaliy_kh

Hi evilpenguin,

I have only HD200 players (3 of them).
I did more testing and it looks like only watching HULU is not working.
Standalone mode is terrible. Navigation through the all these folders
is extremely slow and therefore not really useful.
In standalone mode downloading HULU episode for watching does not
report any errors but HD200 becomes 100% unresponsive – nothing is
working except for the Power button. In server mode – HULU times out
with my lovely error(-2) message (file is no longer available … ).
All other feeds seem to be OK in both, standalone and server modes.

Does all this mean Playon has a problem with HULU and this problem is
related to the Playon is running on WHS?

Is anybody else here running SageTV and Playon on WHS?

According to this forum it looks like Playon is OK with HULU if it runs
on other then WHS PCs.
Am I right?

Thank you,

- Vitaliy

What did you change to make this work? I have the most current SageTV installed as of last night, most current beta on the HD200 as of tonight, current Playon as of tonight and still get this problem. I can play the Playon or Netflix videos in IE8 on WHS, but not on the HD200.

Netflix videos are just black screens now on the HD200.

I can play some of the videos directly from networks. But Hulu stuff usually just gives the error (-2) using "online media" on the HD200 via the WHS server. I also tried to play a folder clip and the HD200 will eventually throw an error (-3,0x0).

[vitaliy_kh]

I did not do anything specific other than carefully applying all updates to every piece
of software. This includes windows itself, IE, flash player, sagetv, sagetv plugin and
playon. Latest update from Playon did a trick.
Sometime HD200 shows a black screen.
In this case the solution is (at least in my case) to push a PLAY button one more time.

- Vitaliy

[mechling-burgh]

This may sound stupid but did you try hitting play on the remote. I know mine shows a black screen till I hit play.

[najames]

Thanks, I'll take a look at it again tonight. It was 1am, I was getting desperate, and I gave up for the night.

I read a fair amount on the Playon forum too and it sounds like they have kinda trashed it up recently, used to work much better evidently.

The HD200 downloads all the icons for stuff, plays a few channel's videos (NBC?) but not most. I signed up for Netflix last and tried it once at the very end, likely did NOT try hitting the play button twice. My testing hours are limited outside the wife's normal TV viewing hours.

[xj-boonie]

I installed this tonight, and it works, so thanks!

One question though - I get green bars at the top and bottem when playing something from netflix. They show up on the HTPC, but not on my HD200 extender. On another computer I have a SageTV client software installed on, I get black bars (which aren't really noticable) Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike

[chrisc983]

EP what version of Play On are you using?

[najames]

Update - OK, I did try Netflix and it does work. We watched an "instant movie" and it played flawlessly on the HD200. We did not have any green bars. My only minor gripe would be the amount of time it takes to download the movie selection lists. I tried changing Playon from auto to high quality and was basically getting a slide show instead of an instant movie, back on auto it played ok.

I didn't look at any of the other stuff that was giving the error (-2), maybe tonight.

[evilpenguin]

Logs

[KJake]

Heya, would it be possible to update the Food Network feed? I think Good Eats is missing from mine...thanks!

[mbowling]

Originally Posted by KJake

Heya, would it be possible to update the Food Network feed? I think Good Eats is missing from mine...thanks!

Is anyone actually seeing an episode list for Food Network shows? When I check "30 Minute Meals" and other Food Network shows I get a message that no videos are available.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jpimlott

I sent a bug a few days back reguarding crackle tv not working i wonder if you have had a chance to look at it and if it broke for others.

Found the Crackle problem and it turns out its not just isolated to shows on that network. The issue is with some UPnP directory structure inconsistencies between Hulu shows with the latest update that make it impossible for me to predict the right path 100% of the time. I sent a request to PlayOn, hopefully they can handle it on their end, but if not I should be able to come up with a work around.