Playon download speed

[gibsonpa]

I have been successfully using Playon to watch Hulu, Netflix, etc using the Playon Plugin.

However, it seems as though the download of the show when streaming is slow. For example, when streaming a hulu show and hitting pause, the timeline is very slowing filling in green. It is fast enough to keep buffered and ahead of watching...so no stuttering. But it makes it hard to fast forward much if wanting to skip some parts.

The Playon settings control panel rates my bandwidth at Max..and speedtest.net shows me getting around 12-14 Mbps. When streaming a show...my cpu is only 10% and my network meter shows only 3-5 Mbps being used.

Not sure where the bottleneck is...maybe a playon thing?

[peternm22]

Perhaps it's Hulu that's limiting the speed? I'm guessing they don't see any need to provide speeds that are faster then the bitrate of the video.

[evilpenguin]

PlayOn doesn't download videos, it streams them into a hidden window and encodes them in realtime just like if you were recording a TV channel. In other words a 60 minute show streaming though PlayOn will take 60 minutes to record.

[gibsonpa]

Thanks for the feedback guys! That makes sense.

[matt91]

(Only partially related to this - but I didn't want to start a whole thread for it.)

Since the download happens in real time, it's difficult to fast forward to the 1:25 min mark where you left off the movie.

I know there is a playon setting that specifies that it should pick back up at 1:25 mark where I left off, versus at the beginning.

Can someone remind me where this setting lives? I looked briefly but couldn't locate it.

[White94Cobra]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

PlayOn doesn't download videos, it streams them into a hidden window and encodes them in realtime just like if you were recording a TV channel. In other words a 60 minute show streaming though PlayOn will take 60 minutes to record.

I actually like this feature. We start a show and then pause it for 5 minutes (go make popcorn, put the kids to bed, whatever). This allows us to skip past all of the 60 second commercial breaks while we are watching the show.

I've been using a DVR for so long, watching even 60 seconds of commercials is too much!