I ran across a set top device, which led me to another device, so I thought I would share them with you. It looks like Netgear has several versions of a media streaming set top device called the Digital Entertainer which access the internet in a verity of ways including PlayOn along with music, video, etc. on a computer or NAS. Then there is the VuNow that is a very similar to the Netgear device.
I will keep adding devices as I find them.
PlayOn is another fun application that I ran across. In short what PlayOn will do, is that for a one time fee of about $40 it will connect you with your accounts at Hulu, YouTube, Netflix and may more. There is even plug-ins for may unsupported video streaming sites as well. At first I thought you had to have Windows Media Server, but from what I read, you do not and a XP system will work. There are some additional Microsoft packages you will need if you do not already have them installed, but that is no big deal. I ran the 14 day demo on a Windows 7 computer that is about 6 years old with 512mb ram. Let me tell you that this is not the best test platform to try this software on. Over all it was easy to install and I had an Xbox 360 for my end control unit at my TV. I did not try out the the Nexflix because I have the Xbox already setup for Netflix, which by the way works better then the Roku. Issues that I encountered with PlayOn is that my PC would not convert the stream quick enough, so I encountered buffering so bad that all I attempted to watch was unwatchable. This issue was mentioned in their help files, so I recommend a high end system with good downstream Internet speed if you plan to use this software and I also recommend that you do not try to go wireless to your Xbox, PS3 or Wii. So without any further testing using another system I would have to say that PlayOn is well worth it if you have a good PC to run it on.
Just a followup to this post in that I installed PlayOn on my Windows XP system that is much more powerful then my Windows 7 system. What a difference that made to the quality of the stream. I still am watching through the Xbox 360 like with the System 7. We have found some new show to watch and are enjoying the shows without the buffering I had before.
Another update to PlayOn. I have installed it on out Wii and it is working just fine. We are even able to access our media server that has our movies on it. These movies are in several compressed formats and so far I have not found a problem with viewing any of them.
