Tallitsch

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.

I was researching connecting my ReplayTV unit up to my Comcast set-top control box and ran across the site for this $180 device. Because it is very cool I had to do a write up about it. We have a bunch of devices attached to the TV to play games and watch movies. We have the Xbox, which also works through the Windows 7 media player to access our NAS which has movies stored on it. Then there is the OSD, which also access the NAS directly, and we have the Roku for streaming Netflix’s. The OSD is an ok device, but is temperamental sometimes when it comes to playback. Watching movies through the Xbox is also a pain due to having to have the Windows7 computer turned on and then having to use that crazy game pad to make the movie play. I love the Roku for its ease of use and how well it works, but it does not access anything other then Netflix online. This SageTV device looks like a Roku, but will access all kinds of video and audio formats from NAS, or networked shared PC, much more then the OSD. It does even more with additional software, making this a DVR and allows you to remotely access you movies from anywhere you have internet access. If someone wants me to test this out, just send me one or the $180 and I will perform extensive testing with it and write up my findings.

We like movies like most everyone else and there are the good old stand-by’s that we take out to watch when nothing else is on our 100+ channels. What I don’t like is the whole DVD in the DVD player bit. I like to have the ability to watch a DVD either upstairs on my Neuros OSD, downstairs on the Xbox, on my Blackberry or our Creative Zen when we are camping. So how to make this all work. I have tried several programs and to date the best I have come up with is the following. To get a DVD protected or not into the computer I use DVD Decrypter. This free program is rock solid for converting an entire DVD or just the main movie to VOB, IFO and BUP. You also have the choice to convert to an ISO. Why an ISO, because it is just one file and can be mounted and viewed using software or read by some cool devices like the Tvisto Galaxy, which is great for taking to the rental cabin.
Ok, now that you have your movie in VOB, IFO and BUP, the next step is to convert it into a format that can be viewed on one of the mentioned devices. For this I have yet to find anything that works as well as Handbrake. This is another free piece of software that will convert a folder of VOB, IFO and BUP files into MP4, AVI and some other formats. If you plan to use the Windows Media Center with an Xbox see my entry on that for issues that I found converting files. As for the Divx converting, you need to get the Divx Converter, and that does cost money. I have to admit that the quality is very good for the file size. My conclusion on the whole converting is that you need to convert to the best format for what you are planning to use for playback. For example the Xbox, my current findings are AVI and for little hand held video players, best to use MP4.

So seeing that I am a MS Certified Partner, I get some cool software to mess around with. I decided to try and get a Windows 7 BetaOS to work with my Xbox 360 so that I could watch movies stored on the NAS. Using the Windows Media Center and the Media extender for Xbox, I got all that working together without too many problems. I did get some BSOD, but I think it had to do with either my video card or the NIC. After an update the OS seems to be working well. I did find that AVI’s work well as do Divx. You do have to download the divx player to install the necessary codex for that all to work, both on the Windows machine and the Xbox itself. The only issue I have is with MP4 and that is frame dropping. I found a web site that explains it better HERE. In short it has to do with Zune compatibility and videos need to be between 23-29 fps. 

I have now rebuilt my Window 7 box and am again testing it with my Xbox 360 and NAS playing music(mp3), avi and dvix videos. So far it seems to be working just fine. I did need to install Divx on the Win 7 computer along with DivX Tech Preview. This I got from the DivX site. There is also a very nice video on the DivX site explaining all this. I found other methods that are out on the Internet that say they can do the same thing, do not work with Windows 7.