Thursday, July 16, 2009

MediaMall Play On Review for PS3

For those of you that are into cutting edge technology and like tinkering with new toys, here's a review you might find useful.
Last year I purchased a PS3, i was suppose to wait till my birthday so my fiance could buy it for me, but I wanted it so bad i went out and bought it on my lunch break one day.
Ever since then, i have been hooked to the power of the PS3! I started to immediately download all the demos and games i could get my hands on, I probably purchased over $800 in blu-rays movies in the first year.

Now that i have calmed down alittle.. I started looking at other ways i could use my PS3.
Media server being a a really cool part of the PS3, i started using different media servers.
I tried Tversity for a few weeks, i didn't really like it, it was hard to configure not very fast at streaming etc.. Then came PS3 media server... now that was years beyond what Tversity would do, it was super quick and pretty much played every files I sent to it. I still use PS3 Media server to play files that are stored on my pc's.

Then one day i stumbled upon Playon by MediaMall, it looked good from the start.. On their website it says "Playon let's you watch Netflix, Hulu, CBS, Youtube, CNN, ESPN and more on your TV." I figured..wow that sounds awesome, so i sign up for the Trial, download & installed Playon. Everything worked as advertised for 2 days, then Hulu stopped working and that lasted the entire time of my 14 day trial. CBS, CNN & ESPN still worked for the duration of my trial, i was just pissed that Hulu was down.
A few weeks later i received a email from Playon offering a $20 discount if i decided to purchase the software, I figured hmm why not.
So i buy the full license, watch some awesome Hulu for 2 days.. then you guessed it.. Hulu goes down. And it's still down, now it's been over 10 days that Hulu is down. This is not the first time and probably not the last.
To make things worst.. Netflix barely works, if it does at all.
The only good thing going for Playon right now, is the community of members that are creating plugins for Playon, the plugins allow you to access other content that the Playon coders have not implemented yet, like HGTV, Food Network, Crackle etc..
If it weren't for these plugins i think i would file a charge back with Paypal.

So to anyone thinking of getting Playon for their PS3 or Xbox360, if you solely want it to watch Hulu.. stay away,it's down more then it's up!
For $20 i would say it's worth it, but at $40 i would stay away!