Brian's Brain

I've spoken several times in the past about Netflix's Watch Instantly (aka Watch Now) service, an adjunct to the company's mail-shipped optical disc program that Internet-delivers movies and television shows to subscribers' PCs. I've also mentioned several times in the past Roku's Netflix Player, which directly accesses Watch Instantly and direct-connects to a display and sound system. And I've mentioned that later this fall, Microsoft's Xbox 360 will be an alternative Watch Instantly direct-access vehicle.

If you've a Netflix subscriber, own an Xbox 360 and don't want to wait for the Fall Update (or install an independent developer's plug-in to your Windows Vista PC), or if you own a PlayStation 3 (or another networked media player) instead, there's another way to enjoy your Watch Instantly content without completely dedicating a PC to the task. It's MediaMall Technologies' PlayOn, a DLNA-cognizent UPnP server program that I first discussed in late August and mentioned again a week ago. I got a chance to briefly test the program early last week, installing it to my Windows Vista-based laptop, and I followed up my evaluation in much greater depth earlier today and subsequent to the release of the latest PlayOn software build.

I gotta say; I'm mighty impressed. PlayOn currently provides access to content not only at my Watch Instantly account (the software enables me to enter my Netflix account login details for access to my viewing queue) but also housed at the following other websites:

• CBS
• ESPN
• Hulu (therefore addressing last week's laptop-centric complaint)
• Netflix, and
• YouTube

with CNN support 'coming soon'.

One qualifier upfront; PlayOn doesn't (yet) enable individual Hulu account queue interaction. But with that said, and after perusing multiple pieces of content housed on each site (including way more Saturday Night Live skits in the Hulu archive than I care to publicly admit), I was able to stream everything just fine to my PS3 and both of my Xbox 360s. And the image quality was quite acceptable, as well. Note that the consoles, along with the PC running PlayOn, all connect to my router via high bandwidth HomePlug AV powerline spurs.

For reduced-bandwidth LAN tethers, PlayOn configuration settings enable lower quality (in exchange for smaller payload) trans-rating prior to console transfer. Company president and CEO Jeff Lawrence confirmed to me early on in my review process that the majority of web-originated content is realtime-transcoded by PlayOn, if for no other reason than to match the audio and video codecs supported by each target console (my PS3 claims everything comes across in 5 Mbps MPEG-2 video and 128 Kbps, 44.1 kHz-sampled two-channel MPEG audio in my particular configuration). For this reason, and in part defined by my particular LAN bandwidth and UPnP server processing muscle, I was also only able to smoothly fast-forward at the Xbox 360's lowest 2x rate (and at the PS3's 1.5x playback speed).

If you'd like to completely dispense with the PC intermediary, and if you own an Apple TV that you don't mind hacking, you're now able to load up the open-source Boxee or XBMC media center programs on the unit via its USB port. At the moment, along with greatly expanding the suite of file formats supported by the box, this non-Apple-blessed augmentation provides music streaming from Last.FM and numerous Internet Radio stations, along with video access to ABC.com, Hulu, YouTube and other sites. Speaking of ABC.com, support for it is my biggest near-future aspiration for PlayOn, since I can't tune in the Reno ABC affiliate over the air and since ABC isn't supplying material to Hulu. Unfortunately, according to Lawrence, the proprietary codecs and delivery schemes used by ABC.com are complicating MediaMall Technologies' support desires.

Granted, Netflix did just sign a streaming deal with ABC (along with CBS, and Disney and Sony content via Starz, for that matter), but at least at the moment my favorite ABC shows (Lost and Ugly Betty, if you're curious) aren't on the support list. In other Netflix news, and in closing, the company released a public API on October 1^st, and it's promising Mac support by year end. I'll be curious to see how, in actualizing this latter aspiration, Netflix will work around the Watch Instantly service's use of Windows Media codecs (Flip4Mac, mebbe?) and, more importantly, DRM schemes. Truth be told, I'm betting that Netflix will migrate to Silverlight for all supported O/Ss.