downdb.net

Ars Technica has a pretty decent write-up of PlayOn:

PlayOn is a Windows-based application that allows you to watch online video content—from providers like Hulu, Amazon VOD, Comedy Central, and YouTube, to name a few—on your television via your PS3, Wii, or 360, as well as a few other supported devices. The process is fairly quick and painless, and I was able to get the service running on my PS3 in less than five minutes. The software will run you $39.99 for your first year, and $19.99 for each subsequent year. All you need is a networked PC and console.

I bought a PlayOn license a year or two ago, and have used it on and off to mostly watch Hulu content via my Popcorn Hour box. While it generally does the trick, the problem is that it has never been particularly reliable. Hulu has worked most of the time, Netflix worked a few times, and Amazon VOD has never really worked. None of these services is a primary source of video for me, and the license was cheap when I bought it, so these issues have never really bothered me all that much. Their user forums, however, tend to be filled with lots of very unhappy people complaining about how Service X has suddenly stopped working.

It’s hard to really blame the PlayOn guys for any of these problems. They seem to be trying to make a good product, and their support team has been very helpful and responsive when I have contacted them about issues. The problem is that they have an impossible task before them—they’re trying to keep hitting a constantly moving target, with, so far as I can tell, little to no support from the services to which they’re connecting.

In the case of Hulu, they have an actively uncooperative “partner”.

Good intentions and technical ingenuity only get them so far, though. My experience has largely been that when I am able to watch stuff via their app, and I don’t end up having to reboot both my computer and my media box at least once each, it’s a pleasant surprise. Maybe it’s just my setup, but that doesn’t make for a reliable solution. I can’t really see paying a yearly fee for their updated version.