[Canderson420]

I've been using the 8.10 final Atlantis release with the Playon server and had very mixed results. Here is what I've experienced so far:

1. After first loading up the new T3CH release and Playon - Hulu, Youtube and ESPN work great. CBS didn't work.
2. Next day I kept getting an error stating the Hulu had an invalid user/password - although I had used the "test" button under Playon and these were reported valid. I was also able to log directly into Hulu via my laptop with no problems.
3. Loaded Playon on another laptop and everything worked great (except CBS, never has worked)
4. Signed back up for Netflix. Able to access the Queue but get a "too many failed items" error and my regular log reports:

13:55:08 M: 32907264 ERROR: CMPlayer::OpenFile http://192.168.0.10:63478/n-206721fb-6e6...output.mpg failed with code -1
13:55:08 M: 41828352 ERROR: Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 0, path [http://192.168.0.10:63478/n-206721fb-6e6...utput.mpg]

5. Going back to Hulu I now am able to start and watch some videos, but others stop playing after about 15 seconds.

I love this solution, but wish I could get some consistency with how everything works. I don't know if the issues I'm having relate to the Playon server or have more to do with XBMC. I don't get why I would have no trouble logging in one day and cannot the next. Also i'm unsure what I should do regarding the Netflix errors. Suggestions on what to try??

Thanks!

[stacked]

Cool! I got it to work with a old build.

XBMC + Hulu = Free Video on Demand!!

j/k

[yoshiofthewire]

I got PlayOn working with the latest XBMC Windows build, once PlayOn updated to the latest version.

There seems to be some interaction issue that needs be worked on.
But then about a third of my files don't play back correctly on the latest XBMC builds.

I know they will get things worked out. I have complete faith in the devs.

[xalu]

I just wanted to post this to save everyone the trouble if they haven't seen this message. If you are having problems with playing netflix videos this could be why.

Taken from the playon site

"I can't play any of my Netflix Instant Queue movies. Why?"
It's possible that your Netflix account is using their new beta Silverlight player instead of Windows Media Player. You can verify this by visiting http://www.netflix.com/WiMessage?msg=58 and seeing if you are already signed up to test the beta Silverlight program. We are working diligently on a solution so that Silverlight accounts will work through PlayOn. Bear with us!

I called customer support at netflix and was told that this will be the new standard. So until playon fixes it ... netflix won't play any videos. Also doesn't work for my ubunto computer.
Now I can reinstall the new release of XBMC at least.

[zebraitis]

Hi,

This is a quick update of my experience with PlayOn and XBMC.

Following the instructions in this thread, I removed MS Silverlight (just in case) from my Vista 64 home server (repository of my DVD ISO's for XBMC) and I downloaded the 14 day trial of PlayOn.

Installation of PlayOn was simple, GUI driven. The installation allowed for my Netflix account and password to be entered and tested for validity. No problems.

I was surprised that there is no PlayOn thick client on the desktop. It runs in the background, and does not add anything to either to quick launch or the taskbar.

At my XBMC (XBOX running Atlantis 8.10 [beta3]), I activated UPNP, and did a quick reboot.

I went to Videos, selected to add a Source, UPNP, and was VERY surprised to see PlayOn listed as a choice. (... admit it, we usually are ready to do battle with a new XBMC feature, right? )

I added PlayOn at the highest level. This way I have CBS, Netflix Hulu, and a few other sources available to me in XBOX.

Selecting Netflix, I saw three choices (Alphabetical, Type, Top 50). I selected Comedy, Casino Royal.

Ah HAH !!! Finally an issue: playback at cache buffer set at 2048 was bursty.

I went to settings cache on XBMC and increased local network video to 4096.

Nice! Playback is good.

DirecTV... I am really starting to wonder why I pay so much for you!


Vincent

3 XBMC's, Harmony One, Harmony 1000.

[zebraitis]

OK... So, the battle beigns.

re: PlayOn with XBMC: Looks like HULU is fine, as is YouTube.

I have bumped my LAN Video cache to 8192 and I am still suffering cache overflow while watching Netflix.

When frames begin to be dropped, I can pause the playback, hit info to watch the cache clear back up to 80%, then play is fine... for a while.

(sidebar: No "skip" or "FF" is supported in the PlayOn playback, I do not have the Netflix Silverlight beta)

Any Ideas?

[zebraitis]

Here is the answer:

PlayOn works fine for Netflix.

I was attempting to resolve the issue of start-and-stop video by increasing the cache on my XBMC.

Wrong way to do it. I was trying to accomidate for more than the XBMC could take in and process.

Here are the details:

1) My systems are XBMC on XBOX.
2) My cache is set exactly back to the "normal" amount.
3) I have PlayOn running on my Win/Vista box on my network
4) I have NOT signed up for the Netflix Silverlight Beta

The trick to good playback on XBMC is to make the change on the PlayOn host (my Win/Vista box).

In the PlayOn interface, under "General Settings" I bumped my "Video Performance" down to "Medium" (rather than the default of "Auto").

Now, video streams uninterrupted.

What you can expect: Very primitive control.

1) You will need to pre-select your videos in Netflix (from a "normal" computer) for your instant queue.

2) In XBMC you will need to browse into Netflix via the PlayOn access, and select what you want to watch.

3) Your selection begins to play.

4) You may a) Pause, b) Play, c) Skip to the end, d) skip to the begining, e) stop. (that's pretty well it.)

5) Don't plan on missing something and going back. Won't work. Also, if you stop before the end (by accidently pressing stop... too bad, it starts all over again (unlike netflix on PC, which will restart from your last position)


Is it right for you?

I think that if you have a Netflix membership this may be an excellent product. It beats the Netflix Roku player by $60.00, and allows playback on multiple XBMC's ( I have 3, so that would be WAY better than 3 Roku @ 99.00 each!). They do have a free 15 day trial, so give it a shot.

For me, I plan to pay the $30.00 and buy it. (It passed the "wife" test! )

v.

[mclark2112]

This working well for me, I am still playing with the settings, but it is very impressive so far.

It has [passed the wife test for me too...

[Robo983]

I found this too, if you are using a mouse (like me a gyration) and click on an item you get your results mentioned. If you use a keyboard and use your enter/return key it will que and open just fine.

[Robo983]

What I want to do is use the UPnP of XBMC for windows to access Playon for Hulu and Netflix movies. This actually works fine but my CPU is pegged at about 100% on a an HTPC single core AMD 1.6GHz, 768MB ram. This causes the video to be choppy.

The reason I do not just launch a web browser is for the same reason using too much CPU. My thinking was that I am running PlayOn on a Dualcore and it would off load the processing to it instead of my HTPC single core. What I do not get is this seems to work fine on my XBOX which surely has less guts than my HTPC. The only issue I am running into on the XBOX is the lack of a Resume which is also ported to the Windows version.

Is this due to a codec issue? Any ideas of things for me to try? Or is it just not possible with UPnP and XBMC to avoid the High CPU and I will need a DualCore HTPC?

If I have to upgrade my HTPC seems it would just be better to launch a browser so I could resume and jump around in the video with a mouse. However I really like the simplicity of the UPnP navigation setup though to access my que.

[Hotkey]

Boy is this thing gonna be great.

So far my issues are:

Jerky "hanging" videos sometimes on Hulu. Sometimes video fails to start.

None of the Netflix selections actually play after selecting and displaying the "opening" dialogue box. Someimtes I get the playlist aborted error.

I've tried most of the setting mods suggested below. Upping XBMC cache and dropping PlayOn video to medium.

Suggestions?

[gastric]

I've been trying PlayOn with mostly success (all default settings, changed nothing in my XBMC on my XBOX). I haven't actually had any playback issues once the vide streams start. What I have is issues where I'm navigating Hulu (mostly), select Channels, Food and Living, see a list of shows, click a show to open it's episodes and the XBOX just sits there with the little spinning-wheel icon and stays there for eternity. It never gets the list of show episodes, nor does Back, Menu, etc. cancel out of that process. This has happened a number of times and my only remedy is apparently to power cycle the XBOX.

Is there some hotkey sequence that can be used to break out of that cycle?

I'm both excited and annoyed with PlayOn. The HULU feeds are awesome and high quality, Netflix access is nice, though I find their offerings fairly limited. But ease-of-use is great since you don't have to actually download or rip content yourself.

[gastric]

Updated to the latest TCH release and that seems to have fixed my laggy/hung processes getting directory/thumbnail feeds from PlayOn! However, it's introduced playback issues I didn't have before. Now when selecting a video it starts to cache, I see a reference to demuxing, then no playback starts. I click the same video again and it plays instantly. It's like it drops the playback initially. I also had a HULU movie playback die abrubtly half way through with no error message displayed, which I hadn't experienced before.

But navigating the lists via PlayOn is likity split. So I gained a little and lost a a little. Overall my initial excitement about PlayOn has diminished significantly.

[zebraitis]

(signed up for email notification of this thread)


To Hotkey & Gastric...

Here are my settings:

1) High speed internet access (in MB) - I have my internet via cable and I have an 10 down, 1 up speed. While it is not blinding, it does ensure fairly consistent content. (you may wish to check your net speed at http://www.speedtest.net). PlayOn reports that I have 8 down, but I have also seen that it reports as slow as 2 down.


2) Host Computer - Vista 64, home build. PlayOn is on my boot drive.


3) Host Computer power options - I have my computer set up to sleep and power down disks.

This was giving me a challenge (playback dies abruptly), so I bumped up the time before it sleeps. While XBMC (on XBOX) will play my DVD .ISO's and I can keep playing those without having the host system sleep, PlayOn does not seem to report that it is sharing media, and my system will sleep. (...yep, that's annoying.) Still, I would rather have PlayOn change, as I like to have the host system go S3 sleep and MagicPacket wake.


4) Connectivity - 2 of the XBMC's are hard wired, one is wireless. There appears to be no difference between them.


5) My PlayOn settings are as follows:
[INDENT]General Settings:
Video Performance - Medium
Video Processing - Not selected
PlayOn Media Server - "Automatic" and "Show Icon" both selected

The rest of the settings are of no consequence.

6) My XBMC is running the "Atlantis beta 3 final release" version. My "standard" XBMC settings are the same as listed at http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Image:Settin....cache.jpg
[/INDENT]

OK, so having said all that:

Is it still "buggy"? Yes, but as stated by "gastric" sometimes (very rarely) the beginning of the video stream doesn't start. Hitting play again will either a) start it, or b) lock up your XBMC. Still here a quick hard reboot seems to resolve the issue.

Is it still Beta? Yes, so I am hoping that some of these issues will continue to improve.

...and finally - is Netflix limited in movie choices? Here is a surprise: Because of their policies, different movies become available each month. it looks like in the last week of the month, new choices are available to add to the "play instantly" queue.)

So, since I can get the new release in the mail, and a with a continuous change of offers, looks like I will be downgrading my DirecTV service and saving a ton of cash per year.

Well worth the $30.00 for PlayOn !

[MxChris]

I'm having a hard time getting this to work. I can navigate to the PlayON list on my XBOX, I can see the movies from my Netflix Queue with cover art & all that no problem. I can navigate through all the PlayON shares, none of them will play though. I have not gotten a single video to play from anything in the PlayON shares. The PlayON app has verified my Netflix and Hulu account info to be accurate. I've tried playing PlayON shares with WMP 11 running, and not running with the same results.

Usually I can sort XBMC stuff out myself eventually but I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong here. It's especially aggravating seeing other people seem to have it working very easily. I really want this to work before the trial period is over, I will absolutely buy it if I can get it working and evaluate it. What am I missing?

PC:
XP PRO
2gb ram
WMP 11 (11.0.5721.5230)
WMP: (Library>Media Sharing..>XBMC: Media Renderer (IP)) is enabled and all media types are allowed.

XBOX:
Hardwired to the same router as the PC
T3CH XBMC 2008-12-07 SVN rev16491 (Installed to "F/Apps/XBMC")
Cache settings are default

XBMC.log states:

13:52:43 M: 23932928 NOTICE: CMPlayer::CloseFile()
13:52:49 M: 22470656 ERROR: CFileCurl::CReadState::Open, didn't get any data from stream.
13:52:49 M: 22470656 ERROR: CFileCurl::CReadState::Open, didn't get any data from stream.
13:52:49 M: 22470656 ERROR: CFileCurl::CReadState::Open, didn't get any data from stream.
13:52:49 M: 22573056 NOTICE: CMPlayer::CloseFile()
13:52:50 M: 16257024 ERROR: CMPlayer::OpenFile http://192.168.1.2:63478/n-8bf45ab0-9850...output.mpg failed with code 0
13:52:50 M: 16257024 NOTICE: CMPlayer::CloseFile()
13:52:50 M: 16625664 NOTICE: CMPlayer::CloseFile()
13:52:50 M: 22552576 ERROR: Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 0, path [http://192.168.1.2:63478/n-8bf45ab0-9850...utput.mpg]
13:52:52 M: 23257088 NOTICE: CMPlayer::CloseFile()

I get the above error message when attempting to play any video file, those are the results of just one file though, onscreen I get something something about "Q/ ..." it goes away so fast I can't read the error or take a screen capture of it. The XBMC.log on my xbox Q/ is an exact duplicate of the one in the F/Apps/XBMC.


Arrrrg!