Many members of the PlayOn community have been asking about PlayOn's relationship with content providers, most notably Hulu. This long discussed topic has recently gained more interest due to Congressional hearings last week looking into the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal (NBCU). During those hearings, Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) asked NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, "Did Hulu block the Boxee users from access to the Hulu programs"?

Mr. Zucker's response (below) was interesting for a number of reasons, which we at PlayOn feel warrant additional clarification and comment.

"This was a decision made by the Hulu management to, uh, what Boxee was doing was illegally taking the content that was on Hulu without any business deal. And, you know, all, all the, we have several distributors, actually many distributors of the Hulu content that we have legal distribution deals with so we don’t preclude distribution deals. What we preclude are those who illegally take that content.", said Zucker.

First of all, Mr. Zucker's initial inclination to point the finger at Hulu all but directly contradicts Hulu's own public statement in which their CEO, Jason Kilar, said that, "Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes." At the time Hulu's statement was issued (February, 2009), NBCU was one of only two content providers who owned a significant stake in Hulu (the other being News Corp). It seems highly unlikely that the "content providers" Mr. Kilar was referring to did not include NBCU, given the significant influence NBCU is capable of exerting on Hulu as a material equity stakeholder.

Mr. Zucker's seemingly disingenuous finger-pointing at Hulu serves to underscore the awkward position NBCU finds itself in when trying to encourage Internet distribution of its content through Hulu to the PC screen (which reduces the frequency of Internet piracy), while simultaneously trying to prevent the same Internet distribution to the TV screen (which increases cannibalization of broadcast viewership). It is no secret that the economics of an “over-the-air” viewing are currently more attractive to NBCU than an "over-the-net" viewing. Admittedly, balancing these competing objectives must be a difficult exercise for NBCU. However, it would seem more productive to try to work with players like PlayOn (and Boxee) in order to improve the economics of an episode on the TV screen, instead of pursuing the short-sighted tactic of attempting to block such technologies. As one small example, Hulu could implement a model where more ads were inserted into commercial breaks when viewed on the TV screen, and technologies like PlayOn (and Boxee) could participate in such a program by identifying themselves to Hulu's system as a "TV Browser" (to facilitate this). We at PlayOn would be more than happy to collaborate with Hulu on such an approach (and have expressed this willingness to both them and NBCU in the past). I believe Boxee would be eager to do so as well.

The second point of Mr. Zucker's response which bears scrutiny is his statement that, "what Boxee was doing was illegally taking the content." To understand this point, it is first necessary to understand what Boxee and PlayOn are, and what they do functionally. As many PlayOn fans have been well aware of for quite some time, PlayOn is, fundamentally, a Web browser. It is PC software which communicates with and downloads/renders content from remote Web/content servers in order to fulfill browsing requests made by a user. It uses standard Web protocols for this communication, just as popular browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome do. In fact, PlayOn is actually a customized version of the Internet Explorer engine (the current version of Boxee uses the Firefox browsing engine in a similar way). This makes technologies like PlayOn and Boxee very different (legally) from the "distributors" (aka: "websites") that Mr. Zucker refers to in his statement. PlayOn is a browsing technology. It is not a distribution platform or a video website. Neither Mozilla nor Google (nor Microsoft or other browser makers) have distribution deals with Hulu. It is misleading of Mr. Zucker to suggest that other browser makers are obligated to have distribution deals in order to enable browsing to Hulu (simply because they display content on the TV screen instead of the PC screen). Boxee's own response to the hearing makes a similar clarification.

On a more speculative note, it is important to point out that the original Boxee implementation was quite different than the current one and, at the time Hulu initially blocked Boxee, there was a much stronger legal case that Hulu could have made against Boxee than it can currently. Specifically, Boxee had setup a process by which it ran a "bot" that collected all of the Hulu metadata and then housed it on Boxee’s own server as its own feeds which were redistributed to Boxee users upon request by the Boxee software. This process was somewhat similar to the way Google (and other search engine) "bots" collect data from websites in order to include them in search results. However, there is an accepted standard (The "Robot Exclusion Standard") for website owners to "disallow" such bots collecting data from sections of their sites. Hulu had implemented such exclusions of their feeds (http://www.hulu.com/robots.txt), and Boxee's implementation at that time was violating this exclusion. I believe this gave Hulu both a technical and legal justification (and means) of blocking Boxee at that time. That has clearly changed, as Boxee has since implemented a true Browser model (as PlayOn has had from the beginning). But I suspect this initial case of probable illegality is what gives Mr. Zucker the ability to state (in the past tense) that "what Boxee was doing was illegal", even if it is no longer true. Mr. Kilar's references to Boxee took on a similar historical tone when he was recently quoted as saying, "Boxee had no right to do what it was doing."

All told, this increased scrutiny at the Congressional level will likely cause NBCU/Hulu to engage in more acceptable business practices. The importance of getting the NBCU acquisition approved is far greater than what is at stake in the battles between Hulu and companies like PlayOn and Boxee. Let's hope it ushers in a new era where we can all collaborate to make Internet viewing on the TV both enjoyable to consumers and profitable to content owners.

- Jeff Lawrence, PlayOn CEO

We've gotten lots of questions lately about support for the Wii. Yes - it is delayed (sorry!), but it is coming - and soon. We anticipate releasing it at the end of July/ early August (so - in 5 weeks or so). Why the delay? Well...we had some other priorities creep in (bugs, new device support, and the like), and we want to make sure the interface really rocks. This takes time. As you may know - we have no (very, very little) control over the interface for the PS3 or Xbox360 - so while not as pretty, from a development-perspective, this makes things a little easier. On the Wii, we have free reign over interface, and so we want to make sure it is great ... and this always takes longer than anticipated. We will keep you posted if there is another delay, but we plan to get it in your hands as soon as possible.

From our surveys and in forum posts, Local Media Browsing has been the #1 requested feature, and now it's here...

PlayOn announces LOCAL MEDIA BROWSING (in beta)

You can now enjoy your digital media throughout your home with PlayOn. You can see all of your digital photos on your PLAYSTATION 3 or Xbox 360, listen to your stored music, and watch videos stored on your PC through the same PlayOn Digital Media Server you have been using to enjoy Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube. There is no need to maintain a separate Digital Media Server -- how is that for convenient?

Stream the MP3s stored on your computer to your living room, watch home movies stored on your office PC in your bedroom, or flip through that slide show of your summer vacation in your media room -- all with PlayOn.

To upgrade (free for licensed and trial users), simply download the latest at www.themediamall.com/playon/upgrade. Please note that this feature is still in beta - so it is only going to get better. And - if you have some feedback you want to share - please do so by posting on our forum.

If your trial has already expired... do not fret. We have also opened up a New FREE 14-day trial. We want everyone to be able to try PlayOn's Local Media Browsing beta (http://www.themediamall.com/playon/download).

So - check it out and let us know what you think.

Thanks to the 1,700 of you who took the time to respond to our Beta survey in January. We wanted to share some of what we learned with you…
 
90% of you think it works pretty well or great (thanks for your patience and understanding during our outages). You seem to like Hulu (42%) and Netflix (33%) the best, and you hate that the trick play features don’t work well (ff and rew) and that you get data corrupt or other errors. We hate that too! We are working on ways to make PlayOn more reliable. This one surprised us – 46% of you use PlayOn every day (once or more) and 46% use it once or twice a week. Your couches are back in use – wooohooo.
 
The top 5 product feature requests:
1 – Media Sharing from the PC (yes, we are working on it – it should be out by the end of the summer!)
2 – Customized RSS feeds (we just launched a plugin API – so have at it)
3 – Mac and Linux support (don’t hold your breath)
4 – Wii support (coming next month!)
 
Top 5 content provider requests:
1 – ABC (coming….)
2 – Discovery
3 – Comedy Central
4 – History Channel
5 - Pandora
 
And – finally, 57% of you had already purchased at the time of the survey, 15% planned to, and 25% were on the fence.
 
So – thanks for the GREAT feedback. We are working on YOUR top priorities now, and plan to launch our Q2 survey this month…so keep the feedback coming.

We are excited to let you know that you can now access more than 40,000 movies and TV episodes available to rent or buy instantly from Amazon Video On Demand. And, you can now access original entertainment and content from Revision 3, a TV network for the Web. The latest PlayOn release adds support for both services.

With support for Amazon Video on Demand, Revision 3, Hulu, CBS.com, Netflix Watch Instantly, YouTube, ESPN.com, CNN.com, we hope that PlayOn will become the most robust browser enabling you to watch Internet video content on your TV.

The latest release is available for download at http://www.themediamall.com/playon/download (2.59.3352). We aren't pushing an auto-update yet, so if you want to check it out, you will have to download and install it from the www.getplayon.com website.

This release was based in large part on requests from our user base for more content...and it won't end there, we are still working on adding support for more Internet video content.

Both CrunchGear and Audioholics wrote about the new release today...so feel free to check out the articles and add your .02 on PlayOn. As always - we love to know what you think!

Hey PlayOn users! Most of you should be on the latest version (2.59.3330), and if you're not, head over to www.getplayon.com and download the most recent installer. We've ironed out some troubling issues that showed up in the previous versions, and got our website up and running again. And on Sunday evening, we increased the price of PlayOn to its regular fee of $39.99.

If you missed out on the $10 promotional rebate, well, sorry! On the bright side, we still think our software is well worth the price. And we've got lots of FREE new features lined up for the spring. Wii support is still clipping along nicely, and new content providers and local file sharing (albeit in a limited form to begin with) are just around the corner as well. Everyone will get this stuff as free upgrades to their existing PlayOn installations.

We also highly recommend that you sign up for our PlayOn newsletter, as we will let you know about special promotions and news about PlayOn. It's a great way to stay informed. And we won't spam you with pestering notices.

Two steps forward, one step back. This weekend, we got slammed with two major problems:

• Videos from Hulu are unable to play unless you (temporarily) change your video performance setting to "Low". We'll have a workaround for this soon (days, not weeks, don't worry).
• Our website went into complete meltdown mode.

Always fun to try to fix these things over the weekend, but we're doing our best. We set up a temporary homepage with limited info about PlayOn, and links to the download and purchase. The PlayOn software itself should still be working just fine, since it runs independently of our web servers.

We hope to restore website service as quickly as possible. We know that without the forum and FAQ it's a bit frustrating to get help. Remember that you can always send a support request through PlayOn Settings (this should be working still), or otherwise mail us directly.

Most likely, we will extend the price change until next weekend, since the site has been out of operation for more than 24 hours now, and it crashed just before we scheduled to increase the license fee. Stay tuned for more info.

We at MediaMall are happy and proud to announce that the first production version of PlayOn has been released! The beta program is officially over. We have said it many times before, but we want to thank all our beta testers for their relentless testing, constructive feedback, and considerate patience.

As before, PlayOn can be downloaded at www.getplayon.com. We've reset the trial period again to a fresh 14 days, as promised. And the price is still only $29.99 -- for one more week only. If you've already bought a license, you're all set. If you upgrade PlayOn to the latest version (2.59.3318), your license key will still be valid.

We expect to be releasing new updates and patches over the coming weeks and months. Our developers have been hard at work on adding Wii support, and making lots of great improvements across the board with PlayOn's base functionality. The best of all is that all these updates will be absolutely free for all our users.

Enjoy!

Yesterday, our developers posted version 2.59.3302 (RC6). It is essentially the same as RC5, but we've reset the trial period to a fresh 14 days. This means all of you who were reluctant to purchase over the past few months, due to bugs or just not being convinced, get a chance to try things out again.

For those of you who have already purchased, you do not need to purchase again - the trial is for folks who didn't have a chance to try it out enough to make the purchase decision. Of course, everyone should download the latest version (it knows if you have already purchased a license, and you won't need to buy another one!)

We plan on posting the production version around the beginning of February. There will be some additional bug fixes and a few streamlining features, but no big core functionality changes. And we'll reset the trial again then, to yet another 14 days. Which gives many of you a chance to try out PlayOn free for an entire month.

One last note: the price for PlayOn will be increasing from $29.99 to $39.99 once we release the production version. We are keeping it at $29.99 through the month of January as a thank you to our early adopters, for sticking with us during the beta process. Please note - if you have already bought a license or if you buy one at $29.99, you will NOT need to buy another one once the product release is out, or once the price goes up to $39.99. You will automatically get the production version at no additional cost.

We have also posted a survey www.themediamall.com/playonsurvey which we'd love for you to fill out if you have tried PlayOn. This will help us prioritize future development.

Thanks again for your support!

All of us at MediaMall just want to say Happy Holidays to everyone, and once again send our big thanks to everyone who has stuck with us for so long. We're very excited about 2009. There are a ton of great features and plans on our horizon.

Our developers are working hard on adding support for Wii consoles now, as well as plans to better integrate with additional devices. And the core product will continue to improve, both in stability, usability, and cool features. Be on the lookout for the addition of new content providers, local file sharing -- and much more -- over the coming months.

We just released and posted Release Candidate 4 at the download site. Make sure you give it a spin if you haven't already! www.getplayon.com. We expect to push our first real production release in just a couple of weeks, if not sooner.

We wish everyone a great holiday season, and look forward to what's in store for 2009!