New TDG Study Says 20% of Us will REPLACE our cable with OTT broadband TV

A recent TGD study, as shared with us by Will Richmond in his VideoNuze newsletter, says that 20% of us will replace our cable/satellite subscription with Over The Top Broadband (OTT) services, while 17% of us will use OTT and keep Cable/Satellite. 29% of us could go either way (depending on the price point). You can check out the research here. What I want to know - is what are you using PlayOn for -- REPLACING your cable/satellite subscription or SUPPLEMENTING it? Take our quick 1-question survey to let us know - I'll publish the results here in a few days!

New Release Is Here

The latest release .3496 has been posted. It is a good one and we are excited about it. It offers a new free trial for anyone and everyone - so if you got short-changed with a service outage during your last trial - here's your chance to try it again. Oh - and speaking of service outages, we fixed most of those issues in this release as well - so PlayOn should be much more stable and easy to enjoy now. Also in the release is a new PlayOn Settings chanel where you can get info right on your console (no need to head back to the PC) and the ability to reboot your PlayOn server from the console. We upgraded the Local File Sharing (beta) - so it should be more stable. It still isn't where we want it to be, but we are getting it there. Of course - feedback is welcome support@playon.tv. Hope you enjoy the enhancements - and give PlayOn another shot.

Technical Support Guru Needed

Have you been implemented your fair share of online customer support solutions?  Do you know all about supporting software? Are you entrepreneurial, resourceful, reliable and friendly? Are you passionate about PlayOn? We may have THE job for you -- if you are a Technical Support Guru and know about self-serve support systems as well as the best ways to manage online support, let us know -- we need to know how we can make our technical support scale as we grow! If you are interested (or know someone who would be great for this), email us at jobs@playon.tv.

PlayOn Gear now Available

Get 'em while they're hot! Our CTO and apparently t-shirt designer extraordinare has created some pretty cool PlayOn gear. You can get it at our new store PlayOn Gear.

Check it out - and if you have any suggests for modifications that would improve the appearance of something - let us know. Thanks.

Where's the Wii?

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.

Local Media Browsing is Here!

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/download).

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

March for Babies

It has been a wild winter for PlayOn, and an even wilder one for me personally. I delivered our 2nd daughter in November - 3 and 1/2 months early at only 2lbs. She remained in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for 100 long days. You can learn a little more about my daughter Amelia (and the rest of my family)by watching a local newscast on our situation:

Before "Millie" was born, I knew little about the March of Dimes. They provided valuable assistance to us, including organizing the Thanksgiving dinner shown in the news story. Importantly, they fund research to prevent prematurity and help babies born too early or sick.

The MediaMall/PlayOn team has been super supportive of me and my family. I am grateful that I work with such a kind, caring, and progressive group of folks.

I'd love to have your support as well as we help raise money for the March for Babies -- to ensure every baby has a healthy start.

Thanks for your support!

Beta Survey Results

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.

Amazon VOD and Revision 3 Added to the PlayOn Lineup

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/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!

Back in Action

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.