This is one of my few issues with PlayOn. If there is something that can be done about the fast forwarding problem then I would be very happy.

I agree, when I try to fast forward on my Netflix movie the picture gets stuck and freezes and won't unstick even after a couple minutes. So I stop the movie, then start it again and either have to watch from the beginning again or attempt to fast forward hoping it doesn't freeze again.

Fast forwarding is much trickier than it sounds. PlayOn has to pull the streams realtime from the sites, transcode them to a different format, and then serve them to the device. With devices like the Roku, you can at least fast forward (or skip to time markers), but keep in mind that this is bound specifically to Netflix, and Netflix only (for now), and the Roku box costs three times that of PlayOn.

Adding fast forwarding capabilities to PlayOn requires a considerable amount of engineering work. Add to this the fact that devices like the PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360 aren't really designed to handle the buffering during delayed fast forwarding (since they are more accustomed to streaming existing and readily available media on your PC hard drive, when you e.g. use products like TVersity). This is why you see the stream just stopping on the device when you try to fast forward online media.

We understand the desire. And we're thinking of ways to make this work, but it's a tricky issue.

I totally understand where you're coming from. I'm just throwing out a "wish list" item. If you can come up with something, that would be awesome. The device is part of the problem. The PS3, for example, goes from a 1.5x FF to a 10x FF. There is no in between! I have no issues if I use the 1.5x FF... it takes a while to get where you're going, but the steam doesn't get lost in the buffer. If the PS3 had something like a 3x FF, that would probably help thing. Just sayin'.

Here's to hoping the PlayOn programmers can come up with something. You guys have been doing a pretty kick-a** job so far!

same problem here, hope you can fix this. :)

Ditto here, w/ the DSM-520. I suspect this issue is device specific. If so, any tips on how to tweak the fast-forward signal being sent from the remote (I have a Logitech Harmony) would also be useful.

Hmm, I don't know if it would work, but how about maybe sending a bunch of blank frames when the device tries to request a section that has not been encoded yet? Of course, I have done no programming related to video encoding or streaming, so I have no idea if such a thing could work or not.

PS3 has something akin to time markers, but it's really closer to the scene selection features on your normal DVD. Hit the SQUARE button, or pull up the SEARCH feature from the playback menu. What that does is break the video it has received into intervals and you can select which "scene" or interval you want to start from. You can even choose if you want it at 1 min, 5 min, 10 min, etc... intervals. Works great when streaming video files direct from your PC.
It works with PlayOn in that you can see the scenes in screenshots that the PS3 gives you, so it's working to some extent, obviously. That's as far as it goes though. If you pick one to start playing from, everything freezes.
Now, at buffering speeds that PlayOn works at, I'm not sure this is going to work ever. But I don't know much about that... It'd be great if like on Hulu on the PC you could click anywhere on the progress bar and it would catch up to that point without having to buffer the whole video.

Looks like this has been a known issue for at least a year and a half. The Admin responded on 03/13/2008 - please tell me that something is in the works to fix fast forwarding or "scene" selection.

I dropped $40 on this app specifically for nexflix on the PS3 and in the last 2 weeks I've had this issue happen a couple times. It's really frustrating.

We've already made certain improvements for fast forwarding logic from the PlayOn side, since we first launched our product, and since fast forwarding has become such a pressing issue. We totally understand the frustration, and from a user perspective, it seems intuitive that it should just work, especially when other products handle it fine.

Ultimately, the onus lies within the client -- in other words, the playback device. The analogy is when you play a video in an embedded player in your browser, from a site like YouTube, you can easily skip forward or backwards by clicking with your mouse. The client player in this case sends a request to the online server, asking it for new bytes at a different byte range or timestamp. With DLNA, the same concept applies: the device player is allowed to ask the server (PlayOn) for bytes in the future.

However, not a single DLNA device we know of yet is correctly handling dynamically growing files being served from a PC. Once they ask for bytes that don't exist yet from the server, they complain and show weird errors. They should be patiently waiting for those new bytes to arrive, or force the playback to take a step back to the most recently available bytes in the stream. We strongly encourage you to contact the manufacturer of your DLNA device to ask them to fix this. We have done the same. We do expect improvements in the future, but it's pretty much out of our hands. We're of course not happy about this.

Modern DLNA players are just not sophisticated enough yet to handle skipping forward and backwards for dynamically generated media. (For media that already exists in full on your hard drive for example, this is not an issue, since the server in that case can always fulfill all byte/timestamp range requests from the client. The issue here is with dynamically generated media.)

Incidentally, PlayOn first launched in beta in August of 2008, one year ago -- where do you see posts from March of 2008? We didn't even have a forum then!

Hey admin - yeah, I looked at your Join Date (03/13/2008) and mistook it for the post date.

Thanks for the explanation. I have been using Playon every night for the last month or so now. Typically, it's not too big of a deal because I've only watched shows (netflix) from the beginning.

I'm very seriously debating canceling my satellite service.

I vaguely understand the technical side and I'm sure the multiple platforms does cause issues with the traditional thinking of "I want to FF and RW just like my VCR, DVD", etc.

How about a different concept...like, build a choice for a popup where you can input either a manually entered number (may be tough due to multi platform inconsistencies) or a chooseable list of predetermined numbers in minutes. So you hit Menu, then something like "Jump to" and you can have a list of 5 mins, 10, 15, etc in so you then can have Playon send that minute mark directly to the Netflix or other site and the stream starts to Playon from there.

Would that work?

People are right....this is THE biggest problem with Playon currently (please note I LOVE what Playon has brought to the table....I have killed my satellite due to it and saved my family $$ in this downturn).

Unfortunately we cannot control the user interface for the devices that interface to PlayOn. The DLNA specification basically only allows media servers to provide a list of folders and media items.

How about as a bandaid allow us on the PC to select a starting point manually for a data stream? There is nothing worse than having to stop 1/2 through a movie and can't restart there later...even if I had to go to the pc to do a manual entry to start at 45 mins on a video and allow the PS3 to start that manual request that is better than nothing.

Actually, for our current Netflix implementation, if you open the movie in question through your PC browser and then fast forward to the desired point in the movie, then close the browser, and then restart PlayOn and choose the movie, it should start up where you left off on the PC.

I just tried this and it worked like a charm. This is GREAT. I am perfectly content setting up my start point on my pc and then watching from that point on my ps3. I was wondering how in the world I would get 3 hours straight to watch the good the bad and the ugly and now I don't have to. You guys are awesome.

Glad to hear it, though many users aren't so glad about this "feature". We are considering how to make it customizable somehow, though this can be complicated.

Indeed - this is actually a reasonable work around. Personally, I have seen the first 2/3rds of nearly every move I have seen lately. Being able to get back to the point where exhuastion set in, even like that is totally nice (yeah, not elegant, but it works).

Reagrds,

SMA

Think I know the answer, but is there anything similar in Hulu? Similar to the Netflix work around that is.

Folks, does the "Go To" function of PS3 work along the same lines with Fast Forward?