[mythtv-users] Streaming MythTV recordings (MPEG-2) to an Xbox 360

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Fri Jul 23 12:47:07 UTC 2010


On Friday, July 23, 2010 04:03:31 am Vitani wrote:

> This sounds interesting, just looked at PlayON and it looks like a very
> neat package, it would also mean I could drop my VM down to Windows XP
> which should reduce the overhead.

Indeed, PlayOn is an easy way to get just about any UPnP player/renderer access to Hulu, PBS, CBS, TV.COM, ESPN and 
especially Netflix, plus many others.

It works with an Xbox, PS3, D-Link DSM series, Myka, Popcorn Hour, and  others. I know they were working on support for 
the Wii, I'm not sure of the status of that. This means that just about everyone has a box of some sort hanging around 
that will work with it.

Since Netflix won't allow any Linux system access to their DRM, this is a simple solution. The obvious drawback is it 
requires a fairly fast Windows machine on the network, but you can't blame Media Mall for that. Using a VM has worked well 
for me, no additional boxes, just a little more power.

Hulu often makes changes to their site that break things like PlayOn, but they usually get an updated version (of PlayOn) 
out within a day or two of any such changes. People react very differently to having something they have paid for (albeit 
not much) stop working than they do with open source/no cost software, so I guess they have to be quick to react.

In spite of what some folks have claimed, I don't think Hulu is intentionally trying to "break" PlayOn, I think they are 
just flailing around, not really knowing what it is they want to do, and trying to "enhance the viewer experience" (and 
their revenue), by changing everything around without ever really giving anything a chance to work, I question how long 
Hulu will be around, but there are plenty of other sources, PBS being one of my favorites, and of course Netflix is great 
and always works.

Hulu's latest gambit of giving you a choice of a single long-form commercial at the start or several shorter ones is an 
example. Since PlayOn does not give you a way to interact with Hulu it defaults to the long-form option after a timeout, 
which is fine with me.






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