During the past two weeks I've been using the "Playon" app for the Roku streaming device on the 14 day free trial. My first impression was that the interface was well designed and that this could actually be used by someone wanting to reduce or eliminate their monthly cable or satellite subscription. The number of channels and programming choices is very good and even some retro programming such as "The Brady Bunch", "Gilligan's Island", "The Flintstones", "The Andy Griffith Show", "The Jetsons" and others can be viewed and even recorded using Playon's new Playlater feature. I also liked how plugins can be easily added to expand the programming choices and that Hulu is included to allow programming not available on Hulu Plus to be streamed to your TV.
However, I found that in order for the Playon server app to work correctly without any re-buffering a computer having a CPU of 2.0GHz and memory of 4GB or greater is needed. Also, some channels (ex: History) have known problems when using a computer having Windows 8 and none of the programming is shown in HD.
Playon is currently offering a lifetime membership for only $39.99. Is the service (or I should probably say software) worth $39.99? While this might be a good choice for some people I will probably not subscribe. For $39.95 I could subscribe to Hulu Plus for 5 months which offers HD programming, better streaming without needing a separate computer and many more programming choices including movies.
I just streamed "The Neighbors" episode "The Gingerbread Man" in HD via Hulu Plus on one input and the same episode in HD previously recorded on my Dish Network VIP722K DVR on another and switched back and forth. To my surprise the Hulu Plus HD picture looked better than the Dish Network HD picture which was highly compressed and lacked detail.
However, I found that in order for the Playon server app to work correctly without any re-buffering a computer having a CPU of 2.0GHz and memory of 4GB or greater is needed. Also, some channels (ex: History) have known problems when using a computer having Windows 8 and none of the programming is shown in HD.
Playon is currently offering a lifetime membership for only $39.99. Is the service (or I should probably say software) worth $39.99? While this might be a good choice for some people I will probably not subscribe. For $39.95 I could subscribe to Hulu Plus for 5 months which offers HD programming, better streaming without needing a separate computer and many more programming choices including movies.
I just streamed "The Neighbors" episode "The Gingerbread Man" in HD via Hulu Plus on one input and the same episode in HD previously recorded on my Dish Network VIP722K DVR on another and switched back and forth. To my surprise the Hulu Plus HD picture looked better than the Dish Network HD picture which was highly compressed and lacked detail.