PlayOn... Beginners Manual...

[joelinkup]

I have a server in the basement running Vista 64 with the 2250 card... and 2 HD200 extenders upstairs at the TV's... I am confused regarding PlayOn software... I pay my $40... OK No Issue, I can do that... Then I load PlayOn onto the server... Then at the server I use PlayOn to download some Hulu or Netflix videos... After the videos are downloaded onto the server... I go to an HD200 extender at a TV... and then from the extender I play back onto the TV the videos that are now on the server... Do I have it?... I am asking... I don't want to start the process until I understand what it is all about... Could someone provide a brief set of instructions... I don't get it... Your help is appreciated...

[gplasky]

No. You don't run the hd200 in extender mode. You run it standalone. The Playon software makes your server a UPnP server. The HD200 in standalone can browse to the UPnP server running playon and I think the videos stream.

Gerry

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by gplasky

No. You don't run the hd200 in extender mode. You run it standalone. The Playon software makes your server a UPnP server. The HD200 in standalone can browse to the UPnP server running playon and I think the videos stream.

Gerry

Correct. There is a Server option (or is it services?) and if you are running playon on your server (or another pc) it will show up as the playon server running on whatever PC you have it on. Once you have accessed the playon server, it will give you all your options such as Netflix, Playon, CBS, etc. If you access Hulu, you just need to find the "Your Queue" option and all the videos that you loaded into your queue will be there.

[wrems]

I downloaded the trial of Playon to get my HD200 to display Netflix. I did all of the above and can access Hulu videos. I can’t seem to get Netflix up and going. I have queued movies in my Netflix watch it now queue and set up Playon with my Netflix credentials. I updated the firmware on the HD200 and am using the latest Playon version available. When I try to access Netflix through the HD200 all seems good. I get a Netflix folder with sub folders for alphabetic listings, top ??? in queue and I think Genre… When I go into any of the sub folders it tells me I have zero files… I cant figure it out. Any ideas?

[gplasky]

Make sure on the server you are running the Playon server you have verified through IE that yo can reach the Netflix site, login with your ID and password and can play the Watch Now movies. If you can't do it on that mchine thru IE, you can't do it thru PlayOn.

Gerry

[wrems]

I have verified that Netflix works on my server with IE and it works fine.

That’s where I’m stumped everything seems in order, but I cannot seem to gain access to my instant queue via Playon on my HD200. I am on the unlimited instant plan too; I don’t have Netflix’s 2 per month plan…

I have noticed that I receive a couple of dialogs through IE when attempting to play a Netflix movie. Not sure if they are significant/normal or unusual. I attached the two prompts I get while launching a movie:

Are these messages normal?

I’d really like to get my Netflix working before my 14 day Playon trial expires.

Thanks for your help!

[gplasky]

It shows your Windows Media Player is NOT configured properly to handle the WatchNow feature. This may be a security configuration in IE or an upgrade or patch to WMP. Did you install the Netflix player on your server and actually play a movie? By the looks of that dialog I would have to say no. None of those dialogs should appear when playing a movie out of IE on your server. Right now WMP doesn't have the license to play any of your Netflix movies. I have Playin running on my WHS server and I see all of my Netflix movies in any of the folders I look in.
Gerry

[wrems]

I don’t know what to say but it does work on the server, despite the messages. I can stream just fine as long as I click thru the dialogs. At the same time, I just fired up Netflix on my laptop and streamed a movie and never received any prompts, the movie just started playing. This leads me to believe that something is squirrelly on my server as you surmised. I’m going to try to uninstall/reinstall WMP and see if I can get this to work out correctly.

Thanks again for helping me diagnose this. I’m getting closer. I thought the messages were normal… I’ve received them every time I launched a movie from Netflix and didn’t think it was out of the ordinary.

[wrems]

Still perplexed…

From my server I removed WMP, Netflix Movie Player, and WMP Runtime. Did the usual rebooting etc… Then I logged into Netflix and proceeded to launch a streamed flick from my instant queue. Netflix goes onto installing their player, and WMP 11. All is good; I reboot, and then launch Netflix to see if I can access a streamed movie without getting those weird prompts directly from my server. The movie streams perfectly, no dialogs, no errors just straight to the movie. So I figure that Playon will now work and go to my HD200 and still nothing… I figured it either took some time to update or that I needed to restart Playon. I did both, waiting even a couple of hours to see if that mattered and still I don’t get my instant queue to display on my HD200.

I’m determined to get this working and not sure of the course I need to take. Does anyone have any ideas that might lead in the right direction?

Thanks!

[simonen]

I think you might need the most recent beta firmware for your HD200. That got mine working.

[gplasky]

Same here. Running the latest beta firmware on the HD200.

Gerry

[wrems]

The beta version of the HD200 firmware did the trick! Netflix is working, but leaves much to be desired… Do you think Sage will integrate Netflix support in the future with or without the use of Playon?

[Rezolution]

Originally Posted by wrems

The beta version of the HD200 firmware did the trick! Netflix is working, but leaves much to be desired… Do you think Sage will integrate Netflix support in the future with or without the use of Playon?

I'd appreciate it if you'd email support@sagetv.com and ask them if they are going to add Netflix support.

I think the more requests they get via email, the more likely they may be to add that functionality. I'm not sure if they have a "marketing" email, all I can find is "support"

[briands]

They also accept feature requests via their support form Request Official SageTV Technical Supportunder SageTV Products in the forum.