PlayOn Desktop Lifetime License Sale, 4/8/20

[pjpjpjpj]

$34.99, "limited time offer". See their website.

The desktop version doesn't require paying for recordings, you can record all you want. They mostly push the mobile-only version because most folks don't have a 24/7/365 server in their homes, but if you're here on this forum, you probably do....

[btrcp2000]

Dayum, I thought I was a genius when I paid 75 bucks 5 or 6 years ago, maybe longer. Now I see this, and also elsewhere it was apparently $20 in December. It works pretty well for what it does, but can be touchy about the computer, video card, and the monitors its attached to. I have an unnecessarily complicated setup with splitters to put monitors in various rooms from one PC, and every now and then a recording will be two hours of an HDCP warning. I always assumed it had somrthing to do with one of the screens being turned on/off while the recording was launching. Another attempt or two fixed it, doesnt happen that often anyway.

I do miss their chrome extension that could detect a stream playing off any old website and capture it. love to hear of any ideas for that

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

Dayum, I thought I was a genius when I paid 75 bucks 5 or 6 years ago, maybe longer. Now I see this, and also elsewhere it was apparently $20 in December. It works pretty well for what it does, but can be touchy about the computer, video card, and the monitors its attached to. I have an unnecessarily complicated setup with splitters to put monitors in various rooms from one PC, and every now and then a recording will be two hours of an HDCP warning. I always assumed it had somrthing to do with one of the screens being turned on/off while the recording was launching. Another attempt or two fixed it, doesnt happen that often anyway.

Are you not still using Sage? If you are, you can use the PlayOn plugin and play your recordings (or even live stream) at the TVs that have Sage...

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

I do miss their chrome extension that could detect a stream playing off any old website and capture it. love to hear of any ideas for that

That was a great function but I'm guessing it must have gotten the attention of the Feds.

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

I do miss their chrome extension that could detect a stream playing off any old website and capture it. love to hear of any ideas for that

Video Downloader works with Chrome but not for YouTube

[VCRUser]

There is a FireFox extension that is specific to YouTube. There might be more than one, but the one that's been working for me lately is called YouTube Video and Audio Downloader (Dev Edt.).

[btrcp2000]

Now that I think about, I'm remembering Plex being 75 bucks. I thnk I got playon for 30 or so.

In any case, what I do is have gemstone and BMT menus treat the playon recordings the same as sagetv recordings, so my TV recordings could have come from a tuner or playon, but they are all in the same place. This is actually what forced me to figure out unraid, as IIRC the windows sagetv server version can't handle the memory/java/something or other required to run gemstone on multiple extenders (I now have 6 shieldtvs). This has worked really well despite the somewhat steep learning curve for a non-programmer. Took a while to get it down (or even figure out that it was possible)

All that said, sage is seeing less and less use lately, especially with no sports. I see channels DVR in my future (or at least the free trial), possibly around when i would have to pay for schedule+ again soon

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by VCRUser

There is a FireFox extension that is specific to YouTube. There might be more than one, but the one that's been working for me lately is called YouTube Video and Audio Downloader (Dev Edt.).

I've used freeware Any Video Converter (https://www.any-video-converter.com/) for years... You can download the videos without opening youtube at all, just paste in the URLs of the videos (make sure you remove the "s" from "https". If I have a batch I want to download, I open them quickly in youtube, copy the URLs, paste into a notepad, remove the S's, and then add them to the download section in AVC. Has always worked great.

Works pretty well as a video converter to/from most formats and allows trimming and such too.

[sic0048]

What is the benefit to Playon?

Looking at the website, it seems that it would simply allow me to record shows from various streaming services (that are either free, or avaiable with a paid subscription like Netflix). Using the SageTV Playon plugin, these shows would appear in my "recordings" - is that right?

I can definitely see the advantage if this is correct. Being able to record an entire season or even series on Amazon or other services and have those shows in SageTV would be nice.

I just want to make sure I understand the benefits of this before I possibly pull the trigger.

Thanks!

[egeller]

Originally Posted by sic0048

What is the benefit to Playon?

Thanks!

One of its uses, for me, is as a backup for the sometimes-flakey Windows Media Center method of recording premium channels.

Also, if SageTV records a premium channel that is not HD, and I really want to watch / save an HD copy of the movie, I will go to Playon Desktop (not SageTV's Plugin) and bring down a copy of the movie.

(I get a better resolution copy from Playon Desktop than via SageTV's UPnP plug-in).

Another use of it, for me, is that it is easier for me to navigate Amazon Prime in Playon, than it is in Amazon's app or the web browser.

[pjpjpjpj]

As long as the folder(s) you set for PlayOn recordings are visible as media folders by Sage, you will get everything you record from PlayOn in Sage. You can use the plugin through Sage to watch something live but more and more (especially with stay-at-home) my family has been using the "PlayLater" function where we just go into the PlayOn UI on the server and set something to record (an entire season of some show we've never watched) and it all dumps into a folder, and I modified our Sage menu to have a path to the "PlayLater" folder, so everything shows up there.

I am a little unsure what methods of recording in PlayOn make shows appear as TV recordings in Sage. I feel like maybe it only happens when we set them to record from within the Sage plugin, but then again I think some shows we've set to record from within PlayOn have occasionally shown up as Sage TV recordings too. Either way, easy enough (with the plugin) to switch them to be handled as imported videos or whatever.

Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think PlayOn can record anything better than 720p (can it?). That's the best I believe I have gotten. And it can't do 5.1 audio, only stereo. I do recall back when Sage first went open-source, Fuzzy set out to get Sage whitelisted by PlayOn (or was it getting the PlayOn plugin whitelisted by netflix?) so that it would allow HD content, because it used to require that... there's a thread about it here somewhere.

[mdnttoker]

I mainly use PlayOn to record Hulu shows so that I can skip through the commercials at will...it works well for that.

I just add the PlayOn recording directory to my Sage directories list, and wa-la!