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Today's Show:
MediaMall has released a new version of PlayOn that now supports Netflix Watch Instantly streaming.  This is the feature we've all been waiting for, so we had to check it out.  Setup is simple, you just add your Netflix username and password and you're done.  There's even a test button to make sure you typed your password correctly.

For the last couple weeks, since we did Episode #315 complaining about the lack of good choices for DLNA servers, we've received a ton of recommendations and tried out almost a thousand of them.  For the short term we had to focus on software-based options, but there are also a bunch of hardware solutions available as well.  We're trying to get our hands on some of them to add to the trials.  With so many options, something was sure to blow us away, right?

PlayOn Update

We installed and tested PlayOn version 2.58.3196 using the PS3 as our player.  The first thing we noticed, even before getting to the Netflix options, was that they're rearranged how the content is laid out.  Originally each video source (Hulu, YouTube, ESPN, CBS, etc.) showed up as it's own media server.  The PS3 would report PlayOn as multiple DLNA servers on the network.  With the new build, each source shows up as a sub-item under one PlayOn media server.  It's a lot cleaner and actually makes much more sense.  So things are looking good.

Then we got into the Netflix section of the PlayOn server.  What you see is an alphabetical listing of what's in your Watch Instantly queue at Netflix.  There are way too many titles to try to navigate through them all on the PS3, so you have to log into Netflix and add them to your queue in advance.  PlayOn shows the cover art, title, a short description and the playing time for each film.  TV Series show up as a folder with, presumably, each episode listed individually in the folder.  With the couple of series we tried, we weren't able to actually see any of the episodes listed there.

We wanted to get a few more titles in the list, so we logged into Netflix and added some items to the queue.  They didn't appear in the PS3 until we forced it to reload its list of Media Servers.  It's unclear whether the problem was a caching issue with the PS3 or an update problem with PlayOn, but the workaround was fairly painless.

As to video quality, we were pleasantly surprised.  We watched some older content, like a Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie and weren't expecting much.  The quality wasn't that bad; very watchable.  We had higher hopes for newer films like Spiderman 3.  It looked a little better, and certainly watchable, but not quite DVD quality.  We were surprised that it wasn't in 16:9 format.  Because it's streamed and not downloaded, fast forwarding was unreliable, forcing us to watch the seemingly endless opening credits for Spiderman, but we digress.

Overall the new Netflix functionality in PlayOn worked great.  It's still in Beta, so we expect some of the kinks to be worked out, but we were happy with it.  Once it makes it to production, it'll be worth the $30 asking price.

DLNA Server Trials

Bottom line on DLNA servers, to quote a famous song, we still haven't found what we're looking for.  Ideally we'd get something like DVDPedia, MyMovies or the new Open Media Library to organize media on the computer, with the ability to stream it out to a DLNA player on the network.  All of those solutions require a computer at the TV to render the media library.  Where's the really good media library organizer that allows you to tag, organize and manage you media library, then stream it too?  Nowhere we could find.

Because we're using Braden's PS3 as our test player, all of the options we looked at were the Windows versions.  Those with Mac or Linux versions may operate differently on the other platforms, but we'd guess they're pretty close.

What options did we try?

• Allegro Media Server
• Cyberlink Digital Home Enabler Kit
• Google Media Server
• MediaTomb
• Nero MediaHome 4
• SimpleCenter Premium
• Tversity
• TwonkyMedia
• Windows Media Player 11

Which ones are worth a look?

Nero MediaHome 4 ($39.99) Wins for easiest overall DLNA server.  It is simple to setup, simple to use, and just works.  The interface isn't very flashy, but it is functional.  The tree control used to view the media library doesn't let you do anything to organize your collection, and it seemed to falter with really large collections of media files.  Bottom line, not a lot of features, but it works like a tank.

Windows Media Player 11 (Free) Wins for best media organizer.  The library organization features of WMP11 are the best out there.  You can set all sorts of different attributes on files, but not all of those actually show up when you stream the media to a DLNA player.  So while they're cool on the PC, they're of limited use on the DLNA side.  One cool feature is the ability to limit what kinds of content each DLNA player is allowed to get, by rating for example. 

TVersity (Free) Wins for best transcoder.  The media organization is limited, and because the UI is built to be a little flashy, it's actually a bit more cumbersome than Nero MediaHome.  But on the plus side, using TVersity, the PS3 was able to render media files that most of the other servers couldn't.  A couple of the other media servers handled them, but their UI on the computer was so bad they didn't make the cut.

Now to uninstall about a thousand DLNA servers from our test machine.  We really need to get VMs for this stuff...

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