PlayLater by MediaMall Technologies Reviewed

PlayLater is a DVR for online videos from MediaMall Technologies which allows you to watch your favorite online shows and movies offline, anytime, on your time. It sounds great, but before you jump on the bandwagon, read on.

At a glance
Pros

• Support is very responsive and helpful
• Fast forward and rewind do work if viewed on the PC where PlayLater is located

Cons

• Still requires a beefy CPU
• Error checking is not adequate
• Still no fast forward and rewind in DLNA or PlayOn app
• Never did get it to work via DLNA or the iOS PlayOn app

I've made no secret about my love for PlayOn and how much we use it. From streaming flash video to our iPad to watching online content via DLNA on our TV, it rocks. It really is a well thought out little piece of software that fills a big niche. It does have shortcomings though. For instance, it requires a rather beefy CPU to transcode video on the fly. Because it's transcoding on the fly, fast forward and rewind are also not a possibility.

I thought as software being called a DVR, PlayLater would allow me to get that power hungry quad-core off the PlayOn grid and running on something like my low power Atom home server instead. Since I figured the videos were being downloaded and transcoded ahead of time, a smaller CPU to simply stream would be more than adequate. I also thought we'd be able to finally fast forward through the Biggest Loser to the point where we'd left off the night before. I was wrong on both counts.



It turns out PlayLater still needs to transcode to your device for viewing, even after it's downloaded and transcoded in to PlayLater. The media is converted in to a .plv format within PlayLater which other devices can not read unless transcoded. This still requires a beefy CPU and kills the possibility of fast forward and rewind. If your PC is hooked to your TV in an HTPC scenario, and you are willing to watch the video through Windows Media Player, fast forward and rewind are possibilities as its not transcoded at that point. However, this is the only time. It left me asking, "What really is the point of PlayLater then?"

Well, one use would be to record online shows ahead of time on your laptop for watching on the plane. For this PlayOn would work great, but your laptop would have to have a stout processor and good internet connection for the initial transcoding. Someone with no cable or internet at home could sit in a wireless hotspot, download and transcode the video, then watch it later at home. I'd rather simply pay for internet.

As for the PlayLater interface, it's nice, and it's easy to navigate. My personal tastes would have preferred a web server for recording and scheduling programs as our PlayOn PC is connected to the TV via HDMI. Sitting upstairs on the iPad, or even at work, and scheduling recordings seemed attractive to me.




We had a couple of dud recordings. PlayLater thought it had finished, but the online stream had just died instead. There needs to be some error checking there, which I understand is not easy given the current architecture. The first night we tried watching a PlayLater video on our TV via DLNA and couldn't get it to work. We ended up watching it on the TV via the HDMI port on our repurposed TiVo instead. It worked great that way, and we had fast forward and rewind. I prefer using our TV remote over a full keyboard and mouse when at the TV though.

Support from MediaMall Technologies is very responsive and knowledgeable. I've been in IT for nearly 18 years and this was the first time I've had to rely on support so much to get something working. The suggestions from support were reasonable and fast, however I never did end up getting PlayLater to work for viewing to our Samsung TV via DLNA, or by the iPad PlayOn app. I always received the error message below which states, "The selected folder contains no media items" despite the .plv files being in the PlayLater directory.


In the end I really didn't see the point of PlayLater. It's not a replacement for PlayOn, it won't let you use a low power PC or slow internet connection. MediaMall Technologies could have a little gem on their hands if they allowed the end user to choose video format on initial recording. If that was an option I could simply transcode the initial media on our low power home server. Once done I'd pipe the files over to our Vortexbox and watch at our leisure, fast forwarding and rewinding until my heart was content, just as a true DVR would allow you to do.