Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 10/16/2008 - 05:08
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that is what is says on my playon? I have had it two days for the ps3 and when i update it cut my trial in half
that is what is says on my playon? I have had it two days for the ps3 and when i update it cut my trial in half
Re: 45 day trial now 21?
Yes: as we approach our official release, and are getting ready to come out of the beta period, we are reducing our product trial period.
The previously longer trial periods of 45 and 60 days were always temporary, and were intended to allow us to work with the testing community to work through offending bugs. And all of you testers have done an outstanding job helping us narrow in on things. Thank you testers!
We know there are still issues in the latest beta, and continue to work on improving PlayOn. Even once our product goes "gold", we are committed to adding cool features, making improvements, and fixing any current or future bugs. (It would be much harder for us to commit to this if our product was free-of-charge, for example.)
Last, if for any reason there are bad bugs in the current or future releases, we can always reset the trial period for everyone on a subsequent release.
EDIT: We forgot to mention: if anyone prefers to stay on an older version of PlayOn (for example 2.58.3196) after having upgraded to a later version, but no longer has the setup executable, feel free to write our support team and request the download. This would effectively set you back to your 45 day trial period, but of course without the latest bug fixes.
Agreed.
I'm not happy about it either. You should easily be able to check how many days are left in each persons trial, and the update can go with that. I'm SURE you can even decide to do something like: "If trial is less than 21 days, trial equals 21 days, else trial equals however many days left". I signed up for a 45 day trial and have now lost over 10 days in my "trial" so far. I like what you're doing with the product, and had planned to purchase it, but you're jerking people around with their trial period leads me to question you as a company. Am I going to buy the first version, only to have do a "major update", and my purchased version only gives me "minor updates" so now I have to buy it again (Yes, I've dealt with companies that have done just that!)???
I would LOVE to see PlayOn succeed, and its shaping up to be a great product. I'm happy to help test, and have reported the couple of times I've found things that I thought might be bugs, rather than just issues on my end, but this recent trial change has left me feeling a little jaded.
Thanks for listening.
I also agree, in a previous
I also agree, in a previous post we where told all trials were reset to 45 days so all testers can fully enjoy and test the netflix support, and then bam! cut down, maybe a little advance notice or something would have been better. I agree that it's a great product, but if your gonna give someone a trial period, let them use it. Not trying to sound cruel to the Playon team, (Because there awesome for developing such great software) but that just seems a little messed up. But, that is my opinion.
Is this a free product?
NO... this is a BETA. The fact that they are letting so many of us test this product is awesome. I've seen BETAs come out where companies only let 20 or 50 people test it. There have got to be more than that testing PlayOn. Yes... it's a shock when you look and your trial is knocked down... it's a bummer. That's still 3 weeks that you get to test it.
As the Admin said... get an older version with a longer trial period (and all the bugs to go along with it). Regardless of the length of your trial, what are you going to do when it runs out - because it will eventually run out no matter how long your trial period is. I love people that complain about free things.
This is going to be a great product and a $30 pricetag is nothing. Thanks for letting so many of us test this out. Can't wait for the final product.
Now we're complaining ............
about how it's not free enough???
They made a mistake calling it a trial in the first place ..... it's a beta release being tested up til they decide it's ready for public release.
These guys have been upfront with their plans and no-one complained when they said they would extend "trial periods" if it wasn't ready for release. I'll buy it when it's out.
Try going to Nero Liquid TV; you get 15 days (if they ever make it available for testing) for a $199 product.
There's always Tversity ..........
Why the trial was really cut down
The real reason why they cut the trial down to 21 days is so that it will expire before the 14th of November. Everyone knows that as of 14th of November when the 360 offically gets netflix and soon after the plugin will be availabe for Ps3 for free. How is a company like this gonna make money selling a program that the major consoles are getting for free? If they dont release a offical copy and cut the trial period and make revenue now they wont get barely as much if the major consoles are getting the Netflix addon for free. I know for a fact that as of the 14th of November why would I need to buy this application if my console is gonna give me netflix for free? Is this program gonna make my 360 ROD any lesser then if I used netflix straight from the 360 ? NO. Would you buy something if you know you can get it free? NO
Those that have XBMC will soon be able to use netflix for free as well since they have released the open source to allow outside programers to make their own apps for free. You guys are charging for something that will be free to all major consoles in a few weeks.
Then why in the world are you
Then why in the world are you testing this program when you have better stuff for free? And the day MS gives something away .....
Re: Why the trial was really cut down
We're always disappointed to hear when folks are having a negative experience with PlayOn, and our company policy has been to strive to keep our product simple and enjoyable to use.
In any case, we offer you the following bits of information. Although we can never seem to please everybody, hopefully this will help clarify where we stand on our own product:
1) The primary reason we reduced the trial period was because we are approaching our release candidate phase.
2) The Netflix/Xbox integration is actually being delayed by Microsoft. It won't be part of the November 19 launch. You can read more about this here. Note that Microsoft also hasn't indicated when the Netflix integration will be launched. (If someone has other information about this, do let us know.)
3) The Netflix/Xbox integration also requires an Xbox Live Gold membership, which entails a subscription fee. (In other words, it's not free.) Please correct us if we're wrong about this.
4) Netflix is not currently available on the PLAYSTATION 3 or HP MediaSmart. PlayOn is targeted to owners of these devices as well as the Xbox.
5) The new Netflix API's only allow applications to manage a user's queue, not to playback the items in a given queue.
6) We feel that PlayOn is an interesting consumer product (or at least we hope so!) not just because of Netflix integration, but also Hulu, CBS, ESPN, and YouTube.
7) Given the above, we do expect that some Xbox owners may elect to not use PlayOn and stick with the native Netflix integration on their game consoles (whenever it finally becomes available). We're of course OK with that, and can understand the reasons. PlayOn requires the PC to be turned on, which is a detriment to many users. Again, understandable. We are driven to make PlayOn compelling and robust, and to add cool and interesting content. Period.
We hope this helps clarify things. Please let us know if anyone has questions.
CORRECTION
Actually, if you read the article on Joystiq that you linked to carefully, it's Netflix video sharing that is not going to be supported. In other words, you cannot have people in your friends list watching your feed off your account simultaneously (which makes perfect sense).
But the Netflix viewing integration is still slated as part of their new release of the Live code.
That being said, f* all the people complaining about a free beta test period. Even when Netflix becomes part of Live, there is still huge value in PlayOn being able to play Youtube and Hulu.
Re: CORRECTION
Hey, you're right! We read that article completely wrong, and misunderstood it to mean the entire Netflix integration in general. Good catch.
Our points above all still apply (except for point 2 of course).
21 days is good enough
21 days is more than enough time to make sure that you want to buy a program like this.
Can the above user please state where you heard that netflix is coming to the PS3?
The only deals that I've heard about are with Xbox360, with the gold membership only.
Even if Netflix comes to 360 on November 14, not every xbox 360 user has a gold account. Some people just use it as a cheap and effective media extender.
I'll pay the $30.00 for the program. Hopefully the full build will have 480P Hulu resolution.
The PS3 plays Hulu like crap.
If they above user doesn't like the program, then they should uninstall it today and just wait for the superior 360 version.
Hulu
I hate how NetFlix is getting all of the attention... you guys better not forget about Hulu!
I couldn't care less about Netflix, but I really really hope you guys add Hulu queue and 480p support really soon. Without those two features there's no way I'd buy PlayOn (I don't have a netflix acct) and if my trial expires before I get to test Hulu queue/480p support then I'm not too sure what I'll do...
I really think there should be no trial during a beta period. The trial should start when the product is released. The whole point of beta testing is the software isn't yet complete and may be buggy / gimped. The people whose trials expire now are screwed... what did they try? Nothing but an unfinished product...
Re: Hulu
Understandable with your frustrations. A couple of points to keep in mind:
1) Not a single PlayOn installation should have expired during beta testing (barring bugs in our trial detection functionality). We have continually extended our trial period since the day we launched.
2) We have been working our tails off to get Hulu queue and 480p support, and things are looking extremely good. We expect both these features to be available in the next push.
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