The PlayOn Blog

Early January means one thing every year; The PlayOn Team boards a flight to Vegas to tackle CES. Well, we kind of tackle it from the sidelines every year. We go down and meet with press that is in town for the expo and then we get out of town while the gettin’s good. We leave the madness of the show floor to those more brave (or foolish). So what is it that we wanted to talk to the press about this year? A few things, and now we’ll share them with you.

PlayOn and Cutting the Cord
For most of you this is old news but, believe it or not, it’s only beginning to hit the radar of a lot of press folks. 2012 seems to be shaping up as the year of the cord cutter, so whenever mainstream press finds a technology that helps people to do that, they seem to get excited. Enter PlayOn. In a recent customer survey 40% of our customers report that they cut their cable or satellite completely. Nearly 60% said they either cut it or significantly reduced their service. Money Magazine recommended PlayOn as a great way to save money (they did that over 1 year ago, so kudos to them for being ahead of the curve). Based on the response we got to PlayOn at Monday night’s press event, we are hopeful for more praise and accolades soon. Stay tuned.

PlayLater
PlayLater is new enough that we are still just introducing it to a lot of press. So we talked about it a lot on Monday night. If tied in to the cutting the cord conversation PlayLater just completes the conversation. “Think about PlayOn as a replacement for your cable box, think of PlayLater as the replacement for your Tivo," seemed to be the explanation that resonated. The whole solution will cost you only $7.99/month or $99/lifetime. This as opposed to a cable bill that is likely north of $100 for just one month.
PlayLater is more than that though, it’s the ideal product for travelers. Travel & Leisure’s Tom Samiljan stopped by on the heels of his article about PlayLater in this month’s issue. Tom claims that PlayLater provides an excellent alternative for travellers to more "mainstream"  streaming solutions like HBO Go. Time Magazine did a piece on PlayLater which you can see here. Revision 3 filmed a spot on PlayLater. ABC News Radio checked in on how the product was coming as did The Wall Street Journal, CNET, Mashable, and more. There is a lot of buzz about PlayLater as it is truly one of this year’s groundbreaking products. The first ever DVR for online content, the press gets it, it’s kind of a big deal.

The Channel Store
We also spent a lot of time talking about the new PlayOn Channel store. It’s the first à la carte channel store for your television, and it’s free. It was fun to talk about the channel store because it’s been such a runaway success. In less than a month we’ve already gotten 30 new channels that PlayOn customers can watch and PlayLater customers can record. If you want to see what the press saw you can check out our channel store here.
 
So now we’re back in our offices in Seattle and NYC and another pilgrimage to CES is in the books. We’ll do it all over again next year and we’ll have to keep making cool things to talk about when we get there. We’re glad you’re along for this ride, it’s only going to get better. Until next time, cheers!
 

Is it just me or does it seem like everyone got a Roku for Christmas this year? I hope it’s not just me, I hope that the mainstream is really beginning to adopt streaming entertainment. It’s about high time they did. PlayOn has been around in earnest for about 3 years now and things have changed. It used to take an entire cup of coffee (or cocktail if the occasion called for it) to explain to my friends and family just what PlayOn was. Now it takes less time than it does for them to add sugar. People understand the terminology and the concept now, they get streaming. I think that’s a good sign.
 
Then my aunt in rural Virginia got a Roku, now I know that streaming has arrived. It’s one thing to be able to talk to my relatively tech savvy friends about PlayOn and streaming and DLNA, it’s another thing altogether when my aunt who still by her own admission doesn’t “get” the Internet is streaming Netflix to her TV. I’ve never felt more convinced that major changes are afoot in the way we consume media. As someone who works for a company that is right in the streaming technology mix I couldn’t be more excited. You should be excited too, the growth of streaming entertainment will present you with more choices than you’ve ever had before and it’ll do it for less money.
 
My aunt got a Roku just for Netflix, but I have friends that got Roku’s too. Why? Because they wanted an easy way to stream more content into their homes. Whether it’s Netflix, music, shows, or something else, Roku gives them an easy relatively cheap way for them to do it. Some of them intend to fully cut their cable and save around $100/month. Others are using Roku to supplement their cable options with a host of on-demand titles and some cool music sites. Some of them still don’t even know how they’re going to use it, but they know they will.
 
So why am I telling you this? Easy, PlayOn is the best investment you can make in making your Roku be all it can be. For only a few bucks a month you can bring live news, Hulu (no Hulu+ subscription required), Comedy Central (The Daily Show anyone?), PBS, CNN, Spike, and much more to your Roku. It’s super easy to do, it’s free to try out, and it adds more content to your Roku than you can imagine. We also want you to know that we’re working hard on making PlayOn work even better with Roku. So whether you’re a cord cutter, a cord never, or just someone with a cool new Roku you’re not sure how you’ll use, PlayOn is the best plugin channel you can add to get the most of your new Roku. It’s easy to get started. http://www.playon.tv/devices/roku
 
Enjoy.