It appears that many of the original channels supported by playon are now removed.
Playon plug-ins are no longer supported.
Online release notes for the last 3 updates are not posted.
Playon support says support for subtitles in Amazon is being worked - for the last 2 years.
It appears that this product is slowly dying.
Is that the case?
It would appear that it is dying. The only new channel added in the last 2 years was the Roku Channel, hardly a big deal. And as you noted, most of the channels that PlayOn originally supported have been removed.
My guess is, they started this product/company hoping to be bought out by one of the LiveTV streaming services (Hulu, Sling, DirectTV Now, PSVue) as their DVR solution. They then put all their eggs in the basket of their Cloud DVR option, devoting all resources to implementing it and maintaining it, and leaving almost no developers to support their original product for the desktop. I assume they were hoping this would make them more appealing to Sling or DirecTV or whomever. Alas, all the live TV services had already started their own cloud DVR solutions by that point, leaving almost no one to buy out MediaMall (the company that owns PlayOn).
This has left MediaMall's investor's with no way to get their money out, and no desire to put any more money in. And thus we have the situation as is, a product that could be very usable by its clients/customers, but that never will be because it cannot be maintained to any appropriate standard.
As an example, DirecTV Now (now known as AT&T TV Now) hasn't worked correctly since they started splashing a "Nag Screen" (about mid July 2019) telling the viewer that DirecTV Now was about to become AT&T TV Now. And now of course since the URLs have changed, PlayOn cannot even log in using the user's correct account credentials.
In addition, MediaMall made the mistake of offering a lifetime purchase option, which I and many took years ago because of the great deal it was. That left them with little or no sustainable income stream. Honestly, I would be more than willing to pay a *reasonable* monthly/annual subscription if it would improve the desktop software. I have no interest in the cloud DVR service, as it takes control of content away from me as the consumer. Every solution today seems to be designed to take away consumer control, and I have no desire to continue to fuel that trend.
But at this point, I would think just ceasing operations would be preferable to hobbling on like this.
I agree with you about cloud. I like the fact that I can download a video locally and take it with me regardless of internet access.
It looks DOA today. I get no response from support and have difficulty recording after having done so for a couple years. They pushed the cloud pretty heavy. Better use up and DL those cloud credits in a hurry. Please tell me I am wrong!
