This is a tricky problem. Online realtime streams can only of course be downloaded as fast as your broadband connection and the content provider allows, so it’s impossible to fast forward beyond the latest downloaded (and transcoded) point in the media. It’s analogous to watching a live broadcast with a DVR — pausing and rewinding work fine, but fast forwarding can never go beyond “right now”. Additionally, many of the devices aren’t set up very well to handle when the intermediary end of the media stream is reached. In these cases, they may just give up, and exit playback with an obscure error, instead of waiting and buffering. In any case, we are working on solutions and improvements to this issue, but it’s technically very challenging.

And yeah, it’s a tricky problem, if you’re trying to make it work as fast forward.  But if you just make the progress bar work — a feature of every media player — you solve the problem.

photo credit: Newhaircut

Here’s what happens whenever I try to watch a Hell’s Kitchen episode on PlayOn: I watch the first 20 minutes on my TV, something happens and the image stalls, I monkey with my Wii and my laptop, PlayOn gives up so I restart the video, I can’t fast forward, and I end up watching the last 20 minutes on my laptop.  And I can watch the last 20 minutes on my laptop because I can click the damn progress bar.  I can start watching at minute 21.  Implement that, PlayOn.