PlayOn Premium is coming! We will release PlayOn Premium on July 15th, 2010. It will include: Comedy Central (including South Park), NHL, TV.com, MTV.com, VH1.com, and more. It will be sold as an annual subscription -- $39.99 for the first year and $19.99/year thereafter. Your subscription will entitle you to all new content services over the course of the year (and we plan to release a lot), as well as functionality improvements (including a greatly enhanced and integrated Plugin experience, Gold version of the Wii, and much more). We will also be releasing iPhone support for PlayOn Premium which may carry a small additional fee.

Starting on May 20, 2010, we will no longer sell PlayOn as a lifetime license for a single fee. We will start selling PlayOn as a subscription ($39.99 for the first year and $19.99/year thereafter) on May 20, 2010. Customers who purchase PlayOn on or after May 20,2010 will automatically receive PlayOn Premium upon its launch on July 15th, 2010.

We will continue to honor the lifetime licenses for those that purchased PlayOn prior to May 20, 2010 (which we are now calling PlayOn Basic). Your PlayOn Basic will continue to work with the existing non-beta content (Hulu, Netflix, CBS.com, ESPN.com, CNN.com, YouTube, MyMedia and Plugins) as well as Amazon VOD, MLB.tv, and Pandora. After July 15th, 2010, The Daily Show and the Colbert Report will no longer be supported in PlayOn Basic as these are being launched out of beta as part of the full Comedy Central integration in PlayOn Premium. PlayOn Base will continue to receive new features and development support, but no new content will be added into the core (though you can always add more plugins).

To thank our loyal customers, if you purchased PlayOn prior to May 20, 2010, we will be offering a founding member discount for PlayOn Premium. You may upgrade to PlayOn Premium for only $4.99 for the first year ($19.99/year thereafter). Once you purchase the upgrade, you will receive a new license key which will unlock the new PlayOn Premium content. You may also cancel your subscription at any time, and go back to PlayOn Basic (be sure to save your original license key). We are sure you will enjoy the new content and features so much, you will never want to go back.

Between now and July 15th, 2010, you will see a number of content services in PlayOn listed as “Premium Preview” – this is to give you a sneak preview of some of the content that you will have access to as a Premium subscriber. Please note that this content will no longer be accessible after July 15th 2010. We hope you enjoy these previews and encourage you to upgrade on July 15th.

Why are we doing this? The annual subscription fee will fund continued development and support. We want to ensure that we can always give the latest and greatest content and service to our entire user base. The on-going subscription fee will allow that. Give it a shot – we think you’ll like what you see.

If you have any additional questions, please contact us at support@playon.tv

Richard Lawler, who writes for EngadgetHD, just gave PlayOn the Thumbs Up. The PlayOn Beta has only been available for the past 12 hours and he has already downloaded it and watched Psych on his PS3. Impressive. He says that while his experience was good, he'd wait before paying the $30 post-trial price. OK, we hear you. We'll earn your $30. We'll add Netflix and CNN as we move from Beta to GA (General Availability). We'll continue to make it better and better with your feedback. After all - there is no advertising in the interface (yes, Hulu has pre-rolls and mid-rolls to support their business), but the license fee is the only way we can support the product -- and we do have to eat...at least every once in a while ;).

We have had great feedback from our DSM-520 users, and we want to offer ActiveTV to many more users!  We are completing development on a UPnP version of ActiveTV...it will first be available for the PS3, XBox 360, and HP MediaSmart TV.  It will offer a limited but powerful set of video content sources, including Hulu, YouTube, CBS.com, CNN.com, ESPN.com, and Netflix.  WOW.  And -- to kick it all off, we are offering a FREE Beta version for folks who have one of these game consoles/TVs.  If you are interested in participating in our Beta, you can subscribe to this blog (we will be offering all subscribers the Beta version) or drop me an email at tracy@themediamall.com and I'll make sure you get on the Beta list!  It is still about 2 months out, but it is something to look forward to this fall!