hulu, etc. support

[brianp101]

I wanted to give everyone a quick heads up on the Hulu Plugin. I have it working in an early alpha stage. I can play video, connect to their list of videos available and pick each one I want.

A couple of issues I want to fix before posting a beta:
1. The mouse is needed to start the video. For some reason their embedded video player will not auto start, and keyboard commands are not working.

2. Need a popup with Details of the show implemented. I am still learning how to code the popup.

That's about it and I will get something posted out here soon for you guys to try out.

[johnsonx42]

While needing the mouse to start the video is not ideal, it's not so bad for those of us who have one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6880105001

As I do Yes foks, that's an MCE remote, universal learning IR remote, and air mouse all in one!

[cY2k]

I wanted to give everyone a quick heads up on the Hulu Plugin. I have it working in an early alpha stage. I can play video, connect to their list of videos available and pick each one I want.

A couple of issues I want to fix before posting a beta:
1. The mouse is needed to start the video. For some reason their embedded video player will not auto start, and keyboard commands are not working.

2. Need a popup with Details of the show implemented. I am still learning how to code the popup.

That's about it and I will get something posted out here soon for you guys to try out.

Great news! Thanks

[johnsonx42]

I got sidetracked bragging about my Gyration remote and didn't get to what I wanted to say about the plugin...

First, seriously, this is really awesome that you're working on a Hulu plugin. Thank you, Thank you! I've been trying various methods of making Hulu usuable on my TV (currently an SD rear-projection set, so interface legibility has been really bad). I managed to catch up on a few shows I had missed earlier episodes of, but the whole thing was only usable by me; didn't pass the wife or kids test at all. None of this was connected to GB-PVR, I just brought up a web browser on the TV and went to Hulu.com.

Now, for some constuctive ideas, some of which you've no doubt considered. I realize the embedded player is probably the easiest way to start, fine for a beta, but it does have it's shortcomings. For lack of a better term, I'll call the player that's used on their website the 'Full Player'. The Full Player does (usually) auto-start. It also has a true full-screen mode, though it must be called by the mouse. Lastly, as far as I know, it's the only way to play the hi-res 480p stream, which again must be selected by mouse UNLESS you are logged into the site in which case you can make the 480p stream the default.

I did once request of Hulu to add an additional option to the video settings page to make all videos default to full-screen, much like the hi-res 480p setting. They did get back to me and said they'd add it to the dev's to-do list, but nothing more happened.

So, if you can figure out how to use their 'Full Player', perhaps by reading the show info from the rss feed and then calling the player through some flash code somehow, that would be killer.

You may also wish to consider what effect it might have if you actually launch a web browser in the background pointed to http://www.hulu.com, and auto-login to hulu (to get the 480p default setting, and also to allow playing of rated-R content). Once there, perhaps your plugin could launch the Full Player with the desired video, and then somehow bring it to the foreground...

I don't really know what I'm talking about of course, I have little idea how GB-PVR plugins work nor have I written a line of code in years, but that's the tack I'd be investigating if I were trying to do this.

[swaredoc]

I have been following this thread every since you said you have been working on the plugin. Thanks you for writing the hulu plugin to work with gbpvr. I watched hulu on my tv the first time last night and thought about how great the hulu plugin will be once it is available for gbpvr.

[reyngreg]

I've been launching IE as a custom task with the homepage set to Hulu and using the Gyration remote to navigate. I'd echo johnsonx42's comments (especially the "thank you, thank you"). I'll keep my eyes open for the beta!

I'm a hardware guy, so this question my be the dumbest thing ever asked, but I'll go for it anyway... what will be used to play the flash file in your plugin? I ask because I am able to play everything else on my 2.8GHz P4 HTPC in 1080p/i flawlessly, but the hulu videos glitch constantly (even at 320 res). I'm just wondering if I'll get the same performance out of the plugin as I'd get from "pure" IE or Firefox.

[johnsonx42]

I am able to play everything else on my 2.8GHz P4 HTPC in 1080p/i flawlessly, but the hulu videos glitch constantly (even at 320 res). I'm just wondering if I'll get the same performance out of the plugin as I'd get from "pure" IE or Firefox.

Do you get the glitching if you shutdown PVRX2 and just run Hulu in IE? If so you need to be looking at something in your system config (I'm not sure what though). I've run Hulu with the 480p streams on a Celeron-M notebook, scaled up to the full 1680x1050 panel rez. That's with i915 integrated video, nothing modern or fancy.

Or it could be your connection; Hulu streams with essentially no buffering, so if anything else is using your pipe it will glitch.

[reyngreg]

Thanks for the thoughts (don't want this to turn into a support thread)...

Yeah, Hulu is glitchy no matter how it is viewed. I have a 12MB fiber line to the house and a Radeon 9550 driving video via DVI to an HDTV, so it has to be something in the system itself. Only flash video on the web has issues.

I'll keep working on that myself and looking forward to the plugin. Thanks.

[cY2k]

how's the hulu plugin coming? any updates?

[Mr. Camaro]

Sling.com is a new site in beta that combines many of these different sites into one. I haven't looked at it much but I thought I would mention it.