[mythtv-users] Hulu releases Hulu Desktop for Linux

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 09 October 2009 10:32:31 Eric Holt wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Kevin Kuphal <kkuphal at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.hulu.com/labs
> >
> > Might be of interest to some people here
>
> I installed this on my combo backend/frontend box here in my office and am
> surprised to say it works relatively well.
>
> My Myth box is Slackware-based, so I used the RPM and ran rpm2tgz on it,
> then installpkg...  It installed with no issue on Slackware, so that was a
> promising first start.  It was unable to locate my Flash plugin, but that
> was an easy fix just had to put the location into the config file.
>
> Remote didnt work out of the box, had to do some editing of config files
> and start lircd with the --r option... but that mostly works now.  The
> arrows/menu button work at least, tho right now my pause/volume buttons are
> not doing anything at all.  Not sure if they are supposed to be or not,
> still need to dig into that some.
>
> Interesting oddity...  After a fresh reboot, if I immediately launch Hulu,
> I get no audio.  Subsequent re-launches also have no audio.  It's only
> after I play something in Myth that Hulu then has audio.  Not sure what
> that's all about.  Maybe on reboot my volume is muted, and Myth is
> activating it?  I dunno, still have to dig into this issue as well.
>
> Playback looks pretty good... slightly "choppy" at times, and there is
> definite tearing happening with horizontal panning -- but I expected as
> much, I mean, its Flash on Linux afterall :)  *cough*  ;)  My TV 720p, and
> content does look pretty good though.  Menus are a bit slow to render/react
> when there is video playing.  AMD X2 5600+.  But definitely usable!
>
> I added a menu option to launch this from my Media menu... works great.
> Only issue is, when it launches I get a cursor in the middle of the screen
> that never goes away.  Can't figure out how to fix that, yet...  Also, my
> screen is blanking after a while.  I have DPMS turned off, and no
> screensaver running... so not sure why that's happening.  I'm sure its
> something simple I've overlooked.
>
> Overall, this is promising.  Very... very... VERY promising :)
> Just my .02... ;)

It seems to have potential.

I use something called PlayON to access Hulu and a lot of other online 
programming sources. It exports them as a UPnP server.

Having a UPnP renderer/control point in Myth would allow me to access Hulu and 
all the other sources PlayON makes available, how would this differ from the 
Hulu Desktop?, which would seem to be Hulu only?

The main drawback to PlayON is that it is Windows-only. They say they are 
working on (or at least thinking about) Linux support, but I'm not holding my 
breath.

A solution that did not involve sending money to Bill Gates would be 
wonderful. He seems to have enough as it is.

I'd also like to not have to deal with a plugin or external program for every 
online service, something that could access multiple sources would obviously 
be a better answer.

-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org