Hulu Desktop Integration
Outdated: Access to Hulu is now handled through the MythNetvision plugin.
Contents
General
This guide will walk you through the installation and integration of Hulu Desktop for Linux. Hulu builds for Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04, but most other distros should work. It assumes that you're running as the user that your Mythfrontend runs as, and that you have already configured LIRC to work. Full LIRC setup is outside the scope of this article.
Please note that the guide doesn't fully integrate Hulu into your Mythfrontend--it configures it to launch Hulu Desktop from Myth and sets up LIRC.
Hulu Desktop Installation
Installation of the Hulu Desktop app itself is fairly trivial, assuming you have the necessary prerequisites. You will need Flash installed.
Ubuntu
If you don't have Flash installed:
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
Now, download the .deb for your architecture and distro from Hulu Labs. To install using the command prompt:
sudo dpkg --install filename
Gentoo
Hulu Desktop is now in Portage, keyworded ~x86 and ~amd64, so installation is simple:
echo media-tv/huludesktop ~\* >>/etc/portage/package.keywords emerge -av media-tv/huludesktop
If you don't already have Flash or other dependencies installed, they will be downloaded and installed as well.
LinHES
sudo pacman -Sy huludesktop
The package will take care of placing Hulu Desktop in the menu. You'll find it under Media Libray > Online Streams. Remote customize should be all you need to do.
MythFrontend Customizations
The next step allows you to launch Hulu from your Mythfrontend. We're going to edit the XML files for your theme for this. Copying XML files from /usr/share/mythtv into ~/.mythtv allows you to customize menus and prevents them from being overwritten during an upgrade.
Get a command line, and enter the following:
cp /usr/share/mythtv/themes/defaultmenu/mainmenu.xml ~/.mythtv # (or library.xml or wherever else you want to put the hulu command)
This assumes you haven't already edited your Mythfrontend's appearance. If you have, edit your existing copy of mainmenu.xml. In my case, I wanted Hulu available on the main menu. You can add it to wherever you like, you just need to copy the right XML file and edit it.
Now, open up mainmenu.xml (or whatever file you copied over) in your favorite editor. Add the following lines where you want your Hulu button to live.
<button> <text>Hulu Desktop</text> <action>EXEC /usr/bin/huludesktop</action> </button>
The next time you run your Mythfrontend, the button will appear on your main menu.
LIRC Configuration
First, open ~/.huludesktop in your favorite editor and find the lirc_remote_identifier line. Replace mceusb with your remote. If you don't know it, exit the editor and run irw. Hit a few buttons on your remote, and you'll get output similar to the following:
squeaker@myth:~$ irw 0000000000001795 00 Down Hauppauge_350 0000000000001797 00 Right Hauppauge_350
Whatever is in place of Hauppauge_350 in your output is your remote. Edit ~/.huludesktop accordingly.
Hulu Desktop requires the -r (--release) option for proper operation.
If you are using Fedora, you can edit the line:
LIRCD_OPTIONS=""
to read
LIRCD_OPTIONS="-r"
in /etc/sysconfig/lirc
If you are using Ubuntu, edit /etc/lirc/hardware.conf and change
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""
to
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS="-r"
Now, restart LIRC. If all goes well, LIRC is now running with the -r switch. You can verify this:
squeaker@myth:~$ ps aux | grep lircd root 26192 0.0 0.0 3116 584 ? Ss 14:22 0:00 /usr/sbin/lircd --device=/dev/lirc0 -r
Customizations
As usual, YMMV. The arrow keys worked for me immediately, since they happened to have the same names as my lircd.conf file. In order to make the menu appear, I had to make an edit to ~/.huludesktop:
button_name_menu = Home
to
button_name_menu = Menu/i
for everything to work correctly. If you don't know what name LIRC has for your menu key, fire up irw and press your menu key. You should see output similar to the following:
squeaker@myth:~$ irw 000000000000178d 00 Menu/i Hauppauge_350 000000000000178d 00 Menu/i_UP Hauppauge_350 ^C
Edit ~/.huludesktop accordingly. Repeat as necessary to adapt other keys.
Troubleshooting
If huludesktop will run fine when launched alone, but will not play videos when launched from MythTV, or it says "This request is taking longer than expected...", it may be due to Flash hardware acceleration being enabled. Open huludesktop, right click inside a video and select "Settings" and disable hardware acceleration.
Fullscreen Performance Issues
On some systems, Flash video playback may be choppy or have display tearing when running at a high resolution in fullscreen mode. To deal with this, you may want to run huludesktop from a script which sets the screen to a lower resolution while huludesktop is running, and increases it after closure. Hulu's highest quality streams are 480p, so setting your resolution to that mode is probably best, though you may want to test various resolutions to find the best combination of smoothness and quality. To find out what resolutions your display supports, run xrandr. You can create the following script at /usr/local/bin/hulu For example, if your display normally runs at 1920x1080, but also supports 720x480, (these examples aren't common HDTV resolutions, change per xrandr options) the script can contain the following:
cd /usr/local/bin sudo nano hulu
Now copy and past the following code into the file
#!/bin/sh xrandr --output default --mode 720x480 && huludesktop xrandr --output default --mode 1920x1080
Exit and save. You need to set permissions for this script
sudo chmod a+x hulu
Then use /usr/local/bin/hulu in your mainmenu.xml file instead of /usr/bin/huludesktop.
Hiding the mouse cursor
If you experience your X mouse cursor showing over Hulu Desktop, try installing unclutter:
sudo apt-get install unclutter