• follow us on:
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • Youtube
Home » Forums » Windows Entertainment and Connected Home » Windows Vista Media Center » Hulu / Internet TV Plug-In coming VERY soon...

Windows Entertainment and Connected Home

How to organize, access and enjoy all of your media in and around your home
Details
  • 419 Replies
  • 58 Subscribers
  • Postedover 3 years ago
Options
  • Share this on Twitter
  • Share this on Facebook

Hulu / Internet TV Plug-In coming VERY soon...

  • rated by 4 users
  • This post has 419 Replies |
  • 58 Followers
Page 11 of 28 (420 items) «910111213»
  •  
    Posted by
    on Thu, Feb 12 2009 5:14 PM
    Joined on Fri, Mar 9 2007 | 11 Posts
    • New Member TGBUsers
    I have to agree and disagree. I realize that lots of people use extenders specifically the xbox 360, infact I have one myself. Even though I have a 360 I built myself a home theater pc to run my 40 inch Samsung and I believe there are lots of others with htpc's that can utilize this plugin without extender support. That's not to say extender support is not important just saying that this plugin is very useful without it.
  •  
    Posted by
    on Thu, Feb 12 2009 6:14 PM
    Joined on Wed, Nov 26 2008 | 111 Posts
    • Member TGBUsers

    Just tried the beta for tunerfree and I can get all the way to the screen that displays the selected program to play and then the extender freezes up.  I could not figure out any way to select the play button in the middle of the screen so I suspect that this version is not designed to work with an extender.

     

    JC

    JC
  •  
    Posted by
    on Thu, Feb 12 2009 6:45 PM
    Joined on Fri, Jul 4 2008 | 111 Posts
    • Member Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers
    Just a random reminder.  This is clearly a very active thread which proves people have been waiting for this kind of activity and development in this area for some time.  The developer is doing this project in his free time late at night and doesn't plan to charge, don't forget to donate if you are able!
  •  
    Posted by
    on Thu, Feb 12 2009 10:12 PM
    Joined on Wed, Feb 4 2009 | 90 Posts
    • Member Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers
    Release wont be tonight... WILL be during the day tomorrow!
     
    I mis-judged how much side work would need to be done to actually put out a download of the app tonight... It's almost 1:00am and I just don't have enough left in the tank tonight to get this thing out the door tonight!  I dont want to rush it and forget to do something or leave something out of the distribution... So some time early tomorrow I should be posting the first BETA build!
     
    I have the install done for the release that I will be putting out tomorrow and I am just working on cleaning up somethings on the website along with doing some install testing on mulitiple machines... there wont be much debugging in this first release either... we will just have to play it by ear with any errors that people run into during install and use.
     
    I will say... I have been doing all my development and testing on my laptop (an HP mobile workstation) and hadn't yet used the add-in on my big screen through my everyday Media Center PC... well... I tested the install package by installing it on my Media Center PC and let me just tell you... ITS AWESOME!  There is still a good deal of content missing and alot of the artwork isn't out there yet but I have it setup so I can add that after the release is out and users don't have to download another copy of the app to get the new content or artwork... but again... THIS THING IS AWESOME!  I sat down with my remote and just started browsing away at REAL tv content in a nice attractive full screen display!  No interaction with the mouse AT ALL!!!
     
    It's funny... I know I am the one developing this so there is a pretty neat sense of accomplishment when I saw it running on the TV for the first time but it was even more than that... It was almost like "finally... its about time something like this was available for Media Center"... with the addin's attractive interface and the fact that it would force the player full screen all by itself really made it feel like I was just watching TV!!!! TRUELY AWESOME!!!
     
    I hope I haven't let down too many people by not getting the app out tonight but I give you my word that it will be available tomorrow during the day!
     
    I am heading to bed to finally get a little more sleep than I have been but I am really looking forward to an exciting release day tomorrow!
  •  
    Posted by
    on Thu, Feb 12 2009 11:33 PM
    Joined on Sat, Apr 19 2008 | 145 Posts
    • Member TGBUsers
    You want comments in this thread rather than your blog? Can't reply to your posts over there - hehe

    I'm excited to try this...if it works well I'll show it to my wife. I can also test iwth a DMA2200 "when the time comes"
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 1:33 AM
    Joined on Sun, Jul 31 2005 | 445 Posts
    • Regular TGBUsers
    Yaggs:

    I did some early testing with my 360 last night and the app works and the extender will open hulu and start playing the video but it was a little choppy and there was no sound... no granted I didn't do the network tuning wizard in media center and my 360 is on a wireless connection and so is my notebook that I am developing on... but again... i do fully intend to support them... I will most likely have to do some transcoding of the flash video some how... that just wont be in the first release tonight or tomorrow.


    Remember too that many people who have Media Center have it running on a PC that is attached to a TV with a remote control... so it will be very useful right out of the gate for those folks!  I have a little mac mini plugged into my TV running media center and the app works great on it!


    I thought you might be interested in my experience with extenders and flash, (taken from an article on my blog):

    I have an Add In for vista and windows 7 (TunerFreeMCE) which allows users to watch online TV from a number sources . It plays all of the catch up and live content from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five in the UK, and more recently Hulu in the US (that's right, there is an add-in already out there which allows you to watch hulu on media center). Some of the content is in flash form, and some of it is streamed as WMV. Since the code has been out there for almost a year now, during that time I have gathered quite a bit of experience with playing flash in media center, and most of that experience is not best news for extenders I'm afraid.

    Most of the TV companies who provide flash video do so using the Akamai tech stack to secure and stream their content. They build their own custom flash players on top of that to provide their own flavour to the players, e.g. related videos and so on. The probably intentional side effect of this is that it is really not trivial to get in to their flash streams and do anything with it. It's not like the have an rtmp url easily accessible for you to get hold of. There are ways of doing it, but not easily. There is for example a project on sourceforge called rtmpdump which allows you to download flash videos from the BBC and from Hulu.

    One of the biggest problems with the TV companies building their own flash players is that they typically don't build them to interact with the remote control - i.e. they don't listen for key presses, or have useful javascript hooks to send messages to the player. I have overcome that in the past by building custom versions of the flash players. That's time consuming and annoying. I can't wait to see how Yaggs solved the problem though, because it looks like he didn't need to do that from his video.

    Another annoyance with flash is that it is not supported in MCML - the vista and windows 7 presentation layer for writing media center applications. That means that any application like this has to exit MCML and enter html to play flash content. That's not that hard to build, but it does have the additional pain that you can't use the MCMLPad debugger with the code any more, because it's not compatible with the Add-In required to go to html. Doesn't effect the end user, but is a pain for the developer.

    The really big problem with flash though is extenders. The way that extenders work is that they have one dedicated channel for music and video, and everything else is sent via a remote desktop connection. You will get WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMA, MP3 and WAV-PCM to play fine on an extender, and everything else is routed over the remote desktop protocol, which has quite a few limitations. Most notable of those limitations is that the frame rate is poor, and in some cases no sound (I have never worked out why no sound - if anyone knows the explanation, I would love to know). Microsoft's advice is not to use flash on extenders. It's a shame they didn't make a flash engine part of the technology requirements on the extender, but it's too late for that now.

    As part of the windows 7 beta testing, I grilled Microsoft on support for flash in the MCML layer and on extenders. Unfortunately the answer is that they don't see it as a priority at this time. I think that is very short sighted given the direction that online video is going. Over the past year, I have noticed more TV providers move away from WMV to flash, because it is cross-platform compatible. That gets the Mac and Linux lobbyists off their backs. I also suspect that the DRM on WMV being cracked didn't endear that format to them either.

    So, since the future of online video for the moment lies with flash, and Microsoft aren't interested in providing better support for that in media center and extenders, the only real way of getting great support for online video in media center is for someone to write a transcoder for converting the flash stream to WMV or MPEG-1/2. Since the flash streams typically contain H.264 video for high def, simply unpacking it from the rtmp stream isn't enough for it to play on extenders or pre-windows 7 media centers, since they don't support that video format. That conversion is not a trivial thing to do on the fly (as opposed to downloading the whole thing first then converting it).

    I am hoping that this mini-essay on the topic is going to prompt someone out there to start an open source project to convert flash streams to a media center compatible format. There are lots of add-ins that would benefit from it, like my TunerFreMCE code, Yougle and I'd imagine Yaggs' code, so go on someone, make a name for yourself by taking up this challenge.

    Martin
    http://www.milliesoft.co.uk/
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 5:20 AM
    Joined on Mon, Oct 6 2008 | 49 Posts
    • New Member Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers

    This looks fantastic!  Congratulations to you, Yaggs!

    Have you considered, or is it even posible, to add recording capability to your plug in/app.  This would be very usefull to someone like myself who has a slower internet connection.  I could download for smooth viewing later.  Anyway, this is something for the back burner, as I have 2 Linksys DMA 2100 extenders that I would like to use with this.Smile [:)]

    Thank you for your good work and generosity!

    HP a6528p 32bit Win7 PC w/Intel E2200/3GB RAM/500GB+1TB/WD Elements 500GB USB/ InfiniTV 4 PCIe/ 2 Linksys 21OO Extenders & 1 Samsung extender.  Basically a DVR.
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 10:01 AM
    Joined on Fri, Nov 23 2007 | 575 Posts
    • Active Member Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers
    mmillmor:
    I am hoping that this mini-essay on the topic is going to prompt someone out there to start an open source project to convert flash streams to a media center compatible format. There are lots of add-ins that would benefit from it, like my TunerFreMCE code, Yougle and I'd imagine Yaggs' code, so go on someone, make a name for yourself by taking up this challenge.

    Martin


    Martin,
    Would something like this help the cause
    FLV2MPEG4
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/vixynet/

    ~Mark nMediaPC HTPC-2000B | Blu-Ray | I5-650 | 4gb DDR3 | Win7 | 32 GB SSD | 4 x 2TB WD Green | A188 | InfiniTV4 | 1x DMA-2100 | 1x DMA2200
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 12:49 PM
    Joined on Sun, Jul 31 2005 | 445 Posts
    • Regular TGBUsers
    mpjbell:

    Martin,
    Would something like this help the cause
    FLV2MPEG4
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/vixynet/

    Yes, that looks really promising. Thanks for that!

    Martin
    http://www.milliesoft.co.uk/
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 12:50 PM
    Joined on Wed, Feb 4 2009 | 90 Posts
    • Member Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers

    FIRST BETA DOWNLOAD IS NOW AVAILABLE!!! GO GRAB IT AT: http://www.secondrun.tv

    Go easy on me!!! This is a really early BETA... so if this app just sucks please don't lay into me too hard!
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 1:02 PM
    Joined on Sun, Apr 15 2007 | 448 Posts
    • Regular Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers
    Not installing on Windows 7. Says I need Vista. :-(
    Velocity Micro Cinemagix S85 - Intel DP35DP MB, Intel E6600, 2GB RAM, ATI 4670 PCIe ATI DCT (Internal) [NTSC/ClearQAM], ATI Theater PRO 650 PCI [NTSC/ATSC/FM] Silicondust HDHomerun [ClearQAM x2], AVerMedia M780 [NTSC/ATSC] Panasonic TH-58PX60U Plasma TV, Denon AVR-987 Receiver My HTPC Gallery
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 1:02 PM
    Joined on Sun, Feb 8 2009 | 190 Posts
    • Member TGBUsers
    Yaggs:

    FIRST BETA DOWNLOAD IS NOW AVAILABLE!!! GO GRAB IT AT: http://www.secondrun.tv

    Go easy on me!!! This is a really early BETA... so if this app just sucks please don't lay into me too hard!

    And if you're not a regular BETA tester of software, remember there WILL BE bugs and issues. If you are not comfortable dealing with errors, or are expecting a flawless execution of Hulu goodness, you probably should NOT try this.

    Yaggs, are you wanting people to report bugs/issues here, on your site, or are you going to open up another thread on the boards?
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 1:04 PM
    Joined on Wed, Feb 4 2009 | 90 Posts
    • Member Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers
    Hmm... Give me a minute... that shouldn't have happened...
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 1:06 PM
    Joined on Wed, Feb 4 2009 | 90 Posts
    • Member Charter MemberTwo YearsTGBUsers
    chrisaroz:
    Yaggs:

    FIRST BETA DOWNLOAD IS NOW AVAILABLE!!! GO GRAB IT AT: http://www.secondrun.tv

    Go easy on me!!! This is a really early BETA... so if this app just sucks please don't lay into me too hard!

    And if you're not a regular BETA tester of software, remember there WILL BE bugs and issues. If you are not comfortable dealing with errors, or are expecting a flawless execution of Hulu goodness, you probably should NOT try this.

    Yaggs, are you wanting people to report bugs/issues here, on your site, or are you going to open up another thread on the boards?

    Just send bugs to me initially (yaggs@secondrun.tv) make sure you put "BUG" in the title!... I am sure there will be tons of bugs right off the bat... many of which I might already know about...  I will come up with something formal sooner than later... just post messages to my website comments section or email them to me.
  •  
    Posted by
    on Fri, Feb 13 2009 1:11 PM
    Joined on Thu, Sep 15 2005 | 83 Posts
    • Member Five YearsTGBUsers
    I will be first to ask the dumb question.  How do you play a video?  The installer worked great and I can browse the different networks but when I hit ok to select a show the show screen somes up with the discription but I dont see any episodes listed.
Page 11 of 28 (420 items) «910111213»