Hulu Desktop (1 Viewer)

eggi

Portal Member
May 29, 2009
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Hey there,

I don't know anything about minidisplay, but Samundsen talked about some of the commands in a previous post.

Hulu looks for keystrokes. Up, down, left, right, esc (for toggleing between the menu and the video), enter and space do the same thing (pause the video and bring up a mini menu and start a buffer).

Even if it's not perfect, hulu desktop is pretty nice huh!?!

Yea, my issue is that I want to use the minidisplay plugin to handle receiving my IR remote commands (mostly because I havent been able to get the VL System remote to work with winLIRC or IR server suite or other alternatives) and I need to find a way to take the commands read in by the minidisplay plugin and convert them into keystroke commands in windows.

Is there any plugin or program that can read the input commands to mediaportal and map them to generic keyboard commands that arent exclusively sent to the mediaportal input handler? I've been playing with eventghost, autoit, and other script-type programs but havent figured out how to take a mediaportal action such as "Move Up" and convert that into a keyboard press "Up" that Hulu will see when its the active window.

Since I havent been smart enough to figure out a solution, I may be stuck until I pull the trigger on a harmony 890 remote and get a different IR or RF receiver for the computer :p
 

winterescape

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  • April 5, 2009
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    Looking at the MP config page for the happuague remotes there is a section for learn or customize the remote button function. It looks like we should be able to edit this to configure the 6 buttons to emulate the MCE remote. Anyone have any luck finding posts or documentation on how to do this?
     

    poppabk

    Portal Pro
    August 8, 2007
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    Update:

    I found this post Support for Hulu.com and other TV streaming sources? - Page 5 - SageTV Community which worked for me but it breaks the remote function of the great "my Netflix" plugin. So as of now it seems to be one or the other has working remote functions....

    Using this I was able to get the remote working with hulu desktop when launched separate from MP. However when launched from within MP, the remote is still controlling mediaportal (I can here the menu change sounds) and doesn't work with hulu at all, even though hulu desktop has focus. I can still use the remote for netflix though, even with the modified IR.ini file.
     

    grooves12

    Portal Pro
    November 1, 2006
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    i set this up yesterday as well. it works pretty damn well. i used the multishortcut plugin to create a link, and used this guide to make that link available in the streamedmp skin's basic home: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...ersions-130/screensaver-home-basichome-51175/

    and i even made an image to use as a backdrop in streamedmp if anyone wants to use it: http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee176/antgash/hulu.jpg

    I tried this and its not working for me... when I click on the new menu item I created, it just blanks the mediaportal screen then restarts it a few seconds later, never launching Hulu desktop.

    Any ideas?
     

    etheesdad

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  • November 8, 2008
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    This is tested and working in the UK.

    Only problems I have are some aspects of the remote do not work: Left, right, up, down, enter(ok) work fine.

    How do you use Previous (back)? And are Play, pause etc... supposed to work?

    No good here in Australia. Tried it on a couple of my machines with no luck. Anyone found any other way to do it outside of US?
     

    userjan

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  • March 14, 2008
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    Tip

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    This is tested and working in the UK.

    Only problems I have are some aspects of the remote do not work: Left, right, up, down, enter(ok) work fine.

    How do you use Previous (back)? And are Play, pause etc... supposed to work?

    No good here in Australia. Tried it on a couple of my machines with no luck. Anyone found any other way to do it outside of US?

    You can use this method, (need some concentration to start with but worked fiine for me) , everytime you connect to Hulu trough Mediaportal or browser, automaticly a USA exit node is used, the rest of the connections (other sites) bypass the proxy and stay untouched.

    https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...bassed-only-video-works-mtv-video-plug-51919/

    I've searched on the net if there was like a P2P proxy program, where you get one big pool of ip's from diff countries that can be used for certain url's, but couldnt find anything, think there really would be a userbase for.

    So i''m living in the USA now, could allow other users to use my USA IP for certain URL's, like Pandora, Hullu etc, a britisch user could allow themselfs to be a proxy for BBCi player etc, that way you could also prevent people from doing naugty things behind your ip.
     

    winterescape

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    Update:

    I found this post Support for Hulu.com and other TV streaming sources? - Page 5 - SageTV Community which worked for me but it breaks the remote function of the great "my Netflix" plugin. So as of now it seems to be one or the other has working remote functions....

    Using this I was able to get the remote working with hulu desktop when launched separate from MP. However when launched from within MP, the remote is still controlling mediaportal (I can here the menu change sounds) and doesn't work with hulu at all, even though hulu desktop has focus. I can still use the remote for netflix though, even with the modified IR.ini file.

    I wanted to post my working solution for others. I was never able to remap the remote and have it all correctly work so I
    1) Edited the IRREMOTE.ini as outlined in my post above
    2) run the attached batch file with multishortcut (rename the file from hulu.txt to hulu.bat)

    ***YOU must edit this batch file with your path names****

    The batch file Kills MP, starts IRremote, starts huludesktop, waits for huludesktop to close, kills irremote, restarts MP
    this will work for most untill someone with programming skills makes a real plug-in to launch huludesktop
    enjoy...
     

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    • hulu.txt
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    poppabk

    Portal Pro
    August 8, 2007
    145
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    I wanted to post my working solution for others. I was never able to remap the remote and have it all correctly work so I
    1) Edited the IRREMOTE.ini as outlined in my post above
    2) run the attached batch file with multishortcut (rename the file from hulu.txt to hulu.bat)

    ***YOU must edit this batch file with your path names****

    The batch file Kills MP, starts IRremote, starts huludesktop, waits for huludesktop to close, kills irremote, restarts MP
    this will work for most untill someone with programming skills makes a real plug-in to launch huludesktop
    enjoy...
    Thanks. This actually works better for me as returning from Hulu to MP, without restarting MP, was causing a temporary slowdown in MP.
     

    mdg78

    Portal Member
    February 23, 2009
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    Hi,

    I just wanted to share my so far brief experience with Hulu Desktop. Hopefully, my experience may help someone avoid a little bit of problems in the future.

    First, let me say this is working wonderfully for me. I have almost no problem with the picture quality or tearing, so I am very happy. Once set up, which is not too long, it runs great.

    My first problem was a very stupid error on my part, I was a little eager to get this going, and when I installed Mutishortcut plugin, I didn't copy over the language files. This was stupid on my fault and took me about 3 tries of getting the error message to realize my idiocy. (ie. I didn't read the instructions)

    My second problem was focus, and I fixed that by the check box in the general settings of MP config, as others have mentioned previously.

    And my last problem took me some (though not too long) to figure out. Hopefully this will help others in the future. I have an IMON VFD in my case, and it has an IMON pad remote with the IR control. My problem was that when MP switched to Hulu, Hulu would initially take focus, but if I tried to use the remote, all subsequent keypresses would be read in MP even though Hulu was on top. After some trial and error, I realized that if I navigated through MP then to Hulu with a keyboard, all worked fine until I hit the first button on the remote. Then, it would switch "keyboard focus" (not sure if that's the right term, but you should understand what I'm getting at) back to MP but leave Hulu as the topmost window. I thought it was a minidisplay plugin problem, but nothing seemed to fix it there. I even disabled it, as well as IRSS to try to get the remote to control Hulu. What I finally found was in the IMON manager software, there was a setting under the IMON Utilities tab/Application Launch for "Exclusive Mode". I unchecked this and all works perfectly now. (I have MP set up as my quick launch button on the remote, so that is where this comes in). I now have Hulu set up as a program in the Imon software, and the remote keypresses act to control Hulu.

    Hope this helps someone save a little time, sorry if the post was a little rambling,
    Michael
     

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