Posts: 30
Joined: Jan 2010
Reputation:
0
2010-01-03, 02:34
So I've spent the afternoon trying to fund out how to enable native support for Netflix, Hulu, various streaming services, etc on XBMC Live. But it really appears that this is either difficult, or not possible. But why? With XBMC installed on a full-fledged PC, and Netflix and the like are all web-based applications why in the word is this so difficult? I can do it on MS Media Center, which I found so painfully clumsy that I took the system out of my setup. I thought a nice little Revo with XBMC Live would be far more capable and more streamlined. But such a simple task, Netflix. Why ever not?
Posts: 26,215
Joined: Oct 2003
Reputation:
187
Netflix requires silverlight -> no go on linux either way.
Hulu requires RTMPE, plus a javascript engine to unwrap all the obfuscation they throw in the path of actually obtaining the URLs -> not all that easy unless you're actually a browser. The RTMPE side of it is easy enough I suspect, though Adobe will probably not be terribly impressed, given their sue-happy nature with others that have tried that route.
I agree that using something like webkit or chrome is the only way to go long-term, though it's incredibly clunky for what in the end is a just a wrapped h264 stream. It'd be nice to just have the stream to play - that's all people want, after all. Instead they wrap it up in obfuscation (DRM, but they give you the key) so that you are forced to use their crappy players with no HW acceleration etc.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Posts: 1,747
Joined: Jun 2004
Reputation:
12
blittan
Retired Team-Kodi Member
Posts: 1,747
1: no, there are no more options in windows
2: no, not until GPU accelerated encoding is avaible in windows.
Posts: 104
Joined: Sep 2009
Reputation:
0
I don't even have a Windows machine (100% Linux household, thankyouverymuch), and I can use Hulu quite easily. I simply power off XBMC and start the browser (irexec command). Then I turn on the wireless mouse and use it - all from my couch.
Posts: 30
Joined: Jan 2010
Reputation:
0
And that's precisely my point, crackers. If I can do Hulu from a browser window on my Ubuntu laptop, why not XBMC? Netflix I understand. But Hulu seems like a no-brainer.
Posts: 30
Joined: Jan 2010
Reputation:
0
Right. And I had a nice Netflix plugin for my Windows Media Center. So why no XBMC integration? Again, I understand the Netflix player is Windows and Mac only, so I can see that not working on a Linux-based build of XBMC. But what about Hulu on a Lunix flavor? And why not both on the Windows version?
Posts: 2,288
Joined: Nov 2005
Reputation:
5
dude Jonathan already explained to you, in nice technical detail, "why no Hulu". Why are you still asking this same question? You will need to either not use Hulu for your television needs or not use XBMC for Hulu. I personally don't use Hulu since I don't like looking at advertising and I have an automated torrent setup that gets me more shows than I can actually watch, plus I don't have to worry about Comcast deciding to turn off 3rd party access or just generally being assholes (something Comcast generally has a reputation for doing).
Posts: 30
Joined: Jan 2010
Reputation:
0
And I thanked him for that detail, Sleepy. Your addition of a snarky, elitist follow-up, indicating that you don't care because you download all of your content illegally adds nothing at all to the conversation. Although I did enjoy reading it imagining it spoken in a classic, Comic Book Guy voice. Thanks!
Jonathan, you indicated that Hulu was difficult for anything other than a browser. Couldn't XBMC simply launch a skinned browser? I'm simply looking to be able to do everything within one app.
Posts: 265
Joined: Dec 2009
Reputation:
0
Hang on, do people actually pay for movies anymore?
You call sleepy Elitist but don't you have to be rich to be able to pay for every movie that you want to watch?
I have a thousand movies downloaded that I will not watch, I have hundreds of DVDs that I will not watch.
I enjoy collecting but until movies come down to £2 or £3 I wouldn't pay £10 or more for a movie.
Cinema is £20 to watch a movie including pop corn.
I fund the industry by buying movies, but I do not get ripped off by everything they release.
So who is the snob?
Posts: 411
Joined: Nov 2009
Reputation:
0
Launching Netflix in a browser is not the issue. The playback is the issue because MS Silverlight isn't supported on Linux, and that is what Netflix uses to stream. A script could be written to launch Netflix in a browser window on windows, but you could just as easily minimize xbmc and launch the browser yourself.