Why is there no Netflix and Hulu support in XBMC as of yet?

For Hulu, I would recommend using Hulu Desktop and "integrating" it into XBMC with a script. This is obviously far from ideal and not nearly as good as native support, but it is near the best that can be done right now. This is obviously not a solution if you are dedicated to F/LOSS, but since you are coming from Windows, I doubt this is your bent. Anyway, on with the instructions (can't claim credit for the idea for the script, stole the main command from a launch script for MythTV, can't remember the original author).

1) Install Hulu Desktop.
1.a) go to http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop-linux
1.b) download the package that works with the system you are using
1.c) run the package installer

2) Configure Hulu Desktop.
2.a) Open ~/.huludesktop
2.b) Set "fullscreen = TRUE"
2.c) If you are using aremote, you need to set it up. Hulu Desktop uses 6 buttons (Up, Down, Left, Right, Menu and Select). If you are using a remote, you can find out the button names for each of the buttons on your remote by running "irw" from a command prompt, then pressing the corresponding button on your remote. The output will be something like "KEY_UP on MCE_via_iMON". "MCE_via_iMON" is the "lirc_remote_identifier" and "KEY_UP" is "button_name_up"
2.d) If you don't want to have the screensaver run while you are in Hulu Desktop, you need to set scripts to enable/disable the screensaver. I'm not sure how to do this outside of Gnome, but if you use gnome, add the following two lines to you .huludesktop file:

3) Add a script to launch Hulu Desktop from XBMC:
3.a) Create a folder ~/.xbmc/scripts/My Scripts/HuluDesktop
3.b) Create a file called default.py in that folder with the following contents:
3.d) You can delete the corresponding xbmc.executebuiltin calls from the script if you don't use a remote, don't have a mini LCD/VFD or don't want to pause respectively.
3.e) Optional - set the script as one of your favorites or on the main screen if your skin supports doing so.



As far as NetFlix goes, you may be out to lunch for now, or go the PlayOn route if you have a decent computer elsewhere in the house running windows.

Hope that helps.

Green453 - So I am a total n00b with linux and really coding of any kind (does half of an intro to python class count?), I am running into errors when trying to install the huludesktop client, says it has dependancies, need the libgtk blah blah blah, I attempt to install that and it says that has a load pf dependancies, what the hell am I missing? I was going to login remotely tomorrow when I had a linux guy near by but I cannot get my external IP because the only what I know how to do it is by going to whatismyip.com using links, but I can't get links installed either.
It has been a long night, I am going to bed, any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.

green453 Wrote:Hope that helps.

Nice first post!

felixxx999 Wrote:why don't you just pay for the play-on plug in? It gives you both Hulu and Netflix on your XBMC. I use it and it's perfect. Not sure what more you want.

Not everyone has a windows box lying around.

fatsarmstrong Wrote:Green453 - So I am a total n00b with linux and really coding of any kind (does half of an intro to python class count?), I am running into errors when trying to install the huludesktop client, says it has dependancies, need the libgtk blah blah blah, I attempt to install that and it says that has a load pf dependancies, what the hell am I missing? I was going to login remotely tomorrow when I had a linux guy near by but I cannot get my external IP because the only what I know how to do it is by going to whatismyip.com using links, but I can't get links installed either.
It has been a long night, I am going to bed, any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Right, so Hulu Desktop has 3 main dependencies (dependencies are pieces of software that another piece of software needs to run correctly). They are:
* GTK+ 2.12 or higher
* GLib 2.16 or higher
* LIRC 0.8.2 or higher (required for remote control functionality)

Without going into extraneous detail, GTK and GLib are part of the same piece of software, they provide the necessary components for rendering the user interface, etc. LIRC is optional, it provides the components necessary to use an IR based remote control (if you are using a wireless mouse and keyboard but no remote, you don't need to install this).

How you install these dependencies depends on what flavor of Linux you are using. Which flavor of Linux do you use? You can do this either from a command prompt or (if your particular flavor of Linux supports it) from a graphical interface.

It sounds like you already tried to install these pieces of software (called packages) and found out that they each have dependencies of their own which must be installed. Just like Hulu Desktop needs GTK to run, GTK needs other packages to run. Installing these additional packages should be fairly easy. The program that installs packages should install them for you.

Without knowing the specifics of which flavor of Linux you run, I cannot give you specific directions, so I will give you directions for Ubuntu since it is the most commonly used flavor these days.

Graphical:
1) Open System --> Administration --> Synaptic Package Manager
2) Search for libgtk2.0-0
3) This will find several items, scroll down and find the one that is just libgtk2.0-0
4) Click the little box to the left of the entry and it will open a context menu, choose "Mark for Installation"
5) A dialog box will pop open that says "Mark additional required changes?" - choose the "Mark" button.
6) Repeat with libglib2.0-0
7) Click the button with the big green checkmark that says "Apply"
8) Install the huludesktop package from wherever you downloaded it.
9) Pick up where my other instructions left off.

Command Line:
1) Open your command prompt.
2) Type 'sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0 libglib2.0-0'
3) Enter your password when prompted
4) You will see a bunch of text go by, then it will say something about "will install x additional packages and will require y additional space. Do you want to continue (Y/N)?' - hit the 'y' key.
--Note that this should install all the dependencies as well
5) Install the huludesktop package.
6) Pick up where my other instructions left off.

Note - if you install huludesktop.deb using gdebi, it should (I think, I don't use gdebi very often) it should install the dependencies for you automatically. To do this, you could (from a command prompt) run: 'sudo gdebi <insert path to package here>/huludesktop.deb.

Note 2 - if you use the first set of command prompt instructions, this should work on any flavor of Linux that is Debian or Debian based, including Ubuntu, Knoppix and the XBMC live version (which is itself based off a version of Ubuntu).

Again, hope that helps and don't get frustrated with being a beginner. We all start somewhere. Also, there is no reason that you should have to use a command prompt for any of this, if you do, it isn't because Linux doesn't have a good way to do it graphically, it is just that the flavor of Linux you are using is not designed to make things easy graphically.

JackieBrown Wrote:Nice first post!

Thanks! Longtime lurker, so I figured it was about time to start pulling my own weight.

felixxx999 Wrote:why don't you just pay for the play-on plug in? It gives you both Hulu and Netflix on your XBMC. I use it and it's perfect. Not sure what more you want.

This was good advice until today. Now PlayOn is getting the same treatment as Boxee from Hulu and PlayOn users can look forward to a never ending arms race of sketchy Hulu support.

Oh well, looks like it is back to using EventGhost to switch between XBMC and Hulu Desktop for me... such a setup works pretty well, though obviously not as nice as just having Hulu with native XMBC controls.

Release of PlayOn Version: 2.59.3664 today fixes the problems.

dadein Wrote:Release of PlayOn Version: 2.59.3664 today fixes the problems.

It's a band-aid though. Tomorrow, next week, or next month they'll have to send out another patch for the same problem until one side relents.

@fatsarmstrong
I'm a Windows guy so I really have no solid advice for you. However, if I remember right I have seen several guys on here talking about semi or even fully automated setups that are strung together using either bash or python scripts. You will probably need to do some Googling or search the Linux forum here, but this is a very old problem so I imagine there are several solutions floating around by now.

can you post a link or any information on how to automate torrents? thanks in advance

I read all of this, and I'm confused. There's all this idea that Netflix can't run on Linux because of silverlight. But Tivo is Linux based and it runs netflix just fine. What's missing here?