Microsoft Vista Media Center users have been watching from afar as Hulu support was added to Boxee and XBMC and announced for SageTV. That envy may end shortly, as just this week it was revealed that SecondRun.tv will provide a third-party application to feed Hulu, Fox, Comedy Central and other online content to Media Center. No official word on whether this will work on extenders, but my guess at this point is it will not. No word yet on timing or pricing either. Some comments from the application developer below (and that’s his preview video above):
Its a native plugin for Media Center and I really like that way it is coming together… when I first stumbled across Hulu I couldn’t believe that no-one had developed a plugin for media center yet… again… it doesn’t do just Hulu and its not a direct interface into Hulu but most of the video right now comes from Hulu… I plan on expanding it to work with all kinds of video sources but I am concentrating on getting Hulu content up and running primarily.
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Yaggs, I took the liberty of sticking your video up on YouTube (with a link to your site) to more efficiently spread the stellar news. I didn’t see any contact info on SecondRun.tv and your blog doesn’t allow comments… So, let me know if you have a problem with this.
Here’s what I don’t understand. How is it that an unknown developer can bring Hulu onto the media center, but all that money at Microsoft can’t seem to solve this problem? I love that the system is open enough for people to make these things, but it almost feel like Microsoft has abandoned this project. We still don’t even have an official Netflix plugin for media center despite availability on the Xbox. It makes me wonder if Netflix is so desperate to sell Xbox live gold memberships that they are neglecting this product.
Been following this on TGB. First beta version is planned for Friday and is expected to work on PCs only. Extender support is likely to require transcoding (just like PlayOn’s solution).