Adding Hulu Desktop to Media Center

As you most likely know by now Hulu has revealed at long last it’s own desktop application for browsing Hulu content outside of the web browser. Of course, the Media Center community immediately jumped into action to bring this new platform into your Media Center setup. While not quite what would be described as “integrated” it will get the job done none-the-less.

The first step you’ll need to do for all of these methods is to download the new Hulu Desktop client from the Hulu Labs website. Once you’ve done that you could do things the manual way and follow the guides on Win7Media for Media Center Launcher and Configurator then Creating New Start Menu Strips. You could also edit one of these registry files included in the Extra Programs for our Media Browser menu strip and add Hulu Desktop to that strip.

Although, if that seems like an awful lot of legwork to you there are a few other options to have a look at. The first is this solution from Missing Remote providing a plug-in and some directions to add a Hulu Desktop Icon to menu strip. It still requires a bit of work for you and may not work fully with Windows 7 Media Center since additions to the default menu strips are no longer allowed. You should be able to find the new app listed in Extra Programs with this method however.

The other option is a plug-in from SecondRun.tv developer Yaggs. This plug-in is essentially the same as the Missing Remote except slightly simplified. For some reason you’re required to make a copy of the Hulu Desktop application in your root C:\ drive though. This should provide the easiest method for beginners but the least customizability.

No matter which option you choose you’ll get Hulu on your ten foot interface but it won’t be the holy grail. None of these solutions will work on extenders as Hulu desktop is developed entirely in Flash. The interface could carry some learning curve as well for the less technical family members since it’s quite a departure from the Media Center interface.

This may signal some level of receptiveness to distribution of Hulu content outside the browser but I wouldn’t hold your breath for Microsoft and Hulu to sign a deal any time soon. In fact, I’d expect to see Microsoft pushing it’s abhorrent Internet TV betas on us for the next decade or so.

Plugin Download: Hulu Plugin (193)

Application Download: Hulu Desktop (107)

Original Artical Link: Hack7MC.com