Everything comes around full circle. First we had Joost, Babelgum, Veoh, and others create standalone client software for watching online videos, but the ease and ubiquity of watching directly in the browser trumped whatever technical benefits a standalone client provided. The rise of YouTube, and more recently Hulu, proved that. But now that watching videos on the Web is something many of us spend an increasing amount of time on, the idea of a better viewing experience through a download client may now be making a comeback.
Hulu, in particular, now has an upgraded, if unofficial, desktop app in MyMediaPlayer2. Developed by Paul Yanez, this video player is more of a demonstration app than anything else, but it is still quite functional. MyMediaPlayer2, which was recently released, is an Adobe Air app which features 400 TV shows and 208 movies from Hulu. You start with a grid view, which resizes depending on the size of your screen and the window. The larger you make the window, the more thumbnail TV show icons appear in the grid dynamically. When you click on a show or movie, it then takes over the top half of the screen, with a list of other episodes below with the date, description, run-time, and a thumbnail. There is also a full-screen mode that works with a remote and allows for a ten-foot viewing experience. The app also includes Twitter integration. Now the whole world can know every time you are watching an episode of The Hustler.
But Yanez is not married to the idea of watching videos outside the browser. The app also works natively in Google’s Chrome browser. Simply go to this URL: http://www.paulyanez.com/labs/mymediaplayer2/app/. That link seems to work in Firefox as well. And Yanez even has a version that works inside Microsoft Outlook. I am not sure why yoou’d want to watch videos in Outlook, but you can.
Yanez has bigger ideas about what a media player should do, and has created an overall framework for what a Web media player should be. Many of these ideas are realized in MyMediaPlayer2. Before you go ahead and download the app, though, you should know that it regularly becomes disabled every time Hulu makes a major change to its service. If this happens again, Yanez suggests that you email Hulu CEO Jason Kilar to complain.
Erick, that guy kinda looks like you..
I am very excited to see what talented developer can do. If he does extend this past Hulu, he will have a killer platform.
Points for innovation.
*Again* shouldn’t Hulu be embracing this sort of app instead of breaking it and playing cat and mouse.
The Boxee issue is just a steaming pile of FAIL.
Let’s not forget he first client (and still the most widely used) – Metacafe. Although they hardly promote it on their site anymore.
What`s really annoying is that it doesn`t allow you to filter out videos that are not viewable in your geographical location (most of them are not viewable in Israel for example) and also, there`s no search option (come on…!)
So how soon before HULUs owners/content partners NBCU and News Corp put a stop to this like they did with boxee
I’ll be to test the new app at utest.com. seems like a cool desktop app but with quite a few bugs.
None of the videos will play – all “Video unavailable”
Boo!
Nary a mention of Boxee?
I got in 1 episode of Chuck before all videos were disabled
I thought Hulu was better than resorting to these kind of tactics.
Open Letter to Hulu and Jason Kilar
It was cool while it lasted.
Hulu has made all videos unavailable on MyMediaPlayer2 in just 4 hours after the posting of this article.
This is the 6th time that videos are “not available” for MyMediaPlayer in the past year.
I have never been asked by Hulu to stop development of MyMediaPlayer, a change is made by Hulu and playback of video is disabled.
The title of the article is “Hulu Gets An Unofficial Desktop App In MyMediaPlayer2″, well I would like to ask Hulu to see if they could make it the official desktop player for Hulu. Or make it part of a labs section in Hulu, Youtube has “Testtube” why doesn’t Hulu have something similar.
Here are my reasons why making MyMediaPlayer the official desktop player makes sense
Users want a TV experience. Hulu.com does not provide that
Users want to access Hulu with multiple devices – MyMediaPlayer is developed in the Adobe Flash Platform to deliver engaging experiences that run consistently across desktops, mobile phones, and consumer electronics devices. MyMediaPlayer is perfecly positioned to take this on.
Users like the Hulu brand – MyMediaPlayer is very consistent with Hulu.
MyMediaPlayer does one thing, it plays Hulu videos. It does not display videos from any other sites.
MyMediaPlayer is built in Adobe Air making it a desktop application which is far more powerful than the functionality a web browser allows.
MyMediaPlayer has Twitter integration which makes the activity of your users reach a larger audience .
Unlike the previous 5 times, I am not going to remove the download link from my site, I am going to continue to allow users the ability to download it, get frustrated and email you until we get some sort of feedback. You can post your reply in this thread or email me at mymediaplayer.app@gmail.com. Jason all I need is five words “It’s never going to happen” and I will port the player to Youtube.
I would like to apologize to the dev team at Hulu, obviously some folks had to work after hours tonight.
I would also like to thank Erick for writing a great article.
Paul
Developer of MyMediaPlayer2
Ok, let me make this very easy for you:
Hulu is probably contractually restricted from supporting sites that enable a “TV” experience, since that might interfere with the core business of NBC, Fox, their MSO relationships, etc. Make sense?
Hulu has a “TV” like experience, it’s the full screen button. Hulu can reach mobile – their video is also Adobe Flash, RTMP, didn’t you notice that?
*Sigh*
great!
when does it come to europe?????
those canadian-hating hulu bastards, just like those canadian-hating netflix bastards
I really like PlayOn (http://getPlayOn.com) that lets me watch Hulu (and CBS, ESPN and others) on my Xbox360 or PS3 … wonder how long before Hulu decide to cripple that as well…
Dumb. I’d happily pay a subscription to Hulu for something like this (as long as there was enough content, available as soon as it aired, not having to wait 8 days – like BSG – or not at all because the networks are dumb)
the more they block services like this the more people go back to BitTorrent. MyMediaPlayer2, Boxee, PlayOn are easier than stealing (and they still get to deliver ads) but they don’t seem to realise that
Netflix appears to be targeting the same content as Hulu. Hang tight – it’s going to get very competitive between those two companies.
What’s up with the blatant rip off of the AppleTV interface? Can’t people do anything original these days??
BOO HULU