A new Media Center Plugin called SecondRun.tv was released today that lets you browse and watch TV shows from Hulu. The plugin was announced earlier this week on The Green Button forums, and has generated quite a lot of buzz. If you follow The Green Button, you already know that people have been clammoring for a Hulu application for well over a year.
I installed SecondRun.tv tonight and did a little playing around with it, and I have to say, it looks great so far. It does have its problems, but it’s only been available for a few hours, so there will definitely be some tweaks needed before it’s ready for prime-time. The interface is simple to use and looks great. The slick look of the application relies on heavy use of network logos and TV show artwork, a lot of which is still missing, so for now you’ll see a lot of empty grey boxes for all but the more common shows. I’m sure that will change as soon as Jason, the developer, has time to finish setting it all up.
The main screen shows the network logos, which you can scroll through to find content. Once you’ve selected your network, the list of shows appear as large images on the screen with the name of the show, and in some cases a description. Selecting a series brings up a full screen background, usually of the cast, with the list of episodes running across the bottom of the screen. The interface is all MCML-based up until you select an episode to watch, and then it looks like the application switches over to a brower control to view the content. For a while you’re able to see the Hulu web page with the video control in the center, but once the video starts playing, it automatically switches into full screen mode. Well, sometimes. In my testing, it worked about half of the time, but once again, this is an early beta, so nothing to complain about.
Things I’d like to see in future releases would be easier ways of finding the shows I want to see, such as a list of all titles available from the main page, or the ability to log into my Hulu account to show my queue and subscriptions. For an initial effort though, this is pretty awesome, and I’ll definitely use it when the need arises. Typically, that means my DVR failed to record something, so instead of getting out the wireless mouse and keyboard and opening Hulu in a browser to replay the episode I missed, now I’ll be able to jump into SecondRun.tv and watch without leaving Media Center.
Find out more about SecondRun.tv and download the free plugin here.
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