Like many of you out threre I would call myself a *Media Center Enthusiest*... I have an Intel based Mac mini that was setup on our main TV with Vista loaded on it and we used it to look at pictures and list to music, etc but never had it hooked up to a TV Tuner... we had Comcast fully loaded with all the pay channels and On Demand so there really wasn't much need or desire to use the Media Center TV interface for anything.  Well... as the new year rolled around we started to look for ways to save some money on the monthly bills and sure enough... the $230+ dollar a month Comcast bill was one of the first things we looked to cut.  Then began the search for a new TV solution that would rid us of Comcast once and for all.  We generally watched normal network television and DVRed pretty much every show we wanted to watch and ended up watching it the follow day(s) when we had time.  Our first investment was an HD antenna to put up in the attic... well... needless to say that just wasn't working out well... we were too far from broadcasting stations to really get quality reception on the channels we watched... so we started looking for something else...

 

Then about a month or two ago I stumbled on hulu.com and started using my laptop to watch episodes of shows that I never had the chance... I would pop my laptop on my desk in front of the treadmill and throw on an episode of Fringe and go off running.  After a while I started to realize how great the content was that hulu was providing... they pretty much have most of the shows we watch around my house and the episodes are out there the day after they air on TV... usually that is sooner than we would have a chance to watch them anyway if we had DVRed them.  So I dusted off my Media Center box and started messing with the Internet TV content that was available on it... and needless to say... blah... the only few options that are built in to Media Center to watch any kind of internet TV are terrible... they still have the same general content that was out there when I first looked at them over a year ago (Arrested Development anyone?) and most of the content is just clips from various shows... so I started looking around to see if I could find some add-in for Media Center that let me access some of the fantastic web TV content out there from sites like hulu.com and the like... and much to my surprise there was NOTHING... and I mean NOTHING... there is an RSS based solution that reads in the hulu RSS feeds but that was a "work around" at best... and of course there is a browser add-in that would let you browse out from inside Media Center and go to a website and play content by using your mouse and clicking around on web pages but that just wasn't ideal... who wants a mouse and keyboard sitting out next to their TVs all the time... so I started thinking... hey... I know how to program... maybe I will just make my own add-in that let me watch hulu based content in Media Center...

 

In current job I develop web based applications and flash based applications so I have a pretty strong background in server side programming technologies and the entire website/browser model of programming... I had never written any software in C# so needless to say when I started looking into developing applications for Media Center using the SDK I was a little hesitant... I pretty much figured sure... I know enough about XML, Javascript, and XHTML that MCML and a little C# shouldn't be too big of a deal... so... a few weeks ago I started messing with the SDK to see what I could come up with... and that leads us to where we are today!

 

I have no intention of ever charging for this extension... it will always be free to anyone who wants it... I feel that its something that should be a part of Media Center all ready... and I'm sure that most of you out there are like me and are looking to cut down on your TV costs... not add to them.

 

So there is the basic history behind the add-in and the motivation that has me working on this in my spare time... if you read down this far you deserve a cookie or something!  No if I have already released a version of the app go download it and stop reading this boring crap on my website.