Integrate the New Hulu Desktop into Media Center

On Thursday, Hulu announced  a new desktop software program for watching videos on your PC without a web browser. The software, simply called Hulu Desktop, was designed to operate with Windows Media Center remote controls. So now, instead of having to choose from a ton of add-ins in Media Center, you can use the official software provided by Hulu themselves to see videos on your desktop.

The folks over at Missing Remote have put together a guide on how to add Hulu Desktop to Media Center as a shortcut from the main screen. This isn’t the only way to get this done, but at least it’s well-documented! Thanks guys.

STEPS (via Missing Remote):

Note, the following steps assume you installed into the default Hulu directory, which is C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\HuluDesktop. If you changed the directory, simply replace the directories in the ini and xml files.

1. Download the file here: HuluMCE Plugin
2. Unzip the folder into your Hulu directory (which default is C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\HuluDesktop\)
3. The files should result in a HuluMCE folder (C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\HuluDesktop\HuluMCE).
4. IMPORTANT STEP: Browse to the above HuluMCE folder, and Right Click on the HuluMCEreg.xml file and select EDIT
   1. Replace the username "Mike" from the following line with YOUR USERNAME:  imageUrl="C:\Users\Mike\AppData\Local\HuluDesktop\HuluMCE\icon.png"
5. Still in the above folder, right click on the InstallHulu.cmd and select Run as Administrator
6. A dialog box will appear with the message Success
7. Close all your windows, launch Media Center with your remote, and the shortcut for Hulu Desktop will appear under the TV+Movies row, as well as in the Program Library

*NOTE: If you prefer to have the shortcut appear in the TV+Movies row, you will need to edit theHuluMCEreg.xml file (Right click > Edit). On the line which says  <category category="Services\TV"/>, replace TV with Pictures. (eg., <category category="Services\Pictures"/> You can visit the followingMSDN Webpage for a full list of category entrypoints you can launch from.

For more details, check out their blog post.