Hulu Not Working on ~amd64

SDNick484 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 123

For the last couple weeks, I haven't been able to get Hulu to work on my ~amd64 system in Firefox or Hulu Desktop. Whenever I go to play a video in Firefox, I receive the message, "Sorry, we are unable to stream this video. Please check your Internet connection and try again". I am running Firefox 3.5.7 and Flash 10.0.42.34; I do not have nspluginwrapper installed:

desultory · Administrator Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 7061

Have you followed their troubleshooting procedures?

depontius · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 1925

I notice that you seem to be installing flash kind of oddly, in that you've got both 32bit and 64bit USE flags set. Mine looks like:

SDNick484 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 123

Desultory, thanks for the links, however neither really seem to apply. This system ran Hulu fine up until a few weeks ago and then just stopped. There's been no changes to my Internet connection (I'm on a 16 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up link, so speed is sufficient) nor my Ad-Blockers (I use the same combo on all my machines and haven't changed it recently).

What's even more odd is that the same system plays Hulu fine in Windows 7 64 Bit running inside VirtualBox.

Depontius, yeah I noticed that and thought it was odd myself. I'm not sure where the "32bit" USE flag is coming from, as it's neither in my make.conf nor my package.use. After posting this message last night, setting it to 64bit only however it didn't make a difference (same issue with Hulu).

SDNick484 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 123

Some additional information: I just confirmed I receive the same error with chromium-4.0.266.0 and Firefox 3.6 (which I didn't care for so I masked it and reverted to 3.5.7). I've also created an ebuild of Flash 10.0.32.18 however installing it from my local overlay didn't resolve the issue so I reverted back to 10.0.42.34.

rtomek · Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 6:21 pm Post subject:

There's an ebuild for the hulu desktop in the sunrise overlay. That's how I use it.

I just tried using it from my browser and it doesn't work for me either.

SDNick484 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 123

Interesting, the Hulu desktop I have was from my local repository (got the ebuild from these forums shortly after it was announced). Tonight I'll have to try the one that's now in portage. It's odd that Hulu works in that app but not Firefox for you.

rtomek · Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:32 pm Post subject:

The hulu desktop uses a special bundled version of flash, I suppose. If I right-click and hit 'about adobe flash 10' it won't do anything. All I can see is the in the hulu desktop preferences it says 'swf version 0.9.12.4', whatever that means.

BTW, I use opera, not firefox :wink:

depontius · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 1925

I tried Hulu a little bit ago, and get the same message. I would swear that several months ago my wife was watching shows on it. Maybe she was, and sometime since then they got addicted to DRM. I'll presume that's the primary feature of their special version of Flash.
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FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 806

This is a known issue with 64bit linux boxes trying to access Hulu. Across all linux distros, not just Gentoo.

Lots of pissed off Linux users in Hulu's forum. Supposedly running firefox & flash in 32 bit mode gets around the problem, but that is a total pain in the ass.

Hulu Desktop still works though.
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"...as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." -Benjamin Franklin

SDNick484 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 123

SpiroPoulos89 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2009 Posts: 188

depontius · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 1925

SpiroPoulos89 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2009 Posts: 188

depontius,

Gnash can play youtube videos. I find that it plays best with youtube and megavideo. But as I mentioned it does not play swf 10 videos(the newest flash format). There are many swf 7, 8 and 9 videos on youtube and even some of those may have some problems.

Edit: also works good with google-video.

I would have to guess that your wife would be diss-satisfied with gnash unless she cares about freedom.

The main reason to use gnash in its current stage is to avoid using proprietary software.

SDNick484 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 123

SpiroPoulos89 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2009 Posts: 188

I use icecat (A completely free fork of firefox). IceCat is firefox with a GNU license. It will downgrade XULRunner for you then I just masked the newer XULLRunner to make sure another program does not call the newer one.

Edit: nevermind above. I just got the update to icecat 3.6 now. but it did install fine withe the latest xullrunner and no problems.

If you were disappointed with Gnash then there is nothing that can be done about that except wait for it to become more capable while using proprietary software in the meantime.

SpiroPoulos89 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2009 Posts: 188

For youtube there is a good alternative to watching all the videos without the need of flash at all.

If you install "greasemonkey" you can then go to "userscripts.org" and search for "youtube without flash".

This will allow your browser to use your installed media-player to watch youtube videos. Works with totem, vlc, mplayer and maybe others.

Here is the site to install greasemonkey: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

here is the sit to install Youtube Without Flash Auto: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771

You can also use totem's youtube plugin to watch youtube directly from totem without a browser or you can install minitube to watch youtube videos from the minitube program instead of a browser.

All the alternatives I mentioned above works only for youtube. This goes to show you how popular youtube is.

Hope this helps.

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 806

SpiroPoulos89 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2009 Posts: 188

FishB8,

Maybe DRM doesn't have to do with hulu, but it does have to do with Adobe's Flash Player and other proprietary software. And hulu does use the flash player, so my posts are not completely irrelevant.

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 5:52 pm Post subject:

SpiroPoulos89 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2009 Posts: 188

I just remembered, Ubuntu does use an x64 bit browser but uses "nspluginwrapper" to install a x86 version of flash player and use it in an x64 bit browser.

That's probably why Ubuntu x64 works with hulu but Gentoo does not.

Adobe Flash Player x64 is still an alpha or beta release, so I guess Ubuntu does not want to use it yet. but Gentoo uses the x64 alpha version of flash and I guess the x64 version is having some kind of problem with hulu.

So until it gets fixed I guess the only solution's for hulu in x64 are:

1: Use hulu desktop

2: Use an x86 browser with x86 flash

3: Use nspluginwrapper to get x86 flash in a x64 browser.(I don't know how to do this, Ubuntu does it by default).

And remember that all these solutions are non-free. hehe

SDNick484 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 123

Just updated to www-plugins/adobe-flash-10.0.45.2 to no avail...

scan2006 · n00b Joined: 20 Jan 2008 Posts: 48

http://www.fancast.com/ has all the same shows/streams (in fact is says Hulu while watching shows) and will play with amd64.

rtomek · Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 4:04 pm Post subject:

PraetorZero · Apprentice Joined: 11 Dec 2004 Posts: 236 Location: /home