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[imugli]

Hey there,

Am thinking of looking into setting this up.

Does anyone have this set up and working in MC?


UPDATE: I have it working and it's great!

For those interested, I'm in Oz.
Signed up for StrongVPN acct US$7 per month and followed the instructions to set up my PCs
Signed up for Hulu by using random (but correct) US city, State, Post Code combination.
Signed up for netflix - didn't have to give any location details and used my Oz credit card.
MC doesn't skip a beat - works fantastically well and adds a whole new dimension to the software.

[raym]

No but I'd love to...

[imugli]

Have Hulu set up and working!

Used StrongVPN - US$7 per month, followed the instructions to set up. Dead easy.
Once connected to VPN, sign up for HULU acct using US city, state & PC (no actuall address necessary).
MC doesn't skip a beat.

Tossing up on Netflix... Seems that it's great for older stuff but not for new releases.

[raym]

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds awesome. Did you happen to try any of the free VPN solutions out there? I was going to start there but not sure how they compare. Also, any ISP or bandwidth considerations? I only have a 1.5 mbps adsl connection in my area. Is mc likely to do well with streaming over such a connection?
Thanks again for your help on this! It's something I've considered for ages!

[imugli]

TBH I didn't look at a free VPN. I've read in other places about unreliable connections (slow, dropouts) etc, so I looked for positive reviews and Strong were mentioned a few times.

Netflix recommend a min. speed of 500kbps, while Hulu recommends 1mb connection.

Thing you have to remember though is that because you are logging into a VPN, which is passing the connection to you, it will be more dependent on THAT speed than your normal internet connection.
Bad connection to VPN = bad playback.

I'm on Cable and I found Hulu pauses and stutters during commercial playback, but the shows themselves for the most part were stutter free.
Had no problem at all with Netflix.

Hulu don't state file size, but netflix says each hour of SD is about 1gb, HD is 2gb & you can set netflix to only use SD if you want.

I only have a 50gb data allowance, so this may become a concern down that track but we'll deal with that if and when it arises.

[raym]

Thanks again. Seems to be working great here also. Only played with HULU so far though (in std view). I'm trying to work out how to vew my queued videos in tview  ? .....

[imugli]

Glad you got it working.

My wife is already pressing for the upgrade to Plus (for the classic movies). Not convinced but we'll see.

Let me know if you figure out the queue thing - I'm not at home right now but will take a look when I get back.

Don't forget, too, that you can now watch all the US TV programs on station websites as well...

From my initial usage, I can understand why people would drop Pay TV and subscribe to these services, especially here in Oz where a full Pay TV sub is ~$100 per month.

$25 a month and I have access to most of what's on it...

[imugli]

It seems that MC doesn't support logging in to your Hulu acct, thus queue isn't available and alas, neither are +Plus services.

Hopefully the guys can implement these in a future build...

[QuintinBoy]

Is it possible to make OpenVPN work with Media Center? I'm asking because I subscribe to this American Netflix VPN and I get it to work with the OpenVPN client software, but I wonder how it should be set up to work with MC.