What You’ll Need
For this project you’ll need the following materials:
Note: If you’re interested in adding Netflix to your XBMC experience, check out our article on the topic here.
Installing the Bluecop Repository
First, download the Bluecop ZIP file here. Second, place the ZIP file somewhere your XBMC installation can see it (network share, flash drive you can plug into the computer running XBMC, etc.) Third, navigate to System –> Add-ons –> Install from zip file. Navigate to and select the Bluecop ZIP file and click OK.
Wait a moment or two for it to install and then navigate to System –> Add-ons –> Get Add-ons. Within that sub-menu you’ll see the Bluecop Add-on Repository—as see in the screenshot above. Within the Bluecop repository is where we’ll find the add-ons we’re looking for. Go ahead and select it now.
Installing the Hulu Add-on
You’ll be presented with a description menu that includes information about the add-on as well as menu options to install and configure. First, install the add-on. It will take anywhere from a few seconds to half a minute or so to finish. When it does, a notification will pop up in the lower right corner:
At this point you can jump back to the main XBMC menu to start watching Hulu content or, if you’re a Hulu Plus member, you can take a moment to plug in your username and password. You can do that by selecting the Configuration menu option within the Hulu description page.
Let’s go take Hulu for a spin. Exit back to the main XBMC screen (we’re using the default Confluence skin) and navigate to Videos. Under Videos select Add-ons. You’ll see Hulu listed as one of the potential add-ons. The first time you select it, you’ll get a message indicating that the software is free and if you paid for it you were defrauded. We don’t need to worry about that, we downloaded it for free right from the author.
The first menu you’ll see in Hulu allows you to pick from popular, recently added shows, TV, or movies. We’re curious about TV content so we’ll dive right in there. Let’s check out the TV offerings:
30 Rock? Don’t mind if we do. Notice how clean the content looks? The add-on is pulling thumbnails, artwork, and metadata for the streaming shows in the same fashion XBMC pulls down the data for locally stored content.
Since we don’t have a premium Hulu account, we’re only seeing content available to all Hulu users. No complaints here, it’s still quite a bit of free content. Let’s start watching:
We’re going to explore the television content again:
Doctor Who? Don’t mind if we do. Not only is there entire episodes of Doctor Who in HD but there’s lots of season extras too—nice! Let’s fire up the first episode of season six:
Looks good to us; nice and crisp HD playback with no stuttering.
Adding Shortcuts To The Main Screen
XBMC Eden supports handy front-screen shortcuts. Rather than forcing you to navigate through sub-menus you can easily add them right to the main navigation screen.
To do so, visit System –> Settings –> Skin. Under the Skin menu you’ll find the Add-on Shortcuts sub-menu. There you can add short cuts to add-ons for most of the major entries on the main screen. We’re interested in the Videos Submenu. If you’ve never used this feature before, you’ll see five empty slots. Click on one to pick a video add-on.
