there are a few hulu videos that i would rather watch on my tv rather than my laptop.

is there a way to download the source .flv so that i can put it on my portable video player ?

thanks,

Try: man wget

not quite sure what the url would be. is there a way to browse mozilla cache grep-ing for the url like for youtube ?

i've done it before with youtube but i cant figure it out for hulu. anyone successful with hulu ?

They are using rtmp protocol and a new Flash 9 "Feature" which seems to hide the actual url. There is a non-free windoz program, "Replay Media Catcher" which can rip it (I tried their demo which rips only 75% of the video). I haven't found anything Linux or foss to do this. Wish we could though, I'd love to watch this on my TV more easily also!

This thread is not quite a year old but remains relevant. Any 'nixers know how to download hulu.com content without using Windows in a VM or WINE?

I ask because I am in a rural area. The recent digital TV switchover impacted a few shows I watch. Simply put, UHF signals do not travel as far as VHF and some channels are no longer available. (I have an outdoor antenna and amplifier mounted on a tower.)

I can watch shows on hulu.com. One challenge for me, however, is I can only watch late at night. I would prefer to download and watch at my leisure. Why? I contract with a mom-and-pop ISP who is the only local provider with broadband. Being mom-and-pop in operations he has some bandwidth limitations. I know the owner and he has told me several times that he overlooks bandwidth issues as long as they occur outside peak hours and non-business hours. That means late night. Works great for me with respect to scheduling downloading large files such as ISO images, but not with content from hulu.com. Because I know the owner, I have no intention of hurting our relationship by watching online TV during peak or business hours.

I'm not looking for a black-hat solution or evading commercials --- I can ignore commercials online just as well as over-the-air. I simply would like to find a hack that allows me to watch hulu.com content at a reasonable hour.

Anybody have ideas?

Thanks.

i have been meaning to see if "miro" will do it
at this time , i just do not know
http://www.getmiro.com/

i used to be able ( until youtube's change ) to easily get those .
but miro WILL get youtube so it might work ?

When I want to watch flash videos outside of the browser, I let the video load (keeping it paused) and then retrieve the temporary flv file located in /tmp. The temporary file is called Flash* (where * is some hash).
I'm using Firefox, so I'm not sure if it will work for other browsers.

HTH

Will the download helper plugin for Firefox bring in hulu files?

that is what i do but the file is in
~/.mozilla/firefox/????????.default/Cache

I've done the same thing with temp files but the strategy fails with hulu.com.

As far as I can tell from browsing the web, the hulu folks use RTMP. They also use some other tricks that prevents any caching to the hard drive. That is, I've checked the usual places for storing temp files and there is nothing to find from hulu.com. Therefore there is no simple way of capturing the video stream.

Yet even if I could capture the video from hulu.com, I'd have to do so manually because the browser is needed to fetch the feed. A better solution is needed to automate the process for people who want to download a show for viewing at a convenient time.

I could use something like Wireshark to sniff the packet stream. Yet I would have no idea how to extract only the video and to ensure the extracted bits play in a video player as a file.

I looked into the miro suggestion. Looks promising. So far I have not found a Slackware build script therefore for me using miro is not yet an immediate option. If I find a build script then I would like to test miro.

Other than the usual paranoia exhibited by the media moguls, I do not understand why TV shows cannot be downloaded from hulu.com. People can record shows over-the-air. Why not the web too? I think part of the problem is the ads are streamed on-the-fly, and the content owners need that part to function. Yet that is a weak excuse too. The root problem is the media folks don't see the big picture. I'm sure there are ways to embed commercials into a TV show video file.

I, too try downloading videos from hulu.com in the past without success. I've use wireshark and the video downloadhelper plugin for firefox.

The only way you can get the video at least for now is to make a screencast of your browser. For example, you can use xvidcap, a screencast program. You drag the red border around the video clip and press the record button.

The quality of the recording varies from the settings you choose and the type of hardware you have. The faster the CPU, the better.

Check youtube for instructions on using xvidcap if you wish to use this method.

Remember, hulu.com has won this battle in preventing anyone from ripping the video, but in time someone will find a way to break the encryted link and we'll win the war.

I downloaded stream transport and installed with win xp(wine didn't seem to want to launch the installer? Nevermind, forgot to mark for execution) went to launch using wine, it will launch but doesn't seem to respond. Thought i would mention it maybe some on here has an answer from here?