My Hulu machine IV - IP Remote

I felt so silly when I pointed the TV remote at my Hulu castle and nothing happened. It's not a VCR and there is no infra red receiver there stupid! It's frustrating, I'm gonna live with a keyboard laying in front of it? No! I wanted this to be an appliance.

I fiddled with several things and toyed with a number of ideas, and arrived at the conclusion that I may just have to compromise. I swore I wasn't going to spend a penny on this. Everything had to be from scraps. If there is a will as strong as mine, there is a way. I plugged back in the keyboard and mouse and installed a VNC server. I then sat back on the sofa and remote controlled everything via VNC from my laptop.
Sadly, even though the traffic goes through via my wireless router - essentially a gigabit switch - the speed is only barely acceptable. The video slows down noticeably when VNC is on. I could live with that but the constantly flipping open and shutting the laptop was annoying. The thing is, I don't need the video displayed on my laptop, I just need to be able to control the box's input, via IP...

... via IP. Light bulb. Ding. Ja ja...

My Hulu machine may not have an infra red receiver, it has a wireless receiver, so does my cell phone. Not just that, my Windows Mobile 6 phone has hardware controls for moving things up/down/left/right, just like a remote control.

So I set out to write 2 applications. An IP control server that runs on my Hulu machine, listening to a TCP port that reads a stream of key codes and in turn sends them to the OS as keyboard inputs; and an IP remote control, which is a Windows Mobile application that connects to my Hulu machine and turns button key down/key up messages into a stream of key code sent to the other side of the socket.



See? It works. It's so cool on so many different levels. After all these work, I can finally watch whatever's on TV whenever, from the comfort of my couch.

Viva Hulu. I am determined to enjoy it while it lasts.

My Hulu machine III - Hulu Castle II

So I put the mother board into the Lego castle, it was a snug fit. I was surprised the motherboard would take up just about all the spaces and left barely any room behind for anything else. There was simply no way I could have stuffed in both a CD-ROM drive and a hard disk. Luckily, the IDE socket was right by the draw bridge. I would just let the cable out from the draw bridge to the CD-ROM outside of the castle while I installed the OS, and then disconnect it once I was done. But that still leaves the hard disk... My lucky day, I actually had a 2.5 IDE hard disk, you know, those intended for laptops, laying around. It is much thinner and much lighter. I was able to just put in a bracket to hold it above the CPU heat sink.


I even had a hook that guided the IDE cable to the back of the drive.


All set, it's time to power this thing up... oh, wait a minute, the power button. All the while I had forgotten about the power button. But who says you can't get luckily twice in a row. I don't have a case but I just so happen to have a power switch. But where should I put it?? It needs to be easy to reach but not visible. I built an enclosure around it and figured, if I put a column of bricks above it, the spring action and the weight of the bricks would counter each other perfectly.


With a guardsman standing on top, the power switch nicely hidden, all I needed to do was to push the little guy.



It works perfect. There, my Hulu castle.


I installed the OS and the Hulu desktop application, set up the wireless supplicant and encryption keys, set Hulu to start on boot,, and then unplugged the keyboard and mouse and CD-ROM. I know having an open case like this, static will eventually destroy alot of the electronics, but I don't care. I was ready to sit back and enjoy my TV on demand. I pointed my remote at my Hulu castle ready to choose a show when I realized - crap, there is no remote. I don't have an infra red receiver. What am I gonna do!?!? Shell out another $20 for a remote?? Live with a very very long USB cable tethered behind?? No way!

I can make something up... I am this close...

My Hulu machine II - Hulu Castle I

Once upon a time deep in the thickest forest of the land, there was a castle named Hoo-loo-Ma-Sheen. Unlike any fortification you might have come across, this one is a house of joy where the swords are forever sheathed and the guardsmen always wear a smile. Because this castle hosts my Hulu machine.

So I needed a case for my internet TV computer. Too bad I had thrown away all my beige boxes. And I am not about to cough up $30-$40 for a boring black rectangular tower case. Those stereo component like chassis look okay, but they are over $200. I was down without ideas when suddenly it came to me: I blogged about a Lego computer case, and as a Lego buff, there's just nothing stopping me from doing something like that myself. So I decided to dig out my 6080 castle set from 26 years ago, [ackham, I mean, 6 years ago], to build a computer case out of it.

First of all, I have a PCI video card and a TV capture card that I want to plug-in; and then there's the CPU heat sink/fan. They all add to the height of the assembly; I need to build walls high enough to cover them all so I doubled the height of the original wall, which left me with only enough bricks for 1 guard tower. That's okay, it still looks cool.



I slided in the mother board with the CPU fan and video cards plugged in, and quickly realized there wasn't much room for anything else, like the hard disk, CD-ROM etc. I need to cut down on things I don't need. I made the entrance bigger so that I could easily remove that IDE and power cable to the CD-ROM after the OS has been installed. That saves me some space.



Also, I didn't want my wireless USB key to stick out at the back, so I added an USB extension cord and put in a little bracket to hold it inside the castle. I even assigned an archer to attend to it 24/7, poor little guy.



Still, my 3.5" IDE hard disk is still way too heavy to stack on top of other components...

My Hulu machine I - Hulu Desktop

I think if it is socially acceptable, I might have married my TV. It's a love affair, except that in this case, a third individual doesn't make a love triangle, it makes a better relationship, and the third wheel is called Hulu.

Since last year I have been catching up with all the shows I've missed on hulu.com. It's magnificent. I no longer had to choose between 24 and Heroes, House and Flash Forward, etc. Lying in bed before bed time, some chewy snack and a coke, the radiator cranked up to max, watching Bones on my 12.1 inch Lenovo X61s on my belly (listening on headphones) can be quiet addictive.

Then came Hulu Desktop - the standalone application that lets you watch Hulu shows, but with more refined controls like channel selections, fast forward previews, etc. The best of all, it lets me tune down the picture quality in favor of video smoothness, cause my DSL ain't as fast as before no more.



All in all, I love it. But it could be better. I could be watching this on my TV while munching dinner couldn't I? My X61s only has a VGA output and it doesn't have the time sync hardware that is required to use with RCA connectors, so that won't work. But I know I have enough old parts to put together a machine exclusively for hulu'ing! I have a spare Pentium IV processor that I know will do a good job, I have a socket 475 motherboard with 1GB DDR and a 400W power supply. I have several old hard disks large enough if Hulu is the only application I need to install. Most importantly I have a spare USB wireless adapter and an old Radeon video card with an RCA output.

What's missing is only a case...