Open Letter to Hulu and Jason Kilar

It was cool while it lasted.
Hulu has made all videos unavailable on MyMediaPlayer2 in just 4 hours after the posting of this article.
This is the 6th time that videos are "not available" for MyMediaPlayer in the past year.
I have never been asked by Hulu to stop development of MyMediaPlayer, a change is made by Hulu and playback of video is disabled.
The title of the article is "Hulu Gets An Unofficial Desktop App In MyMediaPlayer2", well I would like to ask Hulu to see if they could make it the official desktop player for Hulu. Or make it part of a labs section in Hulu, Youtube has "Testtube" why doesn't Hulu have something similar.

Here are my reasons why making MyMediaPlayer the official desktop player makes sense
Users want a TV experience. Hulu.com does not provide that
Users want to access Hulu with multiple devices - MyMediaPlayer is developed in the Adobe Flash Platform to deliver engaging experiences that run consistently across desktops, mobile phones, and consumer electronics devices. MyMediaPlayer is perfecly positioned to take this on.
Users like the Hulu brand - MyMediaPlayer is very consistent with Hulu.
MyMediaPlayer does one thing, it plays Hulu videos. It does not display videos from any other site.
MyMediaPlayer is built in Adobe Air making it a desktop application which is far more powerful than the functionality a web browser allows.
MyMediaPlayer has Twitter integration which makes the activity of your users reach a whole other audience .

Unlike the previous 5 times, I am not going to remove the download link from my site, I am going to continue to allow users the ability to download it, get frustrated and email you until we get some sort of feedback. You can email me at mymediaplayer.app@gmail.com. Jason all I need is five words "It's never going to happen" and I will port the player to Youtube.

I would like to apologize to the dev team at Hulu, obviously some folks had to work after hours tonight.

I would also like to thank Erick for writing a great article.

Paul
Developer of MyMediaPlayer2

Jason Kilar
jason@hulu.com
CEO, Hulu

MyMediaPlayer 2
MyMediaPlayer 2 is an Adobe Air application that gives users the ability to view Hulu.com's extensive library of television shows and movies. The first version was developed as a web application in February 2008. In June 2008, MyMediaPlayer1 was developed into an Adobe Air application. MyMediaPlayer 2 adds the ability to watch in fullscreen TV mode. MyMediaPlayer has always shown Hulu's content with all the commercials as intended, never altering the player and is simply utilizing the RSS feeds which Hulu makes freely available. MyMediaPlayer has always been about showing only Hulu videos and not Bittorrent, web video, mp3, CBS, ABC etc.

MyMediaPlayer 2 Twitter Integration
On install of MyMediaPlayer you can enter your Twitter credientials and update your Twitter account as you use MyMediaPlayer.

Follow me on Twitter

MyMediaPlayer 2 Guide
The guide screen allows you to scale the player so as you increase the size so more shows are viewable. This is a major limitation to Hulu.com which is a fixed size and is built to go page to page. On a 30 inch monitor you will be able to view 144 shows at a glance.

The top left side of the player navigation has two buttons "TV and Movies", clicking on them will show you 393 TV shows and 208 movies. Hulu has been steadily increasing the library of both TV and Movies. The left side navigation allows you filter by categories such as Comedy, Drama etc.

MyMediaPlayer1 supported the ability to watch and search videos at the same time. The video would play at the bottom left hand side of the player. A change from Hulu no longer allows this.

MyMediaPlayer 2 Show Details
Clicking on a show from the guide will take you to the show screen which has the episodes that are available.

This view will show you the air date, run-time, description and a thumbnail of the show. Clicking on a video in the bottom pane will play the video in the top pane.

MyMediaPlayer 2 Fullscreen
The most requested feature to be added to MyMediaPlayer in the past year has been to support full screen viewing.

On the guide screen, a tv icon on the top bar has been added. Clicking on this icon will launch the player into a TV mode style interface.

Users do not have the ability to use a mouse once you click on this icon. The purpose of this is act as a true 10 foot UI and navigate by either remote control or arrow keys on the keyboard.

MyMediaPlayer 2 TV mode TV lineup
Clicking on the tv icon will launch you to the fullscreen mode. Depending on whether you were viewing the TV or Movie guide will launch the list of TV or Movies. In this view the userwas in TV mode and now is presented a list of hundreds of TV shows.

To navigate up or down one at a time use the up or down arrows, if you would like to page up or down, simply click on the page down or page up buttons or the left or right arrows.

To get to the next screen press "Enter"

To go back one level press "Backspace"

To close the fullscreen view press "Esc"

MyMediaPlayer 2 TV mode TV details
Selecting a TV show will then display a list episodes from that show, with title, thumb, length and description.

MyMediaPlayer 2 Fullscreen Video
Selecting an episode will take you to a fullscreen view of the episode. Do not attempt to click on the video, it will cause the navigation to stop working.

MyMediaPlayer stops working
For the past year, users have lost the ability to view videos in MyMediaPlayer 5 times due to changes from Hulu, twice in the last week alone. At which point I get flooded with emails on why the player is no longer capable of playing videos. After a year I found this to be foolish, the emails should be sent to Hulu. I have included Jason's email below as well as mine, make a case to Hulu to make MyMediaPlayer a partner so disruptions will stop.

Jason Kilar
jason@hulu.com
CEO, Hulu

Paul Yanez
pyanez2000@aol.com

Google Chrome
A major part of my goal is to build a player which plays on multiple operating systems, media players, browsers etc. Here is my framework writeup.

Google Chrome has the ability to make any page into an application shortcut on the desktop, start menu or quick launch bar. Simply paste this link http://www.paulyanez.com/labs/mymediaplayer2/app/ into Chrome's address bar and in essense you get the appication without having to download, very cool. Note:only the guide has been made available.

If users see this as a something worth using, send me an email.
Paul Yanez
pyanez2000@aol.com

MyMediaPlayer in Microsoft Outlook
Users have the option of using MyMediaPlayer in Microsoft Outlook, simply right click on your Mailbox, select properties and make MyMediaPlayer your default view. Here is the link - http://www.paulyanez.com/labs/mymediaplayer2/app/