# Does anyone know when the Hulu app is supposed to come to the Bolt



## Clove01 (Oct 19, 2015)

Does anybody know the timeline on the Hulu app. I can always just switch to my Apple TV but it would be nice to just turn on one box for all tv content. I will always have the Apple TV for all of my iTunes movies but being able to use one box for all of my tv content would be awesome.


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

TiVo is waiting on Hulu to release an HTML5 app, (Hulu currently does not have one) and the Bolt does not support Flash.


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## georgeorwell86 (Sep 15, 2015)

Has Hulu even said whether they are working on HTML5 support?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

georgeorwell86 said:


> Has Hulu even said whether they are working on HTML5 support?


I do not know if Hulu has said anything officially. TiVo has said they expect a new Hulu app, but did not give much indication when that would happen.


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## Clove01 (Oct 19, 2015)

Thanks for the replies. I haven't seen anything official either that's why i asked here. Thought maybe somebody had other news.


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## moveandstore (Oct 17, 2015)

I was hoping the same thing. I hope that it will be included in the next future software update. That would be great, instead of using my Roku just to watch Hulu. Netflix; Amazon (Prime); and YouTube works great.

Any news of any other apps that are coming to the Bolt?


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## k1davis (Nov 14, 2004)

I just bought a Bolt last night. I'm eagerly anticipating Hulu on the Bolt as well.


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## kalifg (Oct 27, 2015)

Same here! Mine is arriving today and I can't wait!!!


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## JayMan747 (Nov 10, 2008)

Where did you guys order? 
Best prices I have seen were Amazon prime


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## midnightmarauder (Oct 9, 2006)

This is really an issue for me. Hulu is a major app and Bolt can't accommodate it? Come on TiVo!!! Makes me want to go for the roamio instead and a few years down the road buy the newest TiVo model.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

midnightmarauder said:


> This is really an issue for me. Hulu is a major app and Bolt can't accommodate it? Come on TiVo!!! Makes me want to go for the roamio instead and a few years down the road buy the newest TiVo model.


It's not TiVo. They're just waiting on Hulu to update their app to run on HTML5, which the new Bolt uses exclusively now after ditching Flash.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

Flash support is disappearing on embedded devices, and that's one of the main reasons why Tivo integrated the HTML5 platform and moved their UI off Flash last year... They were going to hit a wall.

Tivo says taking over Flash runtime support would be "daunting" (especially just for the sake of Hulu's very old app at this point), so that's where we are at right now.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Does Hulu offer an HTML5 app on any platform yet?


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Does Hulu offer an HTML5 app on any platform yet?


Nope


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

So the question isn't really "when is the Hulu app coming to the Bolt" it's "when is Hulu going to convert their app to HTML5 so that the Bolt can run it".


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

BigJimOutlaw said:


> Nope


One reason why, IMHO, TiVo erred in moving their app platform to HTML5 rather than Android (or a variant thereof). Look at the major apps TiVo needs: Hulu, HBO, Showtime, Starz, Crackle, CBS All Access, ESPN. None of them, that I know of, have an HTML5 version of their apps.


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## JayMan747 (Nov 10, 2008)

NashGuy said:


> Look at the major apps TiVo needs: Hulu, HBO, Showtime, Starz, Crackle, CBS All Access, ESPN. None of them, that I know of, have an HTML5 version of their apps.


All of those are Apple IOS devices which are not flash, right?
I dont think apple TV has flash either, and it has Hulu, HBO, Showtime, ESPN, etc.


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## SlickVik (Nov 30, 2011)

NashGuy said:


> One reason why, IMHO, TiVo erred in moving their app platform to HTML5 rather than Android (or a variant thereof). Look at the major apps TiVo needs: Hulu, HBO, Showtime, Starz, Crackle, CBS All Access, ESPN. None of them, that I know of, have an HTML5 version of their apps.


Most of those have corresponding web applications, so by default they already have a HTML5 version of their apps.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

SlickVik said:


> Most of those have corresponding web applications, so by default they already have a HTML5 version of their apps.


You can watch Hulu in a web browser; you could do that before they ever had embedded apps. And just because a streaming video app is on the web doesn't mean that it uses HTML5. The HTML5 Netflix app only runs in a limited set of browsers. I ran it in Firefox the other day and it was using Silverlight.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

SlickVik said:


> Most of those have corresponding web applications, so by default they already have a HTML5 version of their apps.





mikeyts said:


> You can watch Hulu in a web browser; you could do that before they ever had embedded apps.


In the past some web sites used Flash or Silverlight are they all using HTML5 now?


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

SlickVik said:


> Most of those have corresponding web applications, so by default they already have a HTML5 version of their apps.


I know for sure that, for streaming video through Safari on my Mac, Showtime, HBO Go, and Hulu all use Flash while Netflix and Amazon Prime use Silverlight. None of them stream video via HTML5. Maybe they do in other browsers/OSes.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

HTML5 MSE/EME support is still pretty spotty. I'm not sure if the Opera browser TiVo is using even supports it. Although I think they did add HLS support at some point, which is how Plex came to be, and I'm pretty sure Hulu supports HLS streaming for iOS devices, so it should still be possible.


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## dthmj (Mar 12, 2002)

According to TiVo, Hulu is coming to the Bolt "soon". So I hope something is in the works, and not just waiting on Hulu.

I'm fairly new to TiVo, and just bought a Bolt and a mini yesterday - and they are not hooked up yet (tech didn't bring a cable card with them).

Looks like the TiVo mini has Hulu support - will I be able to access Hulu through the mini if it is only connected to a Bolt? I'm not sure how it all works.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dthmj said:


> According to TiVo, Hulu is coming to the Bolt "soon". So I hope something is in the works, and not just waiting on Hulu.
> 
> I'm fairly new to TiVo, and just bought a Bolt and a mini yesterday - and they are not hooked up yet (tech didn't bring a cable card with them).
> 
> Looks like the TiVo mini has Hulu support - will I be able to access Hulu through the mini if it is only connected to a Bolt? I'm not sure how it all works.


You can still use Hulu on the Mini with a Bolt as the Host. But you won't have content from Hulu show up in searches. Or at least that is the way it was a week or two ago when I tested it.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

NashGuy said:


> I know for sure that, for streaming video through Safari on my Mac, Showtime, HBO Go, and Hulu all use Flash while Netflix and Amazon Prime use Silverlight. None of them stream video via HTML5. Maybe they do in other browsers/OSes.


Netflix's embedded app, as runs on TiVo Roamio and Premiere and presumably Bolt, is written in web authoring languages, principally Javascript. It evolved from a version written in HTML5, Javascript, CSS3, etc which ran in the Webkit platform. Netflix's player is a highly atypical web page which never uses a large amount of the functionality included in Webkit (and makes unusually heavy use of some of it), so they developed a pared down, purpose-optimized layout/rendering engine of their own design. You can see some posts about their use of HTML5 here in Netflix's technology blog (skip the first label match) and posts about their contemporary design framework here and here.

Their approach, which downloads a huge amount of the functional UI code and art assets at player start-up, allows them to make massive changes to appearance and functionality without requiring an update to the resident firmware portion, for which they're entirely at the mercy of the OEMs in whose devices their players are embedded. It is fairly memory and CPU intensive, so it runs poorly on some older platforms. (Roku is sticking with their old native app on most of their "legacy" products, since they tried and failed to get it to perform acceptably well on them. It runs on Roku 3, Roku HDMI Stick, the 2015 Roku 2, Roku TV, Roku 4 and will run on all future models. The problem with that is that those older Rokus--some not so old--won't be getting support for Netflix profiles or Netflix Kids, etc). Some platforms have optimized start-up of the app, not reloading the code or UI state at all after the first start-up post power-up (first start-up of the day on Roku). Of things that I have these include this smart TV, Roku 3 and the new Fire TV; it takes a second or two to re-start on the smart TV and Roku, but starts frickin' _instantly_ on Fire TV.

Given the similar identical-UI-on-all-or-most-platforms approach that Amazon and VUDU have taken, I thought that they had adopted a similar development tactic (I know that YouTube has). Amazon and VUDU are up and running at launch on Bolt, right? Hulu is the same on multiple platforms for me now (Roku, Fire TV and FTV Stick).

Their website player is HTML5 in Chrome, IE11 and Edge (for some reason Chrome is constrained to 720p whereas the Microsoft browsers both support 1080p). There used to be an account setting for enabling the HTML5 version (versus Silverlight); that no longer seems to be there, so I guess if your browser supports it you get HTML5. EDIT: I just checked and the same version of the HTML5 player runs in Windows Opera as runs in Chrome, similarly constrained to 720p ).


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