# I wonder if Hulu on Bolt uses MPEG-DASH



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Five months ago "Hulus Move to DASH" was published, a scintillating expose of Hulu's efforts to move from Smooth Streaming to MPEG-DASH while maintaining the ability to easily continue support for the legacy platforms (chocked full of fascinating esoteric detail--enjoy ). I wonder if the app they released on Bolt uses the DASH tech. Since it was presumably implemented in HTML5 and Javascript to run in the Opera TV environment, which has support for DASH, my guess is that it is implementing that; unfortunately there's probably no way that we can know for sure.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Probably. I think YouTube uses DASH now too. Not sure about the other apps. We do know that Netflix is the only native app on TiVo that runs outside of Opera. The rest have to use either DASH or HLS as they are the only two secure streaming technologies supported by Opera.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Probably. I think YouTube uses DASH now too. Not sure about the other apps. We do know that Netflix is the only native app on TiVo that runs outside of Opera. The rest have to use either DASH or HLS as they are the only two secure streaming technologies supported by Opera.


The Opera Media Streaming Option spec-sheet says that it also supports MS Smooth Streaming, which Hulu is transitioning from.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I think when they were working on the community version of Plex, before the official version was added, they found that MS Smooth Streaming was not available on the TiVo version of Opera.

In any case DASH and Smooth Stream are very similar, so I can't imagine this is a big transition for them. In fact DASH is the standard the MPEG group settled on after MS submitted Smooth Stream to them for consideration as a standard. Both are variationd on the MP4 spec.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> In any case DASH and Smooth Stream are very similar, so I can't imagine this is a big transition for them. In fact DASH is the standard the MPEG group settled on after MS submitted Smooth Stream to them for consideration as a standard. Both are variationd on the MP4 spec.


As I said in the top post, Hulu has been transitioning to it, converting their files to a DASH-related format and adding a layer which allow them to be properly accessed by legacy Smooth Streaming clients (of which the article I linked to in that post gives gritty details). If what you say is true, they had to have used either DASH or HLS and since they're transitioning to DASH it was probably what they used.

I've been having this protracted argument with someone in an AVS Forum thread who doesn't want to believe that the brand new Hulu app in TiVo Bolt is using Hulu's DASH streaming, mostly because it includes the "Quality" playback option, which allows you to turn off adaptive and choose an encode at one specific bit rate, stopping to buffer if necessary instead of seamlessly switching to lower bit rate video. He thinks that the presence of that option (unique to TiVo among the several devices I own which have that Hulu UI) means that they're not even using any adaptive tech, which is utterly ludicrous. He wants to believe that because the highest bit rate in the list offered by the Quality setting is 3.2 Mbps (for everything I've checked), probably 720p when he thinks that he's getting 4+ Mbps 1080p for at least some titles on his Chromecast and NVIDIA Shield TV. Whatever; I don't necessarily doubt that he's getting such an encode just because it apparently hasn't been made available to the app on TiVo Bolt yet.

I've explained to him that all of the Netflix players on Windows (the app and players running in web browsers) have the same fixed bit rate option, albeit a not-officially-exposed debugging feature.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I thought all Hulu was capped at 720p?

In any case that option might be limited in bitrate due to the DASH limitations of the Opera browser TiVo is using. They might even be limiting it to match the specs of the Roamio or Premiere hardware, and not the Bolt. For example Plex on the Premiere is limited to 720p @ 4Mbps and yet the Bolt can do 1080p at like 25Mbps. But if you were writing one app for both devices and didn't want to distinguish between them then you might code to the lowest common denominator and cap the app at 720p @ 4Mbps.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Is the Amazon Video app coded in Opera HTML5? Because it streams 1080p at a bitrate of about 10 Mbps.

I'm pretty sure that Hulu only offers a max resolution of 720p (and stereo sound) on any device, although maybe that's changing. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to read on here recently that Hulu is offering 24 Hz encodes to their new app on the Bolt, as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube all do.

Sure wish TiVo would roll the new Hulu app out to Roamio. Can't imagine why they're holding it, as well as the new WWE app, back for a month...


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Some people who think that they're getting 1080p from Hulu have estimated the bit rate at 4+ Mbps, measuring bandwidth consumed while streaming it via various methods. I suppose that it's possible that DASH in TiVo Opera is strangely limited to 720p. The devices that I have whose Hulu apps are said by that article to be using DASH are PS3, Roku 3 and Fire TV Stick (the article just says "Fire TV"; the app might run with differences on the stick). I can't tell by eyeballing it whether I'm getting 1080p from any of them or not; Hulu's 720p has always been pretty good. PS3 might be a bit sharper but I can't been sure. I don't have the means to measure consumed bandwidth (I used to run Tomato in and old router but it's gone and I haven't had the guts to risk bricking this one by installing it or some other alternate router software with bandwidth monitoring). As stated, the people who think that they're getting 1080p are using Chromecast and Shield TV.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

NashGuy said:


> I was pleasantly surprised, however, to read on here recently that Hulu is offering 24 Hz encodes to their new app on the Bolt, as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube all do.


Their encodes were probably always predominately 24p; the encoding the content providers give them for contemporary titles is at that framerate (or so sayeth Netflix). The new app is just capable of outputting it as a 24Hz signal which the old one was not.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

NashGuy said:


> Is the Amazon Video app coded in Opera HTML5? Because it streams 1080p at a bitrate of about 10 Mbps.


We don't know for sure. There use to be a way to use kmttg to test if an app launched in Opera or not, but they disabled the feature it exploited before the Amazon app was released.

All we know for sure is that the Netflix app does NOT use Opera and the YouTube app does. (or at least the version they had at the time did)

Although TiVo's developer docs specifically say that they use HTML5 now and I'm pretty sure that Plex is using Opera because of some comments the developers made on their forum.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Going by the URL prefix it uses, the Amazon Prime app does appear to be using Opera:

```
x-tivo:web:https://atv-ext.amazon.com/cdp/resources/app_host/index.html?deviceTypeID=A3UXGKN0EORVOF
```


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