How to watch Hulu in the Playstation 3 browser
Even though the PS3 Hulu experience kind of sucked, I kept hoping it would get better after each System Update. Until… Hulu banned the Playstation 3 browser. The message they give is “This video is not available on your platform”.
I could go on a tirade about this, but instead I will just arm you with the knowledge you need to solve this problem and do what they don’t want you to. The basic steps are:
- Set up a HTTP proxy that rewrites the User-Agent string
- Configure Playstation 3 network settings to use this proxy
- Watch Hulu on PS3.
Naturally, I chose to expand my file server/router machine’s job by installing Squid 3.0 (proxy software), though you can set up any HTTP proxy on any machine on your network so long as it is capable of rewriting the User-Agent header.
Be warned, though, if you use Squid that there is a lot of conflicting information out there since they changed the configuration directives across versions. In Squid 3.0, merely add this to your squid.conf:
request_header_access User-Agent deny all
header_replace User-Agent Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; YPC 3.0.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR)
That User-Agent string is for IE7. You may wish to change that to another common browser, or add a “Fuck you, dickheads” to it, but as long as it doesn’t say “PLAYSTATION 3″ then you should be fine.
Filed by xtravar at September 21st, 2009 under linux