Hulu True Deeplinking

kartcon · June 13, 2024, 12:43am

Has anyone had any luck with true deep linking Hulu. I’m not just talking about starting a media player and switching the source to Hulu. That’s easy and readily achievable. What I’m looking for is the ability to direct Hulu to a specific network, like The Weather Channel, as part of an automation or script.

I’m currently running 4 Roku TV’s as media players and have a subscription to Hulu. The typical start up sequence is:

Turn on Media Player
Set source to Hulu and delay until Hulu is ready
Select the user from the Hulu Menu. We have 2, plus there is an option to add a user.
This is where it gets wonky. Select the correct Network. In my case I want a specific network, not a particular show or series.

I can do the first 3 steps using the remote.send_command service calls, but the desired channel is not typically in the same sequence of key commands from day to day. Meaning if the sequence was Left, Left, Down, Select, Down, Select EVEREY DAY this would be an acceptable solution, but it isn’t. With 4 TV’s and one Hulu account the Recently Watched and Live TV list order changes daily.
Therefore I would like to do something like this:

hulu_direct_to_history:
  alias: Hulu Direct to History Channel
  sequence:
    - service: media_player.play_media
      enabled: TRUE
      target:
        entity_id: media_player.kitchen_roku_tv
      data:
        media_content_id: 2285
        media_content_type: app
        extra:
          content_id: the-history-channel-bf84c00e-26c4-4c19-b4f2-e113fd4ebbc8
          media_type: live

However this fails. The content ID was acquired using the Hulu website on my PC. I can log in, select a network and watch whatever is on at the time. Using the information found on the Roku integration page, the URL is parsed down to a content_id of:

the-history-channel-bf84c00e-26c4-4c19-b4f2-e113fd4ebbc8

from the full URL of:

https://www.hulu.com/network/the-history-channel-bf84c00e-26c4-4c19-b4f2-e113fd4ebbc8

I suspect that the Roku TV’s post a similar content ID to the one the web page uses, but in every case where I get the data from the website, parse it and send it with the above code, it fails.

I’ve tried:

        extra:
          content_id: the-history-channel-bf84c00e-26c4-4c19-b4f2-e113fd4ebbc8
          media_type: live

        extra:
          content_id: the-history-channel
          media_type: live

        extra:
          content_id: bf84c00e-26c4-4c19-b4f2-e113fd4ebbc8
          media_type: live

        extra:
          content_id: network/the-history-channel-bf84c00e-26c4-4c19-b4f2-e113fd4ebbc8
          media_type: live

None work. :<(

Does anyone have a suggestion or alternative solution? Any help would be appreciated.

Positiveground · February 16, 2025, 12:43am

Any luck here? I’m trying to do the same on Apple TV.

kartcon · February 16, 2025, 12:59am

Unfortunately, no. I dug around with WireShark but could never get anything I could code to link an action directly to a specific channel. Super disappointing since it seems like it should be do-able especially since I can click a link on Hulu on my pc and jump right to that channel.

johaywood · June 25, 2025, 2:21pm

This seems to be working for me using

action: media_player.play_media
target:
  entity_id:
    - media_player.office_apple_tv
data:
  media_content_id: hulu://watch/73df1fcf-09ed-4717-a9d2-14d3138afd7e
  media_content_type: url

so basically remove the host/query params of the web url and change the scheme to hulu://. changing watch to series opens the series page instead of playing the media. Still early in testing, but hope this helps!

jeigrei · July 15, 2025, 2:16am

After some playing with curl, I found that the Roku ECP url will accept networkID as a parameter – you can get these from the Hulu URL when you navigate to a network’s details page, e.g. for CNN:

https://www.hulu.com/network/77c1d69b-93a6-45d8-b7d1-6d39cde0e820

Unfortunately as of HA core 2025.7.2 the official Roku integration does not support network_id as a parameter. I’ve opened a PR to fix this, but in the meantime you can use the rest_command integration to send the HTTP request to the Roku directly:

configuration.yaml

rest_command:
  turn_on_hulu_cnn:
    url: "http://{ip-address-of-your-roku}:8060/launch/2285?networkId=77c1d69b-93a6-45d8-b7d1-6d39cde0e820"
    method: post

Note with the rest_command approach you have to hardcode the target roku’s IP and the network id, so you’ll need a new entry per each (roku device, channel) combination

kartcon · July 15, 2025, 11:51pm

I’m gonna test this over the next few days. Initially, it looks good. I’ll mark as a solution after testing. Thanks for posting!!

kartcon · July 17, 2025, 12:35am

So, unfortunately, this didn’t work for me. I added the following lines to my rest commands file:

turn_on_kitchen_hulu_abc25:
  url: "http://192.168.1.14:8060/launch/2285?networkId=wjxx-7d9d2a8c-e1b7-499e-8818-de5db36902b0"
  method: post
#
turn_on_kitchen_hulu_cbs47:
  url: "http://192.168.1.14:8060/launch/2285?networkId=wjax-f272b9c5-f82d-4545-bd53-288a590d0027"
  method: post
#
turn_on_kitchen_hulu_discovery:
  url: "http://192.168.1.14:8060/launch/2285?networkId=discovery-15c4547b-7457-44d2-8cf3-e6aefa2ac09d"
  method: post
#
turn_on_kitchen_hulu_fox30:
  url: "http://192.168.1.14:8060/launch/2285?networkId=wfox-cffc1048-87d6-4144-8f30-197095dcffde"
  method: post
#
turn_on_kitchen_hulu_nbc12:
  url: "http://192.168.1.14:8060/launch/2285?networkId=wtlv-d148cfd1-5645-44ef-b114-bc81e16cf580"
  method: post

I got the network ID while opening the channel on my pc. Here’s that screenshot:

And finally I called the rest command from a mushroom template chip. That code looks like this:

type: custom:mushroom-chips-card
chips:
  - type: template
    tap_action:
      action: perform-action
      target: {}
      perform_action: rest_command.turn_on_kitchen_hulu_nbc12
    content: NBC Live
    picture: /local/roku_icons/nbc.png
    entity: media_player.kitchen_roku_tv
#
type: custom:mushroom-chips-card
chips:
  - type: template
    tap_action:
      action: perform-action
      target: {}
      perform_action: rest_command.turn_on_kitchen_hulu_cbs47
    content: CBS Live
    picture: /local/roku_icons/cbs.png

When I tap the mushroom chip(s) on my dashboard, it restarts Hulu and goes to displaying whatever is first in the LIVE NOW bar onscreen (waiting for the user to press PLAY). As best as I can tell, I have put all the correct pieces in place as described, but can’t get it to go directly to the selected channel.
Just for clarity, the kitchen device is a Roku TV with Hulu built in as an app. The rest commands do connect and interact with the device, but not with the desired outcome. I have populated 5 individual mushroom chips for the major local networks and Discovery Network channel, and all tap actions do the exact same thing, even though the underlying rest commands differ. Also note that I’ve tried the tap action with and without the entity defined. See the last line in the two chip card YAML.
Any thoughts jeigrei?

jeigrei · July 17, 2025, 5:01pm

Hm, those network ids look different from the ones I was seeing (could be a regional or app version thing?) – have you tried setting the network Id to just the UUID? e.g. instead of

wjxx-7d9d2a8c-e1b7-499e-8818-de5db36902b0

just

7d9d2a8c-e1b7-499e-8818-de5db36902b0

kartcon · July 18, 2025, 11:16pm

Tried your suggestion today. Unfortunately I get the exact same response. Just out of curiosity, how do you get your network ID’s? Are you using a browser where you can see the URL or are you using some other method? Also, I am initiating the rest command from a Lovelace mushroom card tap action. It shouldn’t matter how it gets called, correct? I could try moving the action portion to a script and use the mushroom tap action to call the script. (I really don’t think it will make a difference, but can try.)
In any case, I do appreciate your efforts and will continue to tinker with this.