Well, MythTV launched in Australia today. I couldn’t have my wife trying to start/stop the MythTV frontend and poke around looking for web browsers, typing URLs and maximising windows and whatnot, so I quickly banged up a Netflix launch button for MythTV.
It works by launching the Google Chrome browser in kiosk mode. You will need to download and install the full Google Chrome browser from here, because Chromium does not contain the necessary DRM libraries to decrypt the video that is delivered by Netflix. It won’t work in Firefox either.
Once you have Chrome installed, create a directory to hold a custom default menu for MythTV:
mkdir -p ~/.mythtv/themes/defaultmenu
Then clone the main menu file from MythTV into this directory:
cp /usr/share/mythtv/themes/defaultmenu/mainmenu.xml ~/.mythtv/themes/defaultmenu
Open the new file in a text editor. Add this element right above the TV_WATCH_TV button (or wherever you like):
<button> <type>NETFLIX</type> <text>Netflix</text> <description>Launch Netflix in a browser</description> <action>EXEC "/usr/bin/google-chrome" --kiosk "https://www.netflix.com/ProfilesGate"</action> </button>
That’s about all there is to it. Save the file and restart the MythTV frontend and the button should appear. To exit Netflix press CTRL+W or ALT+F4.
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