How to download videos from Hulu

Posted on July 28, 2009 at 5:26 am

Ever want to download a video from the Hulu website? If you don’t know what Hulu is yet, it’s an awesome site for watching TV shows and movies online for free. However, it only allows you to stream content to your computer, kind of like how YouTube works.

Of course, there are a hundred tools to download YouTube videos, but nothing for Hulu, until now! Hulu Video Downloader is a free program that will save Hulu videos to your PC and convert them to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, FLV, WMV, etc.

download hulu videos

Overall, the app is not the best looking or most easy to use app I’ve ever worked with. Actually, it has some strange quirks that might frustrate some!

To start off, you simply copy and paste the URL of the Hulu video you want to download. Before you press the Add button, make sure to click on one of the empty slots in the table below.

Once you hit the Add button, you should get a message a few seconds later with some kind of script error. At this point, click YES and the video should begin to download.

The program comes in a free version and a paid version. The free version only allows you to download up to three videos per session. If you want to download more, you have to close the program and open it again.

Also, the paid version allows you to download the Hulu videos in a higher quality format.

The program also supports other popular online video sites, such as YouTube, Vimeo, and more. Enjoy! [via LifeHacker]

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads

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Comments

16 Responses to “How to download videos from Hulu”

  1. TechCombo said on : July 28th, 2009 at 7:22 am

    Thankyou for this useful tutorial :) Just hope Hulu is close to coming to the UK since the VoD service is such a great site! The closest we have here is perhaps tvlinks or alluc.org.


  2. Chuck said on : July 28th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    The newer versions only allow you to download 1 video at a time. Not sure if the program write did this to cripple it more or to keep hulu from seeing multiple connections open from the same IP address.

    It also seems that there is a cat-and-mouse game going on. It seems that at times, the program just stops doing what it is supposed to, then a new version comes out (sometimes 2 weeks after the last) and everything works again. However, the one-at-a-time limit was an unpleasant addition, but the program wasn’t working.

    Also, you can run multiple instances of the program at once, just in case you want to DL more than one at a time.


  3. Stene said on : November 6th, 2009 at 8:30 am

    Recording movies from hulu is just perfect, I love this idea, that’s why I got tunebite, to get as many movies as I need. :)


  4. Jim said on : November 17th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Hulu Video Downloader does not work for me. Every time I try and use it, I get an “”’ is not a valid integer’ or some message like that, at which time I get the standard windows error message, and then at which time my computer slows down to a crawl to the point that it sometimes requires a reboot. I have tried reinstalling several times with the same results.

    I get this message when I try using hulu grabber – “Access violation at address 00401BBD in module ‘hulugrabber.exe’. Read of address 109B0C3C.”
    Has anyone else encountered these problems? Thanks, Jim


  5. Rob said on : December 6th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    Yes i have had the same errors. And i got the errors after a few weeks of the program working just fine. It has happend twice first time i just downloaded the newer version and that fixed the problem. But this time there is no longer a newer version on there site. In fact there is no version new or old I was wondering if they stopped making the downloader? not sure though. Maybe someone else knows.


  6. Michael said on : December 30th, 2009 at 5:23 am

    Well, since there are no further posts, I guess we can’t download from HULU anymore…..alas, what a shame……..


  7. Richard said on : January 12th, 2010 at 9:15 am

    Hulu’s shows can’t be downloaded with any kind of program, it must be a screencapturing program, not as the youtube downloaders are, because the files from hulu are some rtmp-e files, not flash video and they cannot be downloaded anymore, they must be captured. That’s a bad thing because now we cannot get our fav shows, but also there are many screencapturing software on the market and also the other guy was talking about tunebite which seems now can capture the video streaming.

    Didn’t try myself yet but surely I will and I found a nice tutorial about recording hulu shows, so it must work somehow with hulu:

    audials.com/en/how_to_record_stream_capture_music_videos_movies_from/hulu.html


  8. Hulu said on : January 23rd, 2010 at 9:51 am

    You can’t even download or capture video from Hulu with Replay Media Catcher. When I try to do so the only I get are their stupid commercials and bad movie/dvd previews. I have tried EVERYTHING out there and the one program that could capture video….well, the video playback was sluggish and choppy. DAMN HULU.


  9. Duffy said on : February 8th, 2010 at 4:24 am

    Oh, Replay Media Catcher definitely does not work anymore to record and save Hulu shows to pc.I guess probably there are also a lot of apps that used to work to record Hulu videos don’t work anymore because of the encryption it has on the streams.I also tried to download Hulu videos with a couple of other apps, like Hulu Grabber and I think I also tried Hulu Downloader but these didn’t work either, sadly. This really p***** me off cause I used to download Hulu videos from several of my favorite tv series, I just hate it that now all I can do is just sit in front of the pc and watch Hulu online.
    This sucks!


  10. James Howard said on : February 24th, 2010 at 9:26 pm

    tried the hulu site: http://www.hulu.com/watch/128911/24-1200-am—100-am

    getting ‘Access violation at address 0051C9E6 in module ‘hulugrabber.exe’. Read of address 00000000.’


  11. richard said on : March 3rd, 2010 at 3:11 am

    Hello,

    This is crazy. I have been trying to download videos using this program, but it keeps telling me I have to be in the US! But I am using a program called Hide My IP to view the videos in the first place since you can’t watch Hulu outside of the US. So why can’t I download them?


  12. kelly said on : March 14th, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    Richard-

    The Hide my IP addy you are currently using sounds like an IP from outside the country-so you can’t watch much less download.

    And I use Camtasia Studio to record -it records the screen.


  13. Terri said on : March 16th, 2010 at 12:11 am

    GetFLV (getflv.net) can download hulu videos very well. We checked it today. It’s not free, but it does work.


  14. iTechjunky said on : April 17th, 2010 at 5:12 pm

    That’s a nice tutorial but unfortunately, Hulu is not available in my country :(


  15. Whatever said on : May 5th, 2010 at 5:05 pm

    Piece of crap i’ve tryed 10 different so called hulu downloader/grabber so-on none of them work waist of time dling this app it is worthless crap that dosent work just gives you a error message and it still dosent even closed..pfff


  16. Justin said on : October 31st, 2010 at 9:10 am

    Why does hulu making it impossible to download any videos?


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