Boxee Drops Hulu Support

frdmfghtr writes "According to a boxee blog entry, Hulu will no longer be supported. From the post: 'two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from boxee. we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it. you can see their blog post about the issues they are facing.' Reading the hulu blog post, the only 'issue' I see facing Hulu is that content providers have (once again) shot themselves in the foot, switching off a media conduit they should have been promoting." Update: 02/19 14:31 GMT by T : Jamie points out this interesting (speculative) piece at O'Reilly Radar about the thought process that may have driven the decision.

Comments

No hulu for boxee means...

[Anonymous Coward]

...no viewership from me for hulu. Anywhere. First tv.com now boxee. It's a sign of these illogical times that hulu allow anyone to embed their videos in any web page, but then would force a application that sends hundreds of thousands of streams of traffic to them to drop their service.

Cable companies' (who are clearly pressuring content providers) subscriptions are already falling. I'm one of those people who have dropped it. Lest that trend continue though, we can't make it TOO easy for people to watch video online now, can we? Continually making it more difficult to get to online video won't save the cable companies' bloated overpriced businesses. It may well sacrifice hulu's, though...

Re:No hulu for boxee means...

[Shads]

So everyone goes back to viewing their tv shows with no ads from Pirate Bay. ~shrug~ people used Hulu on Boxee because it was easier even if the ads were a bit annoying, now that they've taken it away it'll just be status quo.

Re:No hulu for boxee means...

[DavidTC]

Back? When did we stop?

And I think the hypothesis in the summary is correct. They thought people were watching Hulu on computer. Because they're apparently complete and total morons who don't understand the different between computers and TVs is...nothing.

I'm going to explain this carefully to the TV companies:

I literally have not watched an ad on TV in three years, cause my 'TV' is hooked to a computer that runs utorrent downloading an rss feed, and a program called gbpvr. This is a 'computer' that serves the purpose of a DVD player. It's not some tiny screen, it's hooked to my actual main TV, and only to that. It has a remote control on it.

It is a computer by technical definition, but I want you goofs to think of it as a TiVo that illegally downloads TV shows. I went to bed last time, and I woke up with Lost, Lie to Me, Knight Rider, and Life on Mars downloaded. Without ads. For free. With an interface I can operate like a TiVo, with a remote, on a television.

This system wasn't hard to setup. The hardware requirement was a $40 remote control and an old computer. The two pieces of software were both free. In terms of technical skill required, it wasn't much at all.

To recap: I can walk into my living room, sit down at my couch and use a remote control to watch the episode of Lost that aired last night, and then delete it to make room for more. Without ads. No hassle whatsoever, it happened entirely automatically. It is there, now. It is easier to watch than using hulu in a web browser.

Now I want to tell you I'm 30. And I want you TV executives to imagine the 25% of the 18-35 year olds that are moderately technically savvy switching to my setup. Now I want you to imagine them helping their friends set it up. (There are a lot of old computers out there.)

I will give you a second to change your underwear. Are you people perhaps grasping the fucking seriousness of your situation?

There is one, and exactly one, way for you to show me an ad: Some sort of automatic downloading application (Not real-time streaming crap. I don't have infinite bandwidth.) that lets me subscribe to TV shows and download and watch them. Like I do now, but legally.

If you would provide this, I would switch. Even if the shows had ads. Away from the same system without ads. I'm okay with ads, I understand that's how you make your money. Other people might not be so noble, but if your application was easier to use, and came with a remote control, they'd never set anything up...but once they do, they aren't switching.

However, my choices now are the current system, and fucking stupid hulu in a web browser that I can't operate with a remote control and stutters if I'm downloading something else. I'd never heard of boxee, might have used that too if I knew about it (Although I hate streaming), but congrats on breaking that.

No Ads

[Hatta]

I watch Hulu on XBMC. It just hooks into the video stream directly. The ads on the website are inserted by the flash player. No flash, no ads. This is probably behind this decision.

Hulu drops boxee support

[wjh31]

if hulu are asking to be removed, then it sounds like hulu have stopped supporting boxee, rather than boxee no longer supporting hulu

Re:Hulu sucks...period

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Nobody wants fragmentation, they all just want their walled garden to be the only game in town.

Not exactly the world's most brilliant plan.

Re:Lame.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They don't really want their stuff on Hulu being watched on TV. Hulu is, essentially, the product of a market segmentation/price discrimination move. Better to have the tech-savvy cheapskates watching on Hulu, where we can show them ads and keep an eye on them, rather than on bittorrent or any of the numerous dodgey underground streaming outfits.

However, they don't want Hulu to replace cable as the medium of choice for nontechy/convenience oriented users. If getting a Hulu set top box is just as easy as getting a cable set top box, and costs a great deal less, then cable loses. The media overlords don't really want that.