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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.
Reading the comments on the blog entry linked in the summary seems to show that there are ads on Hulu streams through Boxee. I can see absolutely no good reason whatsoever for the content providers forcing Hulu to do this.
Hulu seem to be quite resistant to naming them, which is a shame. It's clear that they're walking a fine line between pleasing customers and pleasing providers, and you can see very clearly from the tone of their blog post that they're not happy about blocking Boxee - I'm surprised that they aren't pushing back a little by simply telling their customers who's pressed them into it.
I honestly cannot see a single good reason to allow the content through a browser but not through a plugin. I assume the thinking of the content providers is that most people aren't going to hook up a 'normal' computer to a TV, and thus Hulu doesn't really compete with cable/satellite without services like Boxee. This is short-sighted and stupid - when there is a huge surplus of free (illegal) media out there for the taking, the last thing they should be doing is placing limitations on the legal media. Same goes for HDCP, CSS, UOPs, region lockouts and any other scheme that reduces the value of legitimate content in comparison to 'pirated' content.
It's not precisely the same thing (due to the complexity of international broadcasting rights), but the fact you can only get Hulu in the US is a symptom of the same line of thinking. I want to watch House, for example - if I could get it through Hulu I'd do so, and be happy enough to watch the ads. Back when the region lockout was easy to bypass I used the service and was pleasantly surprised; picture quality is much better than BBC iPlayer and the ads are less intrusive than commercial broadcast TV. As it stands now I'll just wait until the DVD boxsets are cheap enough second hand and get them instead - partly to save money, partly as a matter of principle: if they won't give me half decent access to the product I want, I'll do my best to ensure they don't get any of my money when I do pay for it.
I guess I am missing something, but Boxee is ultimately software, right?
So why can't the Boxee people program their software to look like a regular web browser on a regular computer to Hulu's servers, making Boxee indistinguishable to those providers who would care?
Sort of like a User Agent Switcher for a media player? It seems to me that would be a big "FU" to the content providers, a big win for viewers, and Hulu is left out of the loop altogether so they're not to blame.