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Boxee Hack Restores Hulu Support (Sort Of)

Posted by timothy on from the black-marker-on-the-edge dept.

DeviceGuru writes "Boxee has restored support for Hulu, along with several other enhancements, to its free media center platform for PCs and Macs. The modification, a hack to Boxee's RSS feed functionality, involves having Boxee users enable the support themselves by cutting/pasting URLs from Hulu's RSS feed page into their account on Boxee's website. It works, but one can't help wondering how it's really different from Boxee's original — superior — Hulu support. Oh, the games media companies play!"

9 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. This is great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Until the networks use this as an excuse to force Hulu to shut down its RSS feeds.

    1. Re:This is great... by Chyeld · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Really, Hulu was doomed from the start. They are competing against their owners, never a situation which resolves with a happy ending.

      Hulu is owned by FOX and NBC, it gets it's content from the big networks, the only reason any of them are willing to join this venture is because they see Hulu as the way to capture that last 'small' group of people who watch TV on their computer rather than at a 'TV'.

      They don't want Hulu to be competing directly with themselves on a TV, because the ad revenue they can get from getting your ass in a couch and watching TV vs. you watching it via Hulu is orders of magnitude greater. And unfortunately, that's not a tech thing, that's a "sponsers aren't willing to pay" thing.

      What these folk (though I think Hulu understands it perfectly) don't get is that the division line between TV and PC is growing fainter and dimmer every day and eventually, the distinction is going to be meaningless.

      The networks, more than likely, are going to keep turning the screws on Hulu. They'll be trying to ensure it can only be watched 'from a computer' rather than 'from a TV'. And each time they do, the more successful they are, the more irrevelant Hulu will become.

      Hulu can't escape from this, not while Hulu is owned and run by the networks, because there is no incentive for them to allow Hulu to be anything more and every incentive to keep it from being anything more.

      If I were a Hulu employee, I might not be jumping ship, but I certainly would not be sitting back toasting myself over the nice secure job I had.

  2. Good will? by qoncept · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Boxee guys claimed they were removing Hulu support in an act of good will toward Hulu (I'd guess hoping to maintain good relations with a content provider they wanted to get back). Now they're completely negating the good-will-effect by helping users work around it while still making it more of a pain for their users. Genius.

    --
    Whale
    1. Re:Good will? by hansamurai · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, maybe they decided that any goodwill received would just be wasted at this point and there would be no hope in getting Hulu back without bending over. Just a complete guess though given the circumstances I know.

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    2. Re:Good will? by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They said we want this plugin gone, boxee agreed and never fixed the plugin when hulu broke it. Then the boxee folks said "go ahead and just use the rss feed that works too.".

      Slightly different.

    3. Re:Good will? by Chyeld · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It was 'reasonable' for Hulu to ask Boxee to remove a feature that tied solely into Hulu.

      It is not reasonable for Hulu to ask Boxee to remove a feature that ties into a number of services and just happens to work with a service that Hulu provides.

      Expecting Boxee not to point out how to do it, given it hardly even an open secret at this point, is absurd.

      If Hulu's partners don't want people watching their content from outside of the website, why do they provide an RSS feed? Either they are ignorant or they are playing games.

      To be honest, given the situation, I don't know which. But it's definately one of the two.

    4. Re:Good will? by Chyeld · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think "Hulu" is incompetent, I think they have to answer to their owners, who have apparently rethought (or just now realized it wasn't) what they want it to be.

    5. Re:Good will? by russotto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What are the Terms of Service? Even with a public RSS feed, the Terms of Service may not allow certain types of access.

      Putting such Terms of Service on a public RSS feed is like putting a message on a billboard indicating Toyota drivers aren't permitted to read it.

  3. Re:Boxee supports Hulu? GREAT! by johannesg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd mod you up if I had points ;-) Maybe it is just advancing age (I'm 38, for crying out loud), but sometimes tech discussion do sound like that to me.

    By the way, your new startup sounds like a slightly dirty cross between a social site and a search engine... I would like to throw money at you for some reason.