Slashdot Mirror
ABC/Disney Considering Hulu
An anonymous reader writes "The Walt Disney Co and Hulu.com have restarted talks over offering shows from Disney's ABC television network on the online video distributor owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, paidContent.org reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources." The real question to me is when will they stop screwing around with Boxee users?
The problem with an online model is that it may or may not be possible to block the ads. When watching television, you see what you see, unless you flip the channel. Online, though, maybe or maybe not, with some streaming sites, blocking certain sites will potentially block the ads.
But, that's what they get when they have separate files from the show, as opposed to merging it into one long video file.
ABC can't seem to keep their stuff together with their video client. the volume button is autistic, and the continue feature in which you are forced to hit a button to acknowledge that you watched their ad is recognized as a clickjack by modern browsers.
They don't need HULU they need decent software.
I don't think it's any mystery why Hulu is "screwing around with" Boxee users: Hulu's content providers don't want Hulu to be viewable on a TV and, thus (in their sad confused minds) compete with their television programming. Yes, it's stupid, but I don't see how this is Hulu's fault. They're getting jerked around by the content providers just like the rest of us.
caritj.org
The problem has always been the ABC shows I like, such as Lost. They won't work under Linux, so I have a VirtualBox image that I use for those shows. It's a crappy workaround. Adding ABC to Hulu would allow me to completely get rid of that VirtualBox image.
Regardless of the current situation between Hulu and Boxee, Hulu has allowed me to get rid of my $100-plus a month cable bill, so adding any major network is a good thing.
Not only that, but with an online "on-demand" system, you can really see which shows are successful, you don't have to rely on brain-dead network executives and "surveys". Pay checks can also be directed at shows which are actually watched and not garbage that keeps sucking money until they are cancelled.
Also, said brain-dead network executives can't try to kill shows by shuffling them around anymore.
Wait, you mean a commercial enterprise that pays a fee to host programming is purposely trying to make it difficult on free riders. Oh the shock, oh the outrage.
How can we possibly allow that to happen.
Seriously though, Hulu is working on adding device support to their service, I believe Roku is on the list, but they still have to pay their fees to use the media, and any service that zaps the ads isn't going to be considered for partnership.
I'm not really sure how people can be shocked or outraged about that. Hulu can only be free as long as the copyright owners allow their media to be used. And that requires some sort of payment, either a fee or watching the ads. And really, it only comes out to about a minute and a half per half hour, it's really not that much.
Why is Boxee the real question? I'd never even heard of it until they got blocked by Hulu, I don't know anyone who has one, and nobody I know is even thinking of getting one. Sure it was a lousy decision, but is it really so world-changingly lousy that Slashdot CANNOT EVER post about Hulu without bringing Boxee up?
The problem with that is this model will either require
1) Direct payment from you
or
2) You to be a free-rider on a system supported by others
or
3) People willing to pay to get you to watch what you want to watch.
1) is tough because nobody wants to pay for TV. 2) is not sustainable. 3) is a pipe dream.
Hulu is funded through advertising. On the radio a few weeks ago, I think on NPR's marketplace, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/12/hulu/ they had an interview with Eric Feng, founder of Hulu. In it, he said that advertising is where the money is and that it is likely that the amount of commercials/ads shown per episode is likely to increase. It was either him or someone else on the program (I can't listen to the program right now) that said Hulu is likely to follow the same path as cable did - starting with very little commercials, and using that as a selling point, and then eventually transitioning to 7+ minutes of advertising per half hour as Hulu became indispensable.
I like Hulu, but I do not believe they operate under some "do our work for the benefit of the users" mantra. At some point they will do the analysis on ads vs. user dissatisfaction and will settle at a balance point.
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Hulu is starting to get a pretty good mass now. Hulu is my preferred player (ease of use, intrusiveness of ads, etc.). NBCs is better in some ways (higher resolution) but worse in others (less able to handle connection bumps). CBS' player is decent, and ABC's player is probably the least user friendly of the bunch.
Hulu is the future; content providers who don't offer online streaming will be left behind. It's really a win-win. Consumers get an easy and free option to catch up with their shows if they miss them. The content provider gets to manage the time it's up and gets ad revenue, and likely can use web metrics software to get a better idea of viewership/demographics (NetRatings, Quantcast, Google Analytics, etc.) since very few households influence the Nielsen Ratings.
the real question to me is what the heck has happened to Hulu's service for the last month? i used to have great playback even on my Celeron 800Mhz Tablet, but now all i get is dropped frames -- even on my Athlon XP 3000+!
last year i watched all the episodes of "Arrested Development" and was surprised by both the quality of the series (it was new to me) and the quality of the streaming. it only took me the first 60sec of AD's episode 1 to turn me into a big Hulu fan! i even got into the habit of watching movies there afterwards.
the chopped playback doesnt seem to be a bandwidth issue because the audio and video never stop and they dont get out of synch either. when you think Flash playback cant become any heavier, Adobe and Hulu show you otherwise. it makes me wonder if the use of Silverlight could make this less worse?
I know, I start typing "Dam..." into the search box and "Damages" shows right up, it's the worst... I wanted to get a random TV show, not exactly what I was looking for.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I used to watch a lot of TV via the network web sites. It was great: didn't have to remember to set a recorder, didn't have to remember to go to the TV at a particular time, got shows that aren't available in my area without cable or a rooftop antenna (refuse to pay for one, landlord doesn't provide the other). Plus ABC shows were in a fancy widescreen mode that I can't get on my klunky old analog TV.
Then all the networks started switching to an evil software stack from Move Networks. Don't know the motivation (DRM? Outsourcing streaming infrastructure?) but it effectively cut me off from the sites that use it. The Move player requires more CPU bandwidth than my wimpy little tablet can handle. (So no more watching "Lost" in bed.) And even if I switch to my more powerful desktop machine, I get endless network. These might go away if I upgraded my DSL, but that's just not worth it.
Fortunately, a lot of the shows that I watch are also available on Hulu. And they still use a simple flash-based player. The rest I watch the old-fashioned way or do without.
Gotta wonder how much business Hulu has picked up this way.