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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?
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
You seem to be referring to ABC's horrific website streaming model, which often brings up a separate website to show you the ad, and then makes you click after a determined amount of time to start the show again. Not only that, it also resizes your fullscreen and the volume level is never consistant. Sounds like ABC needs to join up with Hulu to avoid the warnings you are giving them. I don't know of a way to block Hulu's ads, and frankly, I don't care to, considering most of the ads are under 30 seconds, and I WANT internet tv to succeed.
Given that 90% of the people I know still use IE, or Firefox without Adblock, I don't think that ad blocking in streaming videos is much of a concern yet.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
And the other problem is the ads themselves. They keep limiting their audience to the USA, as if they can't figure out that ads don't have to be limited to one market.
Just get the Coke, Nestlé, Kraft, Apple, Toyota of this world (i.e. the big international companies) for your commercials. It doesn't matter where you are on the planet, some products are available everywhere.
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.
Well they better make it bloody convenient because like it or not, they are competing with torrents.
I'm willing to pay for convenience, seems most people are, so get rid of the unskippable shit, files that self destruct or can't be saved at all. Then let me choose a media player instead of the ugly branded junk. If not, then sorry but then you are competing on price alone.
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.
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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How so? 90% of users wouldn't know what a torrent was, and of the remainder how many would know how to configure their router so they could use it? Use WinRAR, VLC etc.? Even know how to install them?
And even then you've done that mess it's not streaming.. you've got to download first. Screw that. Open browser, goto www.hulu.com, watch show. Torrent just can't compete with that.
I WANT internet tv to succeed.
I don't, I'd rather the internet superseded TV; these webTV websites like Hulu leave the same old content syndicates in charge of when you watch, what you watch, and what you watch with it (no Boxee or mobile devices for you! No content if you're not from country X). Note Hulu is owned and directed by media conglomerates, it's not some plucky independent.
Worse, it gives them leverage over device manufacturers to later on demand things like no ad-skipping, no recording, etc etc. in return for licensing access to their webTV channel. The only advance of this system over TV is it isn't scheduled. If this is the future of internet TV, count me out, I'll go back to youtube and reading.
I'd rather a simple purchase/rent model myself (as in Amazon or iTunes), and the minimum of middlemen between the content producer and the purchaser. After the purchase I do whatever I want with the item I have purchased, and don't have to be connected constantly to watch it, or ask permission to transfer it to a device (in this respect iTunes fails, they should lose the DRM).
The concepts of ad-supported viewing, control over viewing, no recording/skipping, and even channels themselves really deserve to die along with broadcast TV.
I dislike commercials during my shows as much as the next person but as a business model goes, I think hulu will be able to take it to the next level. As an advertiser you want to put your product in front of the eyes most likely to purchase your stuff.
Hulu should be able to put together a netflix style algorithm of users who like the shows you do and then match it up to a set of demographics you fall into and truly target ads to you. Advertisers should LOVE this model.
I don't even mind the ads on Hulu because they are 15-30 seconds instead of 2 minutes or more on regular TV. That's not even long enough to make it worth my while to skip past the commercials. By the time I could reach to my remote to skip passed it the commercial will be almost finished.
Now if Adobe would make a flash player for Linux that was able to play full screen 480p streaming from Hulu well, I would be all set to cancel my cable subscription.
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
Plucky Independants in media, especially films and TV, exist on the backs of the giant conglomerates. Look at Steam, just as an example. If you tried steam without mainstream games, and only put up games like The Path, or i-Fluid or World of Goo, Steam would have died a long time ago. The more mainstream content shoulders the cost, the more networks are able and willing to support smaller, more daring shows. I agree that letting media consolidation run rampant is never good, but because Hulu exists, i'd expect a smaller, independant version to pop up as a sister site, because frankly, YouTube doesn't cut it for content distribution.
And you still can, but i'll be damned if i ever pay $1.99 for 22 minutes of The Daily Show. However, we're talking about Free content here. For that, I'd rather the ability to watch when I want, where I want, with fewer commercials and no cable TV bill, the more networks sign on for this, the better.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog