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Hulu May Begin Charging For Content Next Year
DJLuc1d tips news that Chase Carey, president and COO of News Corp., has said that Hulu may begin charging for its streamed video content as early as next year. He said at a recent conference that the free-to-air model is not sustainable in the long-term. The Atlantic takes a look at several business models Hulu could employ and wonders how their current advertising system would be involved.
I wouldn't mind paying for the two to three shows per week I watch on hulu.com, but then if I have to pay I don't want to sit through ads. Wonder how they'll work that out?
Caveat Utilitor
Sometimes I watch Hulu because it's convenient, if they were charging I'd drop them like a hot rock. Tivo is your friend.
Thinking they're going to come out with a charge model isn't as funny as Rupert Murdoch's threats to monetize his web properties, but it's vastly overestimating their importance in the content market.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The problem is figuring out what people will put up with. Some people will be willing to put up with more adds or subscription fees. Some won't
Hulu, as it stands now, is reasonable (though their selection is way too small). If they ever ask for a credit card (paypal, etc), they will instantly lose a huge percentage of their clients, including me. If they increase the number or length of commercials by much, they will drive many back to their DVR and VCR (or online downloads).
They have an appealing concept working for them right now. They need to decide exactly why it is that they aren't making their original projections. I suspect they just don't have much that people want to watch. Perhaps the general public simply hasn't heard about them (an advertizing problem). Whatever the issue, you only resort to driving away your viewers when you're desperate. If they "over-correct", they will crash and burn.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
You can get all sorts of weird stuff on cable that you will never see on OTA TV and will probably never see on Hulu.
The problem with Hulu is it's a little too much like the local NBC or Fox affiliate.
On the other hand, Hulu is on demand. You don't get that with broadcast TV, or even basic cable.
OTOH, I can watch anything on cable commercial free through the wonders of modern technology (DVR).
Only if you've already recorded it (unless you have some form of on demand service, and the show you want is available). Hulu, on the other hand, requires no forethought, and works just fine no matter how many shows you want to watch, even if they are broadcast at the same time.
Hulu is like DVR, without all the annoyances and complexity of managing a dedicated recording device. Also, most standalone DVRs have some form of subscription tied to them for full functionality.
I have loved Hulu, but I will do one or the other: I will pay a subscription fee or I will watch advertisements during my programming - I will not do both, which is one of the reasons I don't have cable service. I'm okay with Hulu charging a subscription if the content is ad-free. But I'm not willing to pay twice for the same content.
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
A few things jump out at me:
First, to be accurate, it is no different than your friend recording it on VHS and giving a copy of that VHS to you. I am not sure about the legality of that, but since he is making a copy for non-personal use it is probably copyright infringement the same as him making you that copy via torrents would be.
Second, it actually is different. The reason nobody particularly cares about your friend giving you a VHS copy of the show is because the scale is nearly non-existent. It costs him (or you) money to buy the tapes and time to dub them for every copy made. Downloading that same show is a distribution method that would allow one person with very small money (tuner) and time (encoding) investments to provide that video, essentially for free, to thousands and thousands of people with exactly the same effort as it would take them for their own use, or to hand it to their friends. I am not intending to argue for one side or the other in the copyright debate, but the difference is hardly semantic.
And third, if it is wrong to download a movie--and again I am not making any personal judgments--then it is equally wrong to download a TV show. Both can be had from free- or nearly-free mediums, both deprive the producers of potential sales later on. If you do not think that people downloading Show X cuts into not only Show X's viewership and thus ad revenues but also their merchandise like box sets, then you are horribly and irrevocably biased.
It may sound as though I am taking the side of copyright owners; I am not, and a look around my hard drives would probably bear that fact out. I just do not see a reason to pretend there are no consequences to such actions for other parties.
First of all, I don't remember ever "no ads" being the selling point of cable.
Just because you don't remember it that way, it did not happen like that?
I remember it, and the 'no commercials' was THE marketing hype for cable. It only lasted a year or two, but it was definitely the angle they used to market this 'new cable service' back in the beginning.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti