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Hulu To Require Viewers To Have Cable Subscriptions
The NY Post reports that Hulu, the video streaming service with over 30 million users, has plans to force those users to prove they have a subscription to cable or satellite TV if they want to keep watching. Quoting:
"The move toward authentication is fueled by cable companies and networks looking to protect and profit from their content. The effort comes as entertainment companies continue to face drastic shifts in home viewing habits. Overall spending on home entertainment edged up 2.5 percent to $4.45 billion in the first quarter as a surge in digital streaming — which rose more than fivefold to $549 million — offset a continuing collapse in video rentals, according to Digital Entertainment Group. ... Hulu racked up some $420 million in ad revenue last year and is expected to do well in this year’s ad negotiations. But the move toward authentication, which could take years to complete, will make cable companies happy because it could slow cord-cutting by making cable subscribing more attractive."
USENET it is.
I didn't really need you before, I sure don't need you now.
Hello, Bittorrent!
Hulu hemmorages customers after initial roll-out of authentication scheme.
Of all the options available, the one we hate the most and absolutely will not do under any circumstances is give the consumers what they actually want and will happily pay for.
This doesn't make cable subscriptions more attractive.
All it does is make hulu less attractive than it already is.
Fuck that.
Good luck with that Hulu. What's next, is CNN.com going to force me to prove I have cable before reading their site? Hulu, people gladly watch your content with ads and you buckled to the cable providers, torpedoing your independence.
It won't slow "cord cutting" to make cable subscriptions more attractive, it'll just lead to people not using Hulu,
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I will cancel and not look back. Thanks Hulu, for making sure I will use bittorrent to get my content.
Totally not related to those same ISPs moving to cut people off from the internet with some special new method of piracy detection and enforcement that is extrajudicial... and being implimented only a few months from now.
It's not like this is coordinated or anything. Collusion doesn't exist. Enhance your calm, Citizen.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Just when you think even some branch of the industry gets it, they demonstrate they don't. It's hard to think of an industry more dedicated towards giving customers what they don't want, and doing everything in their power to make sure that more money slips through their fingers.
You see, Congress, this is what happens when you try to legislate an extinct business model back to health. You don't get better companies, you don't protect jobs or an industry, you just get lazy, stupid dinosaurs who continue to fecklessly drive towards the chasm.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They do realize that people use Hulu because they do not want to buy cable at home.
It's pretty simple.
I know a lot of people who pay for Hulu and would probably pay more.
But they won't buy cable to watch Hulu. Not a chance. They'll take their business elsewhere.
Oh, well. If they are strict about this authentication, a number of people will simply find a new competitor of theirs. No big loss (except to the cable companies)
Microsoft and Comcast already have authentication worked out for viewing channels on your Xbox 360. They require you to log in with your Comcast account, which knows if you're paying for channels. I can't believe it would take years to do the same thing for Hulu. In any case, I've cut the cord and won't be going back even if they stop broadcasting TV over the air.
People use Hulu because I don't have cable. Isn't that the point?
The move toward authentication is fueled by cable companies and networks looking to protect and profit from their content.
It seems that allowing cable companies to purchase content providers wasn't a good idea after all. Oh wait, that's what everyone except the FCC said already.
What exactly do you expect from a company 1/3rd owned by Comcast, with the other 2/3rds being Fox and Disney.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
To read an online magazine, you must also have a snail mail subscription?
There's nothing about this that makes any sense. It's stupid, ultimately self-destructive and only proves that the big media companies don't get it, and likely never will.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sorry Hulu, but you can go get stuffed.
I cut the cable 3 years ago to go with OTA Digital TV + TIVO, Netflix with iTMS subscriptions for the shows like Daily+Colbert that fell through the cracks.
Considering I get the shows you offer with ads in HD over the air WITHOUT CABLE gives me no reason to use your service, especially now that you've joined the Cable TV Cabal -- which is predicted to start charging $200/month in the years ahead.
Nothing, not even an Obama Mandate REQUIRING me to buy from a Federally Sanctioned Media Provider will ever get me to pay a dime to Comcast, AT&T, Verizon or their ILK.
After reading TFA (well, CTRL+F plus), it's not clear whether this will be for the free Hulu online, or just Plus subscribers. I currently use the XBMC Hulu plugin, and I'd hate to think that will go away as a result.
sig: sauer
I dropped my cable TV subscription over a year ago, and went with OTA only. This happened wen the cable company forced us to use one of their receivers for each of our four wall-mounted TV's. No thanks. Kept my cable modem, of course.
I've been very happy with it, except for one exception - NBC Sports Network (was Versus) exercised an option in their contract with IndyCar (practically the same day I dropped Comcast, I might add), which took away just about all online streaming. Since I don't get cable, I don't get NBCSN. So I'll be watching yesterday's race tonight via a torrent.
I'm also a very heavy user of Netflix. I love it. My wife and I are watching Battlestar Galactica now - we never saw it while it aired. We're making our way through the series at our pace. I also tend to turn on Top Gear or old Twilight Zone episodes when I want background noise.
My point is that I've adjusted very nicely to not having cable or a dish. I like it a lot. They're only going to manage to frustrate people like me with this move. I'm not going back, so they're really not helping themselves any.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
We are really starting to reap the rewards of allowing content and distribution to merge together.
My webcomic
Netflix's stock is about to recover from that huge screwup back in September...
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
How anyone over at Hulu could think that this will work out for them is beyond me.
Hulu is partly owned by Comcast. Does that answer your question?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I suspect this page will be filled with tons of "lol everyone will leave" comments.
I left Hulu ages ago. The ads (and long pauses when I blocked them) became more obnoxious and numerous, the library of free content was shit or untimely (or both), and the premium content? Why would I pay for shit I already pay for on cable/Netflix (when I had it)/Amazon Prime?
I haven't touched Hulu in ages and I bet they're counting me as one of the 30 million users.
I watch enough shit (and want it now and in good quality) to justify a cable subscription (with HBO and some other craps).
I order enough shit from Amazon to justify Prime (which comes with a shitty video service).
I cut Netflix off long ago.
Why would I pay for Hulu or put up with tons of ads alongside a shitty library, shitty quality, and release delays?
The only way I would pay for Hulu is if I cut off my cable service. I see this as a viable option for many who don't have the same concerns/impatience as me.
But if they want to require them to stump up a cable subscription on top of the cost of Hulu Plus / the annoyances of Hulu, they've got a big surprise coming.
Of course, they've done the math and figured out that X% will leave and (1-X)% will stay. But I think some PHBs have been conned into believing a bullshit statistic of 30 million users. I couldn't name 2 people I know who use Hulu if you put a gun to my head.
Everyone else on the net seems to point to the article in the NY Post (not exactly known for its careful fact-checking) and the Post article talks about Hulu 'taking its first steps' without a single mention of what those steps are. No other news stories I can find in the last several days talk about any changes occurring to Hulu's model (other than more original programming) or the Hulu user experience. So what the hell is the Post talking about, exactly? What evidence is there — beyond some editorial negative-wishcasting — that anything like this is going on?
The entire (100%) reason I use hulu is so that I don't have to pay the cable company
If only it were that easy. Not everybody happens to live in an area served by FTTH. They have to pay the cable company for Internet access, and for residential customers who don't also subscribe to TV, the monthly Internet bill includes a "dry loop fee" that's about a penny less than the monthly price of the lowest tier of TV. The same thing happens to DSL customers who have gone VOIP- or mobile-only.
Can I login with my Over The Air Antenna information? Doh, I don't need a login to watch TV for free in my neighborhood. ;) I pay 0$ for network TV, how do I convince Hulu that paying nothing for TV is actually legitimate? My guess, I can't. It's bad enough that, the paid, Hulu Plus has less content than Hulu Free. Now there will be no such thing as Hulu Free. Hulu is on a path to self destruction - and just like Netflix these changes are likely out of their control - i.e. the content providers are forcing these changes with licensing restrictions.
Joseph Elwell.
If there is not a lawful competitor, it will be an illegal competitor.
That's how the market works, really.
A very small segment of people are *really* that worried about the legality of copyright enforcement, unless the penalties are sufficiently draconian and enforcement is sufficiently publicized so they hear about it on a weekly basis. They're trying hard (the media companies) to make that reality, but you can't simply legislate that people buy some stupid wire in order to do some unrelated task. It's inane and everyone realizes that, which makes the likelihood of this "enforcement' succeeding close to nil, in my opinion.
Hulu is getting harassed by the studios so they're either going to have to jack up their prices, eliminate content, or do something like proving you already pay.
The the third option is actually brilliant. Think about it. How many of you know a friend or family member that will never use Hulu? How many of them have satellite or cable? At least one. So borrow their information to get access. It's not like they need it.
This is genius. My estimation of the wisdom of Hulu just went up a notch. Millions of people without cable can very easy get the authentication information to claim they do. And then the studios are in the position of trying to cut off people that supposedly are already paying. Genius.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Don't think for a moment that these guys don't understand why people are using Hulu. This action today shows that they understand quite well. The cable companies are scared shitless that people will cancel and use Hulu instead, and that's why they're doing this.
And yet, they don't get it. They seem to think that this scheme is going to stop people from dropping cable. In fact, all it's going to do is flush Hulu down the toilet. People will still drop cable, but they'll find alternatives to Hulu, both legal and illegal.
You really have to hand it to the entertainment industry. These guys aren't afraid to walk up to their customers, spit in their faces, piss all over them, and then hand them a bill for the privilege. And I'd be willing to bet that the ONLY reason they don't hire Guido, Vinny, and Rocco to handle collections is because the lawyers told them that doing do is a liability issue.
If I worked at Hulu, I'd be updating my resume about now.
What? They're not allowed to stop using Hulu!
We need to bribe politicians to pass some law to prevent people from moving away from Hulu! And cable subscriptions, too!
Hulu's outside investors have decided this is the straw that broke the camel's back and have sold their remaining stake before it drops through the floor...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/04/hulu-providence-equity-stake-200-million.html
If corporations are people, then this is a suicide note from Hulu. I recommend mandatory confinement to a mental ward of a hospital for 72 hours of observation. Since Hulu, as a corporation is actually a gestalt entity of the board of directors and officers, they must all be placed in the same mental ward so that the gestalt entity can be observed.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Too bad. Because now they have neither from me, and now they have me actively telling other people to cancel.
Yeah, good luck with that. They don't call it the "idiot box" for nothing.
Oops. Guess Comcast didn't think that through!
I'm sure they have a 200-page financial forecast backing this one. You lose, megalo-corporation wins. News at 11 (oh, wait, no they own the news).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The content industry might not have liked Hulu and they don't like like Netflix. They key point they are missing though is that Hulu + Netflix, found a price point and model that 20 and early thirty somethings found attractive.
They are not going to back to shelling out $60/mo for cable tv. With the recession and jobs being hard to get post college many will never start. Screwing up Hulu from the inside and killing Netflix through starvation and rate jacking is rock dumb. The result we be segregating the market into people with too much money who buy things on iTunes and everyone else. Rather than extracting a few million form Netflix each quarter and enjoying nearly 100% profit from Hulu, they are instead going to get jack and shit when everyone goes back to warez, and boot legs.
They days of pushing ($+50 CATV + (X * $12.99)) / mo are over you can't turn back the clock.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
They just...can't...give...up...trying to turn the internet into television.
expandfairuse.org
's stupid, ultimately self-destructive and only proves that the big media companies don't get it, and likely never will.
It will be an interesting case study of whether capitalism still works in America. If capitalism works, we'll be saying "the former big media companies didn't get it, and that's why we have this new set of big media companies". If capitalism fails, there will be bail-outs. I'm not sure which way I would bet these days.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I would consider the current copyright laws and the ones that they keep drafting and trying to push through every which way amount to a bailout. Rather than forcing the big media companies to compete, legislators are trying to build a wall around them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's what I call that idea. Nothing will stop cord cutting. The reason is on-demand. A good friend of mine is the head of programming at a well-known cable channel. He tells me he has to run like crazy every day to try to not lose ground, but they're still losing ground because they can't compete with on-demand, anywhere entertainment that the Internet offers.
If Hulu does this, they're only nuking their own business. Customers have already seen the future and it is Netflix. Yes, given the intransigence of the MPAA and Cable companies, there is an initial adjustment to the absence of the blockbuster titles. But then you discover the excellent content produced in other places around the world and the American stuff starts to look tedious.
Since Starz channel picked up its ball and went home, I've discovered production values on Korean movies are just as high as here, and their plots are twisted and interesting. And Bollywood movies are pure fun. Bollywood! Who knew?
I was thunderstruck the other day when my 3-yr old daughter saw a picture of Mickey Mouse somewhere and said, "Who's that?" She honestly had no idea. And it occurred to me that because Disney (and by extension the other MPAA and Cable players) have so locked away their content and have been so intransigent about getting with the times that they are running a real risk of rendering themselves culturally irrelevant. Think about what that also means about their ancillary revenue streams: my kids will never pester me to buy Disney toys or to take them to Disneyland. Disney has unwittingly saved me about $20K (over their lifetimes) that way.
So go on, guys, do the world a favor and destroy Hulu, too. The rest of us will move on happily without you!
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Nothing will ever get me to subscribe to cable again guys.
Not even if a DOCSIS ISP were to bundle a free TV subscription with all home Internet plans? The "line fees" that DOCSIS and DSL ISPs charge for not bundling the ISP's other services are close to this.
Yep, that's why it's an interesting study. There's a bit of government support, but currently not enough IMO to keep the cable companies alive as the generations shift. There would have to be worse, and more of it, in terms of industry regulation to squash competition - but there might be!
OTOH, if the new guys get money fast enough, and start sending some of that money to DC, we might see some real competiton here (which will surely be the death of cable as the decades pass).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That's like requiring all bus-pass purchasers to prove that they own an insured vehicle.
Bow before me, for I am root.
The article sounds sketchy and it's the NY Post. I suspect this is being written as if you won't be able to use Hulu at all without cable in order to make it sensational, but it's probably just some marketing strategy Hulu is considering for specific shows. This article calls it a "rumor".
I subscribed and watched like two shows. Boring as cardboard. Cancelled the service, to user unfriendly.
Truth is my life is busy enough as it is, commercials and debacles that confuse me?
Dragging me to their scheduled events? At work we use to call them 'meetings'.
Come to think of it some productions look a lot like Powerpoint.
I buy the shows I want now, if I'm interested. Six seasons of Lost? I do not have the time.
A thirteen episode season of a good story, maybe.
Content providers are going to loose customers because they are not catering to their customer base.
The old days of multigenerational television shows like Happy Days are over.
Multigenerational Cable service is going the same way.
Even Tivo is a bit out dated. Institutionalizing the 'commercial' dodge was amusing at best.. stand back and its pure insanity to put up with it.
Make it easy.. or I've better things to do with my time.
Make it less expensive.. or I just can't afford to pay.
The human race has lived without TV for a long time, I doubt they'll notice its passing.
Congratulations, Hulu, you've just rendered yourself irrelevant.
This sounds like the same mistake cable providers have been making going back to the old horrible days of TCI. The business model was based on the assumption that users were trapped in the service with no competitive options, and the service provider therefore had wide latitude in the services and pricing structure they felt like providing.
Service providers either haven't figured out yet that this just isn't true anymore, or they have some bizarre idea that the majority of TV consumers are old enough and un-savvy enough to be unable to find alternatives. Hulu would therefore be seen as a blip on the radar that the cable providers need to tweak to retain their iron grip on their user base.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Mr. and Mrs TV Tray, the last vestige of humanity that still watches TV in real time, are reducing in numbers. Some are finding alternatives like Roku boxes with the help of their kids and grandkids, and overall that generation is dying out.
I truly believe that the majority of us who are cable free and internet savvy see the need to pay for our programming, but we refuse to participate in the old cable TV business models. An effort to force us is an automatic fail, because the alternative they're driving us to is *free*, and there is no way in hell they can compete against that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is a rumor spread by "sources", as the NY Post helpfully explains. It looks like it's only a speculative rumor; it's certainly nothing official. I just got off the phone w/ Hulu customer service about this --if it were true, I would have immediately canceled my Hulu Plus subscription.
While the customer support guy was not permitted to respond directly to claims in new stories, he said they hadn't heard of such a change, he'd be shocked if they did so, and would feel the same way about it that I did. It doesn't make much sense, as this would precisely eliminate the reason I bother to pay for Hulu Plus -- because I don't have, and will not buy, cable service. A move like this would do nothing to enhance Hulu's revenue, and would almost certainly eliminate a large part of their subscribers.
If you're a Hulu Plus subscriber and you're actually concerned about it, call them yourself; 1-877-719-2773. No hold time, no phone tree; it goes directly to a human in customer service.
They'd have to put something on compelling enough for me to pay to watch it - which isn't really likely. I got rid of my cable tv service some time ago. The only thing we watch at home is Netflix, and even that is pretty marginal considering the $130/month I have to pay for cable modem service with sufficient bandwidth & usage.
Oh yeah, it was when you needed to prove you owned a horse before you could buy an automobile.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I'll just get my favorite shows on DVD, not comcast.
And get sports and political talk shows where? The game shown OTA isn't always your favorite team's game.
In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.
Youtube is a rudimentary fullfillment of that prophesy.
The lack of need for a music industry is killing the current parasite. Music and musicians adapt fine and all is well. No need to panic.
The lack of need for pregurgitated propagandii perpitrated perpetually program pandering pustules we call the media, our enemy, will
give way to population perfected programming particularly presented palatable personas propheting pandemic.
Thufferin' Thuccothash! Did I Thpit on you? Here's a hanky.
That's right, the internet and computers blur the need for several old school things. Newspapers? Magazines? Blogs are certainly evolving faster than their predecessors and outpacing them in some cases.
Now we have YouTube, Open source movies, open source animation, individuals, film students and everything in between. Individuals broadcast live programs both video and audio. More and more power has come to the individual and now that we're all a networked audience, the worlds a stage that frees us from the constraints of a parasitic dangerous tool of government and special interest.
Well ding,dong the witch is dead! 25 years and no one will care about the burnt out crack neighborhood they call Hollywood.
I personally welcome ourselves as overlords.
'Cause cable/satellite/broadcast and the studios that fill them all eat where they sh*t and no one is amused, let alone fascinated with anything but the fewer and farer between techo-breakthroughs. Internet killed the media star.
Personally if the world took over reporting the news, just generally, the average Joe is already someone I'd rather give the time of day than the inhuman swine genetically attracted to the film/tv/music industry.
Another story near this asks if we are still evolving. I think we may be, electronically, artificially, as a networked human race be on to something here.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Did you consider that Netflix is not the problem, it's the asinite ludicrously expensive bandwidth metering?