Ever since its launch in March 2008, I’ve been showering Hulu with the acclaim it deserves. I’ve brought it up in conversation and even converted a few people to it. Hulu was the perfect response to media piracy. It was a way to watch up to date television (and some movies) without having cable or illegally downloading it. Sadly, unless Hulu (and its evil television overlords at NBC) gets its act together they’re going to lose a lot of their viewers irrevocably.
It was announced last week via both Hulu and Boxee’s blog that Hulu would no longer be supported on the Boxee (Boxee is a media center platform that allows access to local audio and video, podcasts, videocasts, and numerous other internet media sources including Hulu) platform. The stated reason according to the Hulu team was that it had “contractual” obligations that forced them to take this action. According to several posts on the Boxee blog, the boxee team is still optimistic about it eventually coming back.
Here’s why I think this sucks:
This is just another example of the big media corporations doing something reactionary in response to something they really don’t understand. They still look at things from the perspective of the Nielsen. Since Boxee is meant to be used as a set top box, they see Hulu on Boxee as detracting from people watching on a television with cable.
However, I don’t think this is the case. I think the people who would watch a show on television will watch it on television no matter what, but the people that watch it on Boxee are either going to watch it through Hulu or pirate it. These are the people who are currently boycotting Hulu for this decision, whether they actually use Boxee or not. This means that Hulu is going to see a lot less viewers and torrent trackers are going to see an influx of leechers. Way to go NBC, by dangling content and then taking it away you’re just poking the beast. Now by revoking access on Boxee, you’re actually causing yourself to lose money.
I also think its amusing that within hours of Hulu shutting off Boxee access, someone had publicized a workaround to gain access to Hulu again.