Disney’s Fox Acquisition Means the End of Hulu as We Know It

Megalith

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They say that Hulu isn’t going away, but it will look very different. In the past, the streaming service had three different bosses, but now, it only has one: Disney. With its more than 12 million subscribers, Hulu will probably be used to piggyback Disney’s new streaming business or be converted entirely, but there are some wrinkles to consider.

Comcast has remained a silent partner in Hulu as part of a consent decree it accepted when it bought NBCUniversal, but those terms end in September, before Disney can realistically complete its Fox deal. Comcast may claim Hulu’s 12 million-plus subscribers belong equally to it, since its content and investment dollars helped generate that audience, or at least a third of it. The cable company could ask the Justice Department to review the acquisition and force a sale of Hulu.
 
Or the mouse will just buy Comcast with the change they found in a couch thats getting tossed out.
 
It's the end of hulu as we know it. Someone should write a song. it rhymes well
 
The no-ads version still shows a couple of ads for certain content. One at the beginning and one at the end. I have only run into one series which has that and I watch a lot of Hulu.
 
Or the mouse will just buy Comcast with the change they found in a couch thats getting tossed out.
Not a chance.
ABC/Disney is roughly half the size NBC/Comcast/Universal ($96 billion in assets vs $181 billion).

In fact, for those of you NOT following this story, NBC/Comcast was actually in talks to purchase Fox as well. Comcast wasn't as heavily involved as Disney - they were pretty certain to face regulatory intervention since the resulting company would own such a large piece of the pie.

My personal theory is that one of the motivating factors behind Disney acquiring Fox was to fend-off acquisition BY Comcast (I could see how owning a near-monopoly on the Orlando tourism industry would be appealing to Comcast) - but that's just speculation on my part.

But to address your point - no - Disney won't be purchasing NBC/Comcast/Universal.
 
Goodbye Hulu. As the only streaming service where Comcast had a vested interest in it...... 0 fucks given.

/micdrop.
 
Disney is the devil... fricken industrial cock inhalers killed the netflix deal and now they are going to ruin hulu... ESAD disney
 
Can't say I care to be honest..of all the streaming services Hulu is by far the worst. I'll never subscribe to it again.
 
Hulu is the most expensive of the services I pay, and the most starved for content.. its getting REALLY hard to justify keeping it, obviously Disney has already been starving them for content, can only imagine this only means even less content, milk subscribers for a while and eventually shut it off with an offer to go Disney streaming.
 
Hulu is the most expensive of the services I pay, and the most starved for content.. its getting REALLY hard to justify keeping it, obviously Disney has already been starving them for content, can only imagine this only means even less content, milk subscribers for a while and eventually shut it off with an offer to go Disney streaming.

I feel the opposite, I enjoy Hulu a lot more than Netflix right now.
 
Ajit Pai can EAD and die. This is one of my biggest issue with being a conservative. They allow corporations WHATEVER they want. I'm all for personal freedom but these fucking corporations need to be reigned in. WTF HOW is this deal good for consumers in the slightest bit. It isn't.

END ALL CORPORATE MERGERS ONCE THEY REACH 50BIL in value.
 
Ajit Pai can EAD and die. This is one of my biggest issue with being a conservative. They allow corporations WHATEVER they want. I'm all for personal freedom but these fucking corporations need to be reigned in. WTF HOW is this deal good for consumers in the slightest bit. It isn't.

END ALL CORPORATE MERGERS ONCE THEY REACH 50BIL in value.
If I'm not mistaken, corporate mergers are the domain of the FTC and/or SEC, not FCC. And as far as I know the deal has not been approved by the regulatory bodies, yet.
 
IMHO, the video streaming industry needs some regulation. The fact that the likes of Disney, a content creator, can use their own streaming service as an exclusive for their content and try to kill off other streaming services is a big problem.

There needs to be some sort of video streaming equivalent of the Volker rule, separating content creators from service providers, or some sort of rule requiring that if your content is available on one service, you are legally mandated to license it to any service which wants it, at a competitive price.

These are some really challenging monopolistic forces at play here, and I don't see them being satisfactorily addressed.
 
What are guys using that has more \ better content and is less expensive that Hulu? Several of you have said it now and I have no idea what you are talking about. I love my Hulu sub and use it significantly more than Netflix. The only thing I dislike is how awful the new Roku interface is if you just want to browse for something new.
 
Muh Hollyweird shows, muh TV, muh moobies! Wahhhhhhhhh
Pretty much this but this is also telling of endemic problems in our society. For a lot of people, television and movies, are the majority of their source of entertainment in their lives. I believe according to the "T-Mobile" CEOs states in his TV service announcement, the average adult now spends up to 5 hours a day watching TV in America. It's opium for the masses. I fear the end of net neutrality and mega coporations eliminating entertainment options, as if it leads to a crackdown on piracy while Hulu and/or Netflix get either shutdown or made ridiculously expensive, it might mean, the youth and middle aged people of the world, start to be unable to afford their entertainment. When they consume less due to expense, start to wake up and see what's going on in the government and world around them, how that would play out is anyone's guess but I'd wager on poorly.
 
What are guys using that has more \ better content and is less expensive that Hulu? Several of you have said it now and I have no idea what you are talking about.
A lot of my friends swear by the application called XMBC in the 90s, however, it went the way of the dinosaur and got replaced or overwritten by a project called Kodi. Kodi works on most android TV boxes and is up to version 17 or so.

Alternatively, if you have a large collection of DVDs (legally purchased), blu-rays (legally purchased ;)) or TV series purchased (legally, of course, as nobody would ever torrent), there's Plex. Plex is an combination of a server running on your PC/mainframe/desktop and a client running on
Kodi, Chromecast, I believe AirPlay(or some apple platforms), any web-browser on a laptop/pc/desktop/etc, every android tablet/device/etc, most TVs, every android TV box and so forth. It runs on almost anything. The Plex server realtime transcodes your video format and audio format to match the best format the client can play (IF) it cannot directly stream it to said device. Thus it'll convert H265 into H264 for older devices or play H265 directly. It'll also stream online via a direct connection from your PC to whatever client outside your house. So you can watch your entire media library on cellphone at a coffee shop or on the bus (if you have a data connection). Likewise, you could go over to a friends house with a chromecast, pick something to watch on your phone and then cast it to the chromecast. Giving you access to your entire media collection at a friends house, while on vacation, etc if you just have a tablet and/or your phone + a chromecast (or the location has one available).

It also provides a very nice GUI for sorting, filtering and so-forth your media collection. IE, you can go to the TV section or movies section and in the search bar just type in "Tom Hanks" and it'll bring up a list of all the Tom Hanks movies in your server. It pulls all the info on every media file from IMDB and a few other places. If you click on any search result, it tells you the runtime, format, codec, rotten tomatoes score, IMDb score, a synopsis (usually from IMDb), the genre and so-forth. Basically, anything you could want to know. It'll even download trailers for movies if you're using the pro-version. Alternatively, you can apply multiple filters for different categories like "Search - > Genre (Horror) -> Decade (1980-1990) + (1990-2000) -> Sort by Highest Rating (or newest or older, or lowest rating or alphabetical or reverse alphabetical, etc)" or "Search - Actor -> Tom Hanks -> Romance -> 1990s - 2000s" if you're trying to remember the title of Sleepless in Seattle and having a brain-fart moment.

There's a few other cool features like by default it always lists what was most recently added to Plex. It will recommend you based upon how you rate-shows, new shows. If you, for example, have watched and rated well every Liam Neelson movie, when you add a new Liam Neelson movie to Plex, it'll recommend you may want to watch it. Meanwhile, if you've rated every movie by the Borat actor, Sasha Cohen as bad, it'll not recommend you movies starring him. However, if your brother that has an account on your media server LOVES him, it will recommend it to him. As you can add seperate users so it keeps track of whose watching what, where, etc.

It makes episodes as watched upon completion, saves your position if you stop watching an episode part way thru and supports resuming wherever you left off. 1 click play for an entire series or 1 click play for an entire season, where it'll go thru one episode after another.
 
XBMC, Plex, Kodi, etc.

I appreciate the long reply but illegal downloading and streaming is comparing apples to oranges. Other members had made it sound like they were using better legitimate streaming services and I'm curios to know what they are.

I used to run XBMC and currently have a Plex server and it works fine when I want to go look for a decent torrent, download it to the server, remove all the junk files, add it to my library, and re-name if need. The process isn't bad for a movie every now and then but is a PITA for TV episodes. I'm happy to wait a day and pay Hulu a few $ to avoid the hassle and actually support content production.

Maybe this mindset comes with age and lack of being broke. As a kid I would pirate all the time to save a few dollars. As an adult I just want things to work and not waste my time. If that means paying a couple bucks to Hulu or Steam that's totally fine.
 
My wife likes Hulu - they have a few shows she watches. Since I got rid of cable years ago, this was the compromise so she didn't miss out on stuff she liked. I'll be watching.
I really don't want cable again. I tried it a few years ago - could not believe how shitty the picture was and still found myself watching repeats on TLC and History Channel from like 10 years ago. Also forgot about commercials - my god, what a tedious thing.
My kids were pissed at them. They have grown up with Netflix, Youtube, etc and never saw commercials. One of them asked me why they ruined her show? She thought I was tricking her.
 
I read the title of the articles. Are you trying to imply that by defending their IP they're doing something wrong? If so, that's a pretty stupid example you've come up with. Also, I'm fairly certain I didn't say they did everything right either. Go fish, padawan.

you should probably read the actual articles.....

Treating customers the way they did is fucked
 
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