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Hulu's Backers Bickering

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According to this article, there seems to be some serious infighting going on at Hulu. It’s a damn shame too, I like Hulu. What’s that old saying about “too many cooks in the kitchen?”

He also said that the lords of video, with their rejection of Internet businesses, are behaving much the same way the music industry did when confronted by the digital age. If network and film studio executives are dissatisfied with the returns they see from Hulu and similar sites, they should consider the possibility that this is all the new media landscape will yield.
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Huku is ok. I miss divx's streaming super high quality. I wish more sites were like that. Streaming HQ 720p is where its at.
 
they should consider the possibility that this is all the new media landscape will yield.
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QFT

It is a resource without scarcity. You can not charge whatever you want for it. You can only charge a convenience fee and that only works as long as it is more convenient for people to pay the fee than gather the resource them selves.
 
If they don't handle hulu properly they risk loosing all control. I do wish they had higher quality video, but it does the job and is convenient/free. As soon as it stops doing that people will quit using it and something else, likely even less palatable to the studios, will fill the gap.
 
wtiger said:
If they don't handle hulu properly they risk loosing all control. I do wish they had higher quality video, but it does the job and is convenient/free. As soon as it stops doing that people will quit using it and something else, likely even less palatable to the studios, will fill the gap.
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Like people have been saying since MP3 and DIVX was introduced years ago, this is how we want it and this is how we'll get it. Change or die.

Sounds like the media companies are angry that they're not making the money they wanted, and are probably suggesting that Hulu start charging. It's something that Hulu just can't get away with.

As it is YouTube makes a great alternative to television, as well as other not so legal sources. It's easy, fast, and free. The moment any of that changes, they'll fall apart.
 
DukenukemX said:
As it is YouTube makes a great alternative to television, as well as other not so legal sources. It's easy, fast, and free. The moment any of that changes, they'll fall apart.
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Speaking of which, have you noticed recently that youtube.com has been becoming a bit less fast, easy and free? When I login to youtube.com, I'm now informed I need to start logging in with my google account as they are phasing out youtube.com accounts. Ironically, I don't have a google account so .... yeah. I guess I'll spend 5 minutes to make a google account someday when my youtube account stops working. Whenver that is.

About 2 days after I was ohh so pleasantly surprised to see high definition apple versus pc advertisements on youtube's homepage. Since I love them on tv, it was fantastic to see them on youtube as well /sarcasim.
 
I pretty much started to consider that Hulu's on its way out the moment the Comcast rumours of buying out NBC/Universal with controlling stake in Hulu came to the forefront. I've also noticed that in the last 3 months, Hulu has become increasingly bloated (moreso than it already is), is nearly unplayable at times even on Core2Duo systems (flash is bad enough, but what Hulu throws on top is overflowing the cup), the streams being interrupted with commercial breaks in the middle of a segment ... mid word, even, features being increasingly delayed or stripped completely (closed captions/subtitles), etc.

Despite such a promising start, it really does seem like everyone involved wants Hulu to fail. If that happens, will I go back to watching the actual Television? Nope. I'll just wait for the DVD releases for a series to show up as Watch Instantly on NetFlix or watch it through other channels. (Official South Park or Daily Show websites, etc.)

I'm already prepared for the funeral. Just waiting for it to die.
 
What tiny TV I watch, I watch on Hulu, so by extension, if Hulu goes, so do I.
 
I'm not having problems with playback (except the occasional buffering pause, but I think that has more to do with my network connection), and I just have an Athlon 64 X2 3600. I have noticed that the timing for commercial breaks is sometimes not great, but it usually doesn't bother me.
 
Ive used hulu, however its usability is limited, res is low, they need to figure out there
competing against the pirates, not tv or each other. tv is slowly going away in its
current form.

the pirates already have programs that allow you to stream any content commercial free
on a encrypted connection for $10 a month.

its not hard to see, as long as your not up in your throne looking down at your crumbling empire.

hulu is a good idea, that's being overly restricted and suppressed, get the streams up to hd
allow it to be played in whatever player the user wants, and extend the commercial breaks
to two 30 sec ads per break, and watch hulu take over the world.

Consumers can stand a few commercial interruptions as long as its free, they cant stand
un-needed control over how or when they consume what they want to consume .
 
Steve said:
What’s that old saying about “too many cooks in the kitchen?”
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"You've been chopped" ?

That's a shame though - I actually canceled my TV service last spring and have been watching Hulu for my tv needs.
 
If Hulu charges for "free" TV and doesn't even air it in real-time as aired on TV, they're going down big time and people will return to Bit Torrent (and in greater numbers).
 
beowulf7 said:
If Hulu charges for "free" TV and doesn't even air it in real-time as aired on TV, they're going down big time and people will return to Bit Torrent (and in greater numbers).
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QFT. This ^^. Hulu has brought tons of people into the idea of Internet TV, downloadable TV, TV available for free or cheaply when they want it and what they want. Its even brought people who might not ordinarily use the Internet very much like Soccer moms, etc. If Hulu dies, you'll have a whole new generation of people using BitTorrent when they ask their technologically-enabled friends the simple question, "Now what do we do that Hulu's died". "We'll my friend, ever hard of bittorrent?"
 
vengence said:
QFT

It is a resource without scarcity. You can not charge whatever you want for it. You can only charge a convenience fee and that only works as long as it is more convenient for people to pay the fee than gather the resource them selves.
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This. Digital media is non-excludable - you can't stop someone from getting it for free if he wants - and non-rival in consumption - one person's use of the resource does not reduce the amount of the resource available to others. Therefore, digital media is a public good (in economic terms), similar to the air we breathe.

It's pretty much impossible to make money in a public good market because, as you said, the best you can do is charge a convenience fee. And once it becomes "convenient" to obtain the good for free, even this doesn't work.

What worries me is that the lack of profitability in the media market anymore will cause a decline in the quality of movies and music produced, since there is no longer any incentive to spend large sums of money producing them. Historically, because of their unattractiveness to for-profit companies, the only way to keep production of a public good going has been to put it under complete government control - think about roads as an example. Obviously that wouldn't work here; I hope there's a better solution.
 
I seem to recall reading an article a few months ago that stated that ad revenues per viewer were higher on hulu than on traditional TV. Is that no longer the case?

Someone really needs to get these execs to take five minutes and talk to a normal viewer. Having had the (relative) pleasure of using Hulu, I am of the opinion that TV schedules are on their way out. Consider how it stacks up to traditional TV:

1) More convenient--I can watch it when I want. I can pause, rewind, etc.
2) Free(ish). Sure, I have to pay for an internet connection, but still...
3) Fewer, shorter commercial breaks. (I haven't experienced the badly-timed breaks, personally)
4) If I want to watch a show, I no longer have to arrange my life around the network's schedule, nor worry about programming the DVR or VCR.

And heck, I prefer it over Bittorrent as well--since I rarely watch a show more than once, I don't need to store it locally, and because it's streamed, I can watch it instantly, rather than waiting for the whole file to download.

What I see is this: the content producers/distributors have (finally) done something to cater to the desires of their viewers. Now, they realize that perhaps they have shot themselves in the foot. Hulu certainly has the potential to increase the number of viewers, but what if the revenue per viewer is lower on hulu? All of a sudden, the TV networks become a victim of their own success--as viewers desert their TVs in favor of their computers, the networks see their ad revenue drop.

All that said, however, this smells a bit like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.
 
vengence said:
QFT

It is a resource without scarcity. You can not charge whatever you want for it. You can only charge a convenience fee and that only works as long as it is more convenient for people to pay the fee than gather the resource them selves.
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...I think that might actually be one of the most intelligent things ever said on this forum.
 
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