we love Hulu. they have built a great product and brand (including one the best Superbowl ads this year). since our early days in private alpha, Hulu was the most requested site by our users. so we built support for browsing Hulu on boxee, reached out to Hulu, and on Oct 20th, 2008 shared it with our alpha testers. the response has been amazing. people love watching many of their favorite shows on Hulu via boxee. last week we generated more than 100,000 streams for them…
two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from boxee. we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it. you can see their blog post about the issues they are facing.
our goal has always been to drive users to legal sources of content that are publicly available on the Internet. we have many content partners who are generating revenue from boxee users and we will work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.
we will tell them how users love Hulu on boxee, why it represents a great opportunity for them to better engage with fans of their shows, how boxee can help in exposing their content to new people, and why they should be excited about future opportunities of working with us.
we will blog/tweet as soon as we have any updates
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Integration with Hulu and Netflix are the two big selling points for me with Boxee. I hope everyone is able to be sensible and come to a resolution.
Time to hack the apple tv and get an actual browser with flash capabilities on there. THat would solve the hulu problem and the abc.com problem.
Hope Boxee realizes they don't have to play nice with Hulu or they will risk their users abandoning their own application.
Well, hopefully these comments will be read by someone at Hulu.
First, I have to say that I do love the content provided by Hulu. Having been to the site and seen it on Boxee, I fail to see where Boxee diminishes the Hulu brand in any way. True, it is placed side-by-side with some of Hulu's competitors, but is it any better than that out in the Wild & Wooly Web? In truth, Boxee adds value by making Hulu (and others) navigable by remote control. Hulu, I respect your desire to stake out your own property, but Boxee is not threatening that.
What are the objections raised? That you are being served through an aggregator, making the whole experience simpler?
That you are cobbled together with your competitors, and sites that you deem threatening (such as YouTube)? Is the answer then to pull out, leaving only the competitors and those you find threatening to serve us?
Let's think about this, Hulu. I want to see Hulu on Boxee. I don't know how interested I am in Hulu without Boxee.
Just one vote.
The main reason I put Boxee on my ATV was to watch Hulu on my HDTV. It saved me from having to download certain programs illegally. I was more than happy to sit through the commercials too – it was a welcome trade-off to having to convert my illegally downloaded files to something I could watch on my Mac.
The thing that the policy makers don't get is that we are all early adopters who are highly motivated. A hack that adds Hulu support back into Boxee will come out, and that hack will be installed by everyone – other than pissing everyone off (thereby motivating us even more), the legacy content distributors have accomplished nothing.
What a perfect opportunity for CBS to promote their relationship with Boxee!
Too bad you guys bent over and took it. Someone else without the chains of a commercial entity / investor interest will eventually come along and figure out how to do a remote controlled fullscreen Flash player app (which is essentially what Boxee really was, another interface for hulu.com's embedded media). It was fun while it lasted. Now I truly have a reason to uninstall your alpha.
No wonder ya'll never got around to fixing pause.
So if Boxee is an application that means it requires a device to run on…and in most cases this device is a PC which is then hooked up to a TV…as such, one can simply launch a web browser from said PC that is hooked up to the TV and "surf" over to hulu.com and still view directly the content that is linked to by hulu.com…
Just saying is all…
v/r,
The Riggler….
I hope Hulu understands that this isn't just a huge blow to Boxee, it's a huge blow to them as well.
Boxee does nothing but display Hulu's content in almost exactly the same method as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. The ad content is not changed. The Hulu and content provider branding is still there. The more I think about this, the more confused I get.
I understand that the content providers asked Hulu to remove themselves from Boxee, but what's to stop them from asking Hulu to prevent Safari or Firefox browsers from viewing content? Does Hulu give into that as well? If not, why fight those battles and not this one?
I appreciate that Hulu has a lot at stake, but this feels like a slippery slope that Hulu shouldn't have started down.
I will not watch Hulu till it is back on Boxee
I find it assuming that I've had a Hulu account since private beta testing (11/30/07) and I've spent more time watching Hulu (along with their commercials) on Boxee than I ever did on hulu.com
Hulu on Boxee was taking my time away from watching programming on other networks (along with their commercials), so this is undoubtedly a loss for Hulu along with all of their content providers. Great going guy!
All this does is tell me that it is now easier for me to download the shows I would have watched on Hulu to my media server for watching on my TV. Too bad, I liked using Hulu via Boxee.
YYYYY HULU YYYYYYY ?!?!?!?! i love boxee we need to boycott hulu until they fix this anyone know a way around this problem???
This is ridiculous. Content "providers" need to get with the program. If they refuse to change with the times they'll find out they have no choices left to make in the end. hulu was a nice alternative to downloading torrents but i'm not going to go out of my way to use hulu if i can't keep using it via boxee, my media center of choice. it's easy enough to use tvrss.net or feedmytorrents.com to set up good rss feeds and automaticly download any show you want. It's just like i told my 15 year old girlfriends father when i was 17
"you can let me your daughter at YOUR house where you know what's going on, or you dont….in which case i'll sneak her out the back door when you go to sleep"
piracy convenient
As a devout Hulu user who hadn't heard about Boxee until now, I feel I have to express my disappointment in Hulu's content partners, as well as the inability for Hulu to convince them otherwise, when all Boxee was doing was providing an improved way to mashup information with online content (including Hulu). No advertising was removed, was it? Was any revenue lost? No.
It is extremely obvious that content providers are misguided in this, not realizing that Boxee was improving the presentation of Hulu content at no expense to Hulu itself, while it's users provided advertising revenue like all other Hulu users. Bringing 100k streams a week, and thus 100k shows worth of advertising revenue to the content providers. Most of this will be lost, as people turn to torrents.
So are the content providers ready to start backtracking on the progress that Hulu has made? Are they ready to start pissing people off enough to entirely ignore their online presence and ignore their advertising by watching the shows via torrents? The content providers need to change their stance on this immediately, or the storm will grow.
Avner boxee could be alot better if you stop trying to make these deals with these devils and turn boxee into a webbased browser for your tv,that let you watch any content on the web. I would pay $50 for a install app.
The solution is quite simple — get EyeTV (software + compatible DVR of choice) and a MacMini if you don't already have one. Then you can watch everything in full HD, skip over or edit out the commercials and save as many TerraBytes worth of programs as you wish.
It is completely legal, you get better quality and more control than Hulu, no commercials, and the greedy networks see not a dime. You just need a slightly higher upfront investment in getting a MacMini instead of AppleTV and buying EyeTV. But it is totally worth it. And hey, if they come to their senses, you can run Boxee on your Mini.
No Hulu on Boxee means no TV for me. Cable/satellite isn't in the budget, and I get a really weak OTA signal (even on digital). Sorry Fox and NBC, you've lost a viewer until you get this resolved.
Apparently I'm the worst possible consumer. Heaven forbid that I want to watch their content on my terms. Not like I'm the customer or anything. I won't give up my Free Movie Mondays (http://www.redbox.com/Help/Signup.aspx) to watch their stuff.
It's the "two cookies or no cookies" approach. I want 2 cookies, or no cookies. I want to watch TV on my terms, or I won't watch. Guess I'll frequent Redbox a bit more, or maybe read some books, or maybe sleep.
Looks like it's the "content providers" loss. Dummies.
did you try Netflix on boxee? Redbox is great, but clicking on the remote is easier
My Boxee is Apple TV.
Very short sighted. Another video web site to write off and will probably die soon. Bye HULU, we barelly knew yah!
Some day, some where, the “content providers” will figure out that people want tv on their own terms, when/where/how they want it, and they are even willing to pay for it. But not when they act like this.
That is really too bad. I love everything about Boxee on my AppleTV and I will no longer watch Hulu since it was only useful to watch on my TV. Keep up the good work on Boxee and hopefully Hulu will be back in the future.
I’ve been using Boxee for a while, I’d have to say the number one function that I use is Hulu. Although I respect complying with Hulu’s request, I hope this can be resolved soon.
Boxee brought this content to my AppleTV which in turn brought it conveniently to my television. I have rather enjoyed the past 2 weeks watching Hulu through Boxee.
I will not watch Hulu through a browser on my computer. The content providers just don't get it. They are reducing their marketshare. I post because I hope that boxee will pass our responses back to them.
we are going to pass these comments to Hulu and its partners (and to all other content partners we are in discussions with)
Put a browser like firefox in Boxee and call it good.
we have all the components of a browser, we just don't look like your typical browser.
The content providers really don't want Hulu to succeed then, do they? I wonder why they are funding Hulu at all? Is it really just so they can ultimately "prove" that on-line distribution won't work, and get a tax write off on their losses? Hello?
I loved watching Hulu on Boxee, on my AppleTV. And I would sit through the commercials (unfortunately, far too many of the SAME ONES repeated over and over, at poorly selected points in the program, but I was willing to live with it. These ad interruptions counted as impressions for ad revenue somewhere, right?
I am not going to watch Hulu on my desktop or laptop. I want it on Boxee. If Hulu isn't available to me, I will simply find other content elsewhere. The reality of the world is that there is NO shortage of content.
As a result of the decision to remove Hulu from Boxee, Hulu looses my eyeballs and ad impressions. The content providers loose ad revenue and mind-share. If there is something I really must watch I'll get it from Netflix, or maybe I'll just pirate it because they piss me off.
people are skipping ads on their DVRs and Hulu on boxee is one way for content owners to keep the ad-based model alive. pulling away Hulu will mean users will go back to watching that content without ads whether it is on their DVR or from Bittorrent
This is nothing short of asinine. The CEOs at traditional content providers will not be satisfied until they have bankrupted their companies from their own incompetence. What harm–seriously, what harm–could it possibly cause to the content providers to offer this interface? It's just a different web browser, for crying out loud! What's next, arbitrarily blocking Safari and Firefox? I work in advertising/media buying, and I can't for the life of me see any logical business sense in this move. They just lost 100,000 streams per week and growing!
This is why I want a Mac Mini hooked up to the old TV. Then you can watch ALL the websites that stream content, then use your TV as a 40 inch web surfing monitor.
Granted a mac mini doesn't come with a mini price tag.
What a shame, this is disappointing news!
Absurd. I thought my RSS feeds were mixed up and I was reading a headline from The Onion. I only watch Hulu via Boxee on my television. Without Hulu, I will find other sources of content through my AppleTV and Boxee. Too bad, because Hulu was becoming my primary source of content and was building strong loyalty to their brand. It's going to take a while, but I predict Hulu will be back within 18 months.
Hulu was always too good to be true. The media companies will apparently always fight the consumers. If they would just feed us content the way we want to consume it, everybody wins, but THEY NEVER EVER LEARN.
Many other industries adapt quickly and capitalize on changing consumer demands. Big media, however, feels the customer is usually wrong and will fight us to the end.
BUMMER.
they can learn a bunch by reading the comments on this blog post..
This is an outrage! lol
Hulu is a great product? Sorry, I don't see what's so great about these black boxes containing the words "We're sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States." littering web pages everywhere.
Why do I want to see that? That's valuable screen real-estate wasted.
LOL geo-blocking.. another concept that needs to find its way to the history books. there is a clear business challenge (content owners license to local partners and can't bypass them), but nothing that can not be addressed by giving the local licensees the ability to monetize these streams.
Boycott Hulu until it returns to Boxee!
Of course being outside of the US we didn't get to see Hulu (again more stupidity but that's a different topic) however it looked like they had finally gotten a clue – but then we see decisions like this and we're back to 1995 again.
Just amazing stupidity. I simply cannot believe in 2009 that people still don't get the internet and what it can do. This is the future of TV and home entertainment – watching a program at a set time each night just is not reality anymore.
Every TV program ever made should be available to view at anytime in SD/HD on TV, iPhone, PC or whatever. They could monetise all that stuff that just sits in a vault if they had a clue and make a ton of money. I would certainly ditch cable if I had somewhere where I could search for TV shows and just stream them and I'd be happy to pay for it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
Back to torrenting I go….
i think that most people feel the same way. if given the options users will be willing to pay for content. what people want in return is the ability to get the content in high quality, as soon as it is available on broadcast and without restrictions on what device/screen they can play it.
I'm sure i will be joining many of you in writing to the "content providers" and letting them know how upset i am about this. Boxee and hulu where a great combo and taking that away from the customers was a move that didnt benefit anyone.
Boo Hoo HULU!!!!! This sucks!
My response is strong, but this is the straw that broke the camel's back:
I am boycotting hulu and broadcast TV, period. Come join my Facebook Group.
Hope this can be resolved! Just received my Apple TV yesterday, loaded boxee on it tonight. Guess I'll get one night of hulu out of it.
Someday the studios will realize that technology always wins. They can come with us, otherwise we'll find a way around.
My response to Hulu (posted to Hulu's blog entry on the subject):
If Hulu's not on Boxee, I'm not watching Hulu.
This isn't a protest, it's a simple fact. In my household, we don't watch TV shows or movies on our desktops or laptops. I have a Boxee system hooked up to my home entertainment system (LCD HDTV, surround sound, etc. but *no* PVR), which is what we use to watch full length TV shows and movies. We didn't watch Hulu before Boxee, and we won't now. We rarely watch television at all, but we started watching a lot of TV shows because they were available on Boxee via Hulu. If the content providers think they're going to drive me to watch their content on the platform of their choice, they're wrong. If we can't view the content on Boxee, we won't be buying them through iTunes (NBC helped us kick that habit), we won't be watching them on regular television, we won't be renting them on DVD, we won't be launching a browser on our boxee system to get to Hulu, we won't be signing up for Netflix… we'll just go back to not watching those shows at all. There's more than enough content available to me on Boxee and my personal media library to allow me to avoid the inconvenience of switching over to or recording scheduled television programming. This is a lose-lose-lose situation for us, for Hulu, and hopefully for the content providers.
In my opinion, you should let go of the content providers instead of rewarding them for their outmoded thinking… if they want to shoot themselves in the foot, let them. It's been apparent for the last several years that consumer demand is evolving towards mobile, on-demand, ultra-convenient, multi-platform media and information consumption by increasingly tech savvy users. Providers (newspapers are a good example) that don't evolve with their customers' changing needs, or worse, try to force the consumer into a particular consumption model, will eventually lose to the competition. Personally, I'd rather have a Hulu with less content than no Hulu on Boxee at all.
Hulu's great, and I wish you guys a lot of success.
Uhmm..it doesn't work like that macco. Their "content providers" OWN them. Their "content providers" MADE Hulu.
This news is very disappointing. I, like many users, have known of hulu but never really used the service. At my home it’s not practical for me and my family to hover over a laptop to enjoy hulu’s programming.
That all changed for me once i discovered boxee. I could install boxee on my appletv making both my appletv and hulu’s service valuable in my life. I started discovering new shows that I have never watched before. I began to watch the programs when it was aired live on my satellite service.
It’s openness and comparability with boxee was very refreshing for a website providing content. What I loved best about it is that it preserved hulu’s website experience. I wasn’t just getting videos. I saw the advertisements and the interface was similar to the home page brought up in a browser.
Not only did this marriage between these two different companies change the way I consume content but as I told people about this, it brought 6 new dedicated boxee/hulu users. (that are very upset about this news as well)
I understand that hulu is painted in a corner on this one but I would expect that you would do your best to support boxee and continue to lobby for the returned boxee compatibility. The content providers should want their content viewed by as many people as they can as long as ads are being viewed and bills are getting paid. It really doesn’t make sense but these content providers don’t really do a good job at understanding what their viewers want and the willingness to deliver it to them. This is why we need your help hulu.
Thank you for listening to our responses.
This "no capital letters" policy is annoying. It doesn't make you look cool or edgy, it makes you look uneducated.
This is too bad
Well, as we all know hulu is simply FOX and NBC. They have their shows online as well. Why not add support to boxee FOX and NBC like you did recently with ABC? This would solve the problem with hulu, and kick their greedy asses, which were bought by cable companies that are scared of loosing their customers…. go go boxee!
This is all so silly. i would bet most of the people savvy enough to wire boxee into their AppleTV (or whatever) is savvy enough to have their PC's hooked up to their big screens and watching hulu full screen anyway.
i go to my brother's house and that's exactly how they watch TV…via Hulu, via a PC hooked up to a 52 inch.
Only thing i can guess is that boxee did it *too* well, and now Hulu's parents want good money for it.
it was destined to happen. i've thought of boxee as too good to be true (or free) from the jump. those of you who have changed your way of living banking on something that probably wasn't meant to be, given C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Man) — are silly as well.
j.
I haven't read all of the post here but my 2 cents.
I think hulu will partner with Sony to use Hulu on PS3. I think that is the reason why.
I haven´t saw this product in Brazil yet…
It looks awesome!
Personally.. I don't think boxee should have removed Hulu. Let's think about this.. it's a *public* content on the Internet. I'm using a computer (i.e. AppleTV) and a display device (i.e. my HDTV) to watch content that is streamed over the Internet via HTTP. HOW I choose to view should be MY decision, not Hulu's. If Hulu choses to broadcast over the Internet then boxee should be able to display it. Period… Comeon boxee… grow a backbone.
The reason why Hulu asked Boxee to pull their content is because of residuals (money) that would have to be paid to writers, actors, directors, and the backstage, Hollywood locals, IATSE (the behind the scenes workers who actually make the content, i.e., camera, costume, grips, electricians, editors, etc.), once that content was able to be viewed on television sets. All these people are members of the various Hollywood Guilds and locals, WGA- writers, SAG- actors, DGA-directors. The bottom line is that the AMPTP (the Producers Assoc.) has been in negotiations with all these guilds over the past year and they have been negotiating contracts that cover "new media", like Boxee and the internet, and how all these people are paid in their residual formulas. They don't want to pay at all. All these residuals is how people make their living, it is also how pensions and health benefits are funded. It is also why piracy hurts. When people pirate, DVDs, and other content, thousands of people are hurt, because all that money is lost. The content producers, which own Hulu, don't want to negotiate fairly and in good faith. The Hollywood studio conglomerates are not unlike Exxon and Chevron, who are complaining of not making any profits, while at the same time they have raked in record profits over the past years, and the motion picture industry continues to do great business at the box office, and continues to sell ad space on television at amazing rates (i.e. this past Superbowl) in this tough economic climate. The bottom line is GREED, money. Isn't it always? The only thing you Boxee and Hulu users can do is write or email the "content producers", Hulu and the rest of the studio conglomerates and demand that they negotiate fairly with the Hollywood Guilds, and backstage locals. There is enough profit to go around. What there doesn't seem to be enough of is GREED.
The bottom line is money, residuals, that have to be paid to actors, writers, directors, and into the Hollywood backstage locals' pension and health plans,( they are the people who actually make the movies, television shows, commercials and webisodes, like, directors of photography, camera operators, camera assistants, film loaders, electricians, grips, costume, hair, make up, editors, etc.). Once all that content is viewed on mainstream media platforms like televsion sets.
When all that content is viewed on a computer over the internet, the producers, don't have to pay residuals, because it falls under the "new media" formulas. This is what the AMPTP (the producers, the Hollywood studio conglomerates) have been negotiating with the actors-SAG, and writers-WGA, DGA- directors, and IATSE- the backstage workers to try and eliminate all residuals payments over the internet, which as seen on this blog, is a growing at an alarming rate.
Of course, the content producers (the studio conglomerates) want their product to be seen, they don't care how, because they will always manage to sell ad space. They are making money, believe me they are not unlike Exxon or Chevron, crying all the way to the bank.
What they don't want is to have to pay residuals.
Write or email these Hollywood studio conglomerates and demand that they negotiate new contracts fairly and in good faith with the Guilds and unions, men and women who make a living manufacturing the entertainment.
There is enough profit to be made and share, there just isn't enough GREED in the world.
feedback@hulu.com email them and tell them you want hulu on boxee
I really liked using hulu on boxee, I hate having to go back to browser viewing.. I really didnt mind watching the ads via boxee… the browser is a different story. I might have to start getting my content via torrents.
I, for one, would like to see the statistics that drove the "content providers" to determine that Hulu on Boxee poses a significant threat to the business. Are they really losing revenue because of this? Perhaps they fear that Boxee users will cancel cable subscriptions in droves. If there were such users, it would be a very small subset. Alienating all Boxee users to spite those who would drop their cable is just poor business.
Well, I would like to let Hulu, NBC, Fox, and whatever content providers out there how I currently watch television. I don't know if my experience is a typical one, but I can't imagine it wouldn't be. In order:
1) Live through cable (extended basic with HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc)
2) Time shifted through DVR
3) Comcast on Demand
4) Hulu or CBS.com through Boxee on AppleTV
5) ABC.com, Hulu, or CBS.com through a web browser on my computer if I happen to have time when I'm at work. Don't tell my boss.
I will never give up cable as I like watching live television. More often than not, I will watch something live. If that's not possible I try to DVR the show either because it's on during something else that I want to see live. If for some reason the DVR won't work because I'm already recording and watching something else, I will check to see if the program is available for free through Comcast's On Demand service. If not, then it's off to Hulu on Boxee.
In this scenario, I'm actually watching more television and commercials because Hulu on Boxee exists. I can now watch shows that I would have missed, plus commercials. In fact, I watch more commercials when watching Hulu on Boxee than when I'm watching on the DVR. If I watch Hulu on a regular web browser on a PC, I can simply open a new tab and check e-mail, news feed, or blog for the 15 to 45 seconds a Hulu commercial is on. On Boxee, that luxury does not exist and I'm forced to watch the commercial.
Now, I don't know how Hulu earns revenue. I'm not sure whether they are earning revenue per user. If they are losing money, then Hulu and Hulu subscribers have more to worry about than just losing Hulu on Boxee. I do know this though: Hulu earns my eyeballs on commercials more on Boxee than through my DVR'd programs or even through the Hulu experience on a web browser. In fact, without Hulu, I couldn't watch shows such as Life, Medium, The Simpsons, Solitary, Family Guy, Doogie Howser, The A-Team, ALF (among others), as these do not make it into my DVR, nor are they free On Demand through Comcast.
By eliminating Hulu on Boxee, the "content providers" have lost the ability to show me commercials that 1) I would have otherwise not have seen or 2) skipped entirely. I don't see how this saves them money unless Hulu is actually losing money per stream and want to drive users away. Again, if that's the case, we have more to worry about than losing Hulu on Boxee.
Good luck to Avner on his presentation.