the Hulu situation
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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I am very dissapointed to hear this news. I bougth an apple TV just for HULU and I hacked it, and now I have a appletv that it is useless as the other channels like ABC are not in good quality.
HELP!!!! BOXEE please work something else with HULU!!!
It’s sad. More comments on the Hulu blog will (maybe) get better results of action though. Goodbye Hulu, I will miss you.
Well, I don’t have much use for Boxee nor my TV now. I can still watch Hulu on my PS3, but the interface just sucks via that web browser. The day they kill access via the PS3 is the day I go back to getting 720p torrents and just watch my shows commercial free. Convenience is only worth so much.
Will never watch hulu again unless its on boxee
I just hope that fighting Hulu won’t take time away from getting ABC.com up and running for Linux. When I dropped cable three years ago, I had to switch from watching NBC programs to ABC programs. ABC.com at the time had the best video player of any of the networks. Well, ABC.com keeps stalling on Firefox, so I started watching more Hulu. When I got boxee up and running on Ubuntu 8.10 I got my podcasts, last.fm, and Hulu all in one. So now that Hulu is gone, let’s get back to work on ABC for Linux.
FYI, I’m boycotting Hulu until I can watch it on boxee. I’m voting with my remote. Maybe when Hulu and its content providers get hit in the pocket book with lost ad revenue they will take boxee seriously.
Any if any cable companies are reading this: You do realize that boxee is helping you, not hurting you. DSL subscribers can’t use boxee. There isn’t enough bandwidth for streaming videos without buffering issues. As a promotion you should give your subscribers a $230 Apple TV with boxee installed for anyone switching from DSL to Internet bundled with television. Digital cable still has content like The History Channel or the Discovery Channel that isn’t available on boxee. Yet with boxee, the best of Internet content as well as the home videos can be side by side with the other content provided. boxee is here to help you regain Internet share away from DSL.
This is crazy. This is one of the best parts of boxee. Bringing my netflix and hulu together in one place. 90% of the time I use boxee is for hulu. Hulu is great but why are the corporate farts thinking. Its free anyway and this is another place for people to access their content.
i guess the networks are shitting their pants, because with the net and browsers like boxee, in a not so distant future nobody needs the networks aka “gatekeeper of the content” anymore.
they might just have realized it and did a foolish move against it.
(of couse they did not, cause they are not able to see more to the future than a couple of advertising blocks.)
This kills Boxee for me on the Apple TV. There’s really no reason to add the hack at this point. 99% of the shows on TV my wife wants to watch are either Fox or NBC content from Fringe to Burn Notice. Boxee pulls in a lot of content, and I’m sure there are other issues regarding the hack, but this really made it worthwhile to go to all the work. Now I’m not so sure.
What a frakking disaster. I bought an AppleTV box solely because I could use Boxee with Hulu. Over the last couple of months, I got rid of cable TV and was perfectly happy watching legal television on Hulu and generating ADVERTISING REVENUE. Obviously I’m just repeating what other have said, but this is so short-sighted. I will never watch Hulu on my computer; it’s just too inconvenient. What is wrong with these content providers?
Fight these guys to the end! Content should be available on as many platforms as possible to reach the widest audiences. Hulu on my Apple TV was amazing while it lasted, I hope it comes back soon.
This is a huge mistake based upon misinformation and paranoia. Hulu and its content providers need to take a step back and reassess.
It’s unfortunate that Hulu’s content providers would much such a short-sighted business decision. I don’t understand why my business isn’t good enough for them.
This really disappoints me…what a bummer. Whatever…thought we were going in the right direction.
I would like to mention a wonderful invention. It is called the capital letter. Among its other functions, it typically signifies the commencement of a sentence.
Its really really disappointing, I was such a big fan of policies of Hulu, now this is the biggest disappointment after buying patchstick.
Staging a Petition to the CEO of Hulu see
http://www.zerosource.org/2009/02/boycott-hulu-now.html
Hey let’s get an organized social media hating of hulu going on….anyone with stumbleupon, reddit, or any other social media that offers a “thumbs down” type offering should click it for Hulu…..not that this will really hurt them but it could ding their traffic with enough of us. (It might take them out of the main stumbleupon rotation at least)
Not that I’m bitter or anything
Hey “content providers”, this is exactly why we illegally download content, you idiots pull crap like this so we have no choice. Change will happen and if you don’t adapt to it then you will be left in the dust, just ask the RIAA. Bring Hulu back to Boxee or you will suffer the consequences.
Comcast Cable and Time Warner cable told NBC.
This is the cable companies paying off NBC
I posted this in the Hulu suggestions forum.
———————————————-
The best thing you could do your for service is to put Hulu back on Boxee. It’s one of the most innovating solutions to serving mass content we have had in a while and yet Hulu decides to cripple it with one stroke. It’s disappointing.
I would love to hear how the return on investment discussion went about that decision. Let me lay out one for you. A good return on investment would be to get our content, name and advertisements out to as many people as we can. The best way to do that is to spend dollars on a Superbowl ad followed up by bad press in the community that is most likely to use the service. Boxee is in discussions about a set top box much like the Roku box. What better way to serve your content at no cost to you that to deliver content to a provider that wants to do it for you for, well free. Let me repeat that, FREE. As in no overhead, no coding, no QA, no development time. All you need to do is sit back, sell ads and deliver content. Interesting take. In today’s market economy how can you turn your backs on such a low cost solution. Incredible.
My guess is that Apple was involved. They have deals with the networks to SELL content that Hulu as streaming for free. Any reason not to think that Apple is not to blame? Hulu gets ad credit for the streams. Apple gets nothing. So, the question is, who is killing what (and who)? When will someone just make a set box would fill an obvious need so I can ditch my shacked to worthlessness Apple TV??
Friends,
I hope so, you all are lucky. coz i couldn’t see the video now. but i can realize the effect of the video from your comments. so here am waiting to watch this video from starting itself.
Thanks,
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Now it is time to email the providers! I emailed Hulu the following!
Hi Guys,
I love Hulu and watch it when I miss an episode of Chuck and other CBS shows, unfortunately my wife doesn’t like to watch my laptop so I was using an Apple TV and Boxee. Why did you block Boxee, are you nuts?
Eyes are eyes, be them on a computer or a TV, you’ll get credit for the connection and viewing time. I now have to program my eyeTV, an ElCato product, appliance connected to my computer and export the to my AppleTV. One good thing I can edit out all the commercials and export them to my AppleTV with out any commercials, I could just as easily upload these to the internet for my friends. So please spare me the bandwidth and restore Boxee to your access list or work out a deal.
–

Pat Allen – Technology Director
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Two Guys F.T.V. & Associates
and got the folowing:
Thanks for writing. Our content providers asked that we remove our content from
Boxee, and we are respecting their wishes. While Hulu never had a formal
relationship with Boxee, this was not an easy step for the company to take.
Please know that our mission to make media dramatically easier and more
user-focused has not changed and will not change. We will not stop until we
achieve it and we are sober in our assessment that we have such a long way to go.
Our CEO provides a more detailed view of the situation in the Hulu blog, which
I’ve copied below.
Doing Hard Things
February 18th, 2009
http://blog.hulu.com/2009/2/18/doing-hard-things
So now it looks like we should go after the guys who asked to pull the plug!
CBS and copy Alix Baldwin too!
Best regards.
Pat
wow! How to make a diaper cake
i love Hulu and Boxee. By themselves, they’re fine but together they’re formidable.My point is they should merge because I think they complement each other. I love watching Hulu but I watch more Hulu with Boxee because of the convenience it offers. Hulu and Boxee is a marriage made in heaven. I’m sure it’s all about money. They should find a mutually beneficial arrangement. C’mon Hulu bring it back to Boxee. Don’t be too greedy. Whats a little more convenience for your viewers worth?
A Hulu a day keeps Boxee away.LOL
Boxee and Hulu complements each other and they should find a mutually beneficial arrangement. By themselves they’re fine but together they’re formidable. I’m sure it’s all about money. What else?
C’mon Hulu, What a little more convenience for your viewers worth?
Who cares what they say? You are wrapped from an open-source software platform for a reason: so you can tell these pricks to sit n spin. for shame!
nice, really nice!
I didn’t read all of the comments, however, there’s a plugin for boxee now that restores the hulu functionality. I haven’t fully tried it myself but I heard that the ads have been removed. Now it’s Boxee + Hulu – Ads = More Win for consumers, Less Win for the content providers that pushed for the Boxee ban. It may affect Hulu a bit, as well, but what can I say, it’s just business.
Three is a lot of talking about Michael Jackson dead, it’s a very emotional for me because I love his msic, I still didn’t believe in his dead. Hi was a definitely King of music
I’m just confused why so many of you NEEEEEEED boxee to watch hulu? I’m new to boxee and it looks intriquing, other than the fact that our HTPC is 64 bit windows, no boxee there yet huh? But, hulu on firefox runs just dandy. Full screen. Oh wait, i’d have to flip over to the “command” monitor (the best way to htpc 1 screen for display 1 for driving) and then goto frigging twitter or digg or whatever emo-homo sharing site. the complaints about laptops on tv’s ummm, don’t be ignorant. you’s guys are the ones who (at least one a week) ask me if they can wireless pump 720 or 1080 from their laptop to their tv. no. GET an HTPC cheap bastids.
SO WHAT am I missing. other than being more social, and integrating my local libraries and getting some info on the content i’m watching/listening to…why do i NEEED boxee. Please there has to be an succinct answer (after all this bitch posts).
When will these bureaucratic advertisers and networks learn that they lost their real power a long time ago?! With the advent of high-speed Internet connections and DVRs cheaper than a stack of VHS tapes the same size, people WILL get their desired content one way or the other–on our time, on our terms.
If Hulu’s content providers insist on doing things the hard way, that’s fine. Those of us with multiple terabytes of storage space will just download the episodes, store them on our home media servers, and watch them commercial-free. When Hulu’s ratings tank, the reason why will be obvious.
by hulu.. hopefully some smart computer kid will do bad things to hulu