ABC/Disney Considering Hulu 192
An anonymous reader writes "The Walt Disney Co and Hulu.com have restarted talks over offering shows from Disney's ABC television network on the online video distributor owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, paidContent.org reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources." The real question to me is when will they stop screwing around with Boxee users?
Re:The problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the other problem is the ads themselves. They keep limiting their audience to the USA, as if they can't figure out that ads don't have to be limited to one market.
Just get the Coke, Nestlé, Kraft, Apple, Toyota of this world (i.e. the big international companies) for your commercials. It doesn't matter where you are on the planet, some products are available everywhere.
Re:The problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well they better make it bloody convenient because like it or not, they are competing with torrents.
I'm willing to pay for convenience, seems most people are, so get rid of the unskippable shit, files that self destruct or can't be saved at all. Then let me choose a media player instead of the ugly branded junk. If not, then sorry but then you are competing on price alone.
Re:What they really need to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but with an online "on-demand" system, you can really see which shows are successful, you don't have to rely on brain-dead network executives and "surveys". Pay checks can also be directed at shows which are actually watched and not garbage that keeps sucking money until they are cancelled.
Also, said brain-dead network executives can't try to kill shows by shuffling them around anymore.
"The real question"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is Boxee the real question? I'd never even heard of it until they got blocked by Hulu, I don't know anyone who has one, and nobody I know is even thinking of getting one. Sure it was a lousy decision, but is it really so world-changingly lousy that Slashdot CANNOT EVER post about Hulu without bringing Boxee up?
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that is this model will either require
1) Direct payment from you
or
2) You to be a free-rider on a system supported by others
or
3) People willing to pay to get you to watch what you want to watch.
1) is tough because nobody wants to pay for TV. 2) is not sustainable. 3) is a pipe dream.
Hulu commercials == Cable in the early 80s (Score:5, Insightful)
Hulu is funded through advertising. On the radio a few weeks ago, I think on NPR's marketplace, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/12/hulu/ [publicradio.org] they had an interview with Eric Feng, founder of Hulu. In it, he said that advertising is where the money is and that it is likely that the amount of commercials/ads shown per episode is likely to increase. It was either him or someone else on the program (I can't listen to the program right now) that said Hulu is likely to follow the same path as cable did - starting with very little commercials, and using that as a selling point, and then eventually transitioning to 7+ minutes of advertising per half hour as Hulu became indispensable.
I like Hulu, but I do not believe they operate under some "do our work for the benefit of the users" mantra. At some point they will do the analysis on ads vs. user dissatisfaction and will settle at a balance point.
Re:The problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
How so? 90% of users wouldn't know what a torrent was, and of the remainder how many would know how to configure their router so they could use it? Use WinRAR, VLC etc.? Even know how to install them?
And even then you've done that mess it's not streaming.. you've got to download first. Screw that. Open browser, goto www.hulu.com, watch show. Torrent just can't compete with that.
Re:The problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hulu should be able to put together a netflix style algorithm of users who like the shows you do and then match it up to a set of demographics you fall into and truly target ads to you. Advertisers should LOVE this model.
I don't even mind the ads on Hulu because they are 15-30 seconds instead of 2 minutes or more on regular TV. That's not even long enough to make it worth my while to skip past the commercials. By the time I could reach to my remote to skip passed it the commercial will be almost finished.
Now if Adobe would make a flash player for Linux that was able to play full screen 480p streaming from Hulu well, I would be all set to cancel my cable subscription.
Re:The problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
Since nearly all of these services only stream to the USA that's kind of expected.
If they were someday to become international targeting ads by using IP geolocation is pretty easy.. so it's a non-issue.
Most of those services stream to the USA -and- Canada.
We get CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and TBS here in Canada but we're not allowed to watch those networks online. Some Canadian stations have great online viewers (such as CTV), however their content is limited as a good half of their content is American programming which they aren't allowed to air.
Re:The problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with what you say. The ads on Hulu really don't bother me. They are almost all under 30 seconds (with that latest Fedex one being around 8 seconds) and none are very annoying or intrusive. And, as you say, I want online TV to succeed.
The problem is, though, if this is truly successful, won't we start seeing longer, more obnoxious commercial spans in Hulu? At that point, it becomes just as bothersome as watching the show on broadcast TV. Also, how do you account for local advertising?