Posts Tagged ‘TV’
Hulu Plus
Hulu recently announced their upcomming “Hulu Plus” subscription service. Hulu is an online video portal, with a well designed interface. They also offer a stand alone application that give a somewhat “Tivo like” interface suitable for a media center. While the free portal will still carry on, subscribers can now watch entire seasons of current series, as well as more movies, and many vintage TV programs. For ten bucks a month, this beats the heck out of $1 or more per episode.
Is this the perfect transition from conventional television, to online video delivery? Well, in a word, no. There are a couple of problems. The first isn’t Hulu’s fault really. So far, CBS has refused to play, leaving three of the big four networks. Comedy central once supplied content to Hulu, but they childishly took their toys and stormed home months ago. Content from other cable networks is also conspicuously missing.
I think this is a pretty good step forward for what will inevitably be the way of the future. Unfortunately, Hulu Plus, and every other effort to deliver television programming online so far has fallen short. Seems content providers are obsessed with either driving you to their own website, or having you subscribe to an overpriced cable TV package. This is really a shame, as it drives viewers to uses dubious sources like Bittorrent to find the programs they seek. And this is exactly the same problem that drove illegal music sources like Napster, until legal music sources like iTunes offered easily available music downloads. Sure, illegal music downloads weren’t eliminated, but they dropped dramatically once legal alternatives were available.
Quite simply, what people want is a way to view content in one portal. I believe Hulu’s new service will show that people will pay for this. Many already pay for individual shows and series from sources like iTunes. Hopefully, the TV entertainment industry will get a clue. Time will tell.
