The Hulu/Boxee Battle Continues To Go Back And Forth
from the give-it-up-hulu dept
On Friday morning, we wrote that Boxee had come up with a workaround to get Hulu content accessible again via Boxee. Basically, it just started accessing the content via Hulu's RSS feed: which is exactly how the RISS feed was meant to be used. It's just that the Boxee software would act as the "reader" of choice. It was difficult to see how Hulu could complain without appearing ridiculous: it would effectively have to say that only certain RSS readers could use it's feed... and that's exactly what the company did. By Friday evening, Hulu had a technical block in place. Of course, it didn't take long for Boxee to figure out a workaround to that block, and supposedly (at the time I'm writing this) the service is back -- though, Boxee has now added a little indicator to its software to let you know whether Hulu is accessible or not...Everyone knows that Hulu's content partners are actively trying to block Boxee, but it's extremely difficult to see what their complaint is. Boxee is simply a different browser, accessing the content exactly as the companies offered it. Users of Boxee can still access Hulu on their computer, it's just in a less friendly UI. All this really does is make plenty of legitimate TV watchers decide to go elsewhere for the content. It simply makes no sense to say Boxee can't access Hulu. It would be like CNN denying mobile web browsers from accessing its site.
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Current copyright laws are the bane of this societies culture
And big media still thinks in antiquated ways, to them Boxee is a competitor, because you can watch it on the big screen in the living room. And they are afraid they are losing out on ad-dollars (which is bs, because I think that on Hulu you watch ads, right?)
Media makers should learn to embrace the concept of releasing their content on as many platforms as possible to generate as much or more eyeballs than ever for their products. Only then can they survive...
Why would they even want to prevent people from watching their content? Don't they want to earn money?
They are driving people towards bittorrent, because that, at least, is not limited.
Thankfully/Sadly we don't have a Hulu here in NL to deal with. Basically, the only two choices we have here, is wait a year or more for the shows to come to our screens on one of hour networks, or grab the shows on Bittorrent.
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Re: Current copyright laws are the bane of this societies culture
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Re: Re: Current copyright laws are the bane of this societies culture
As you say its a Monday but if you're going to correct yourself on one point you may as well do it right and correct all the mistakes.
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Innovation will win
They get horrible press and are forcing customers to head to fancast, joost, veoh, etc. If I'm not mistaken, most of the content in question is on those sites. And I'm sure boxee has plugins to those sites that work.
Eventually boxee will win. Innovation always does. Of course, hulu's content providers will do everything they can to stop it.
The thing I don't understand is why hulu isn't able to charge more for ads if more people are using the service. It would seem like 100,000 ad views are 100,000 views? And putting boxee on TV only makes those ads even more valuable? I really don't see where the content providers lose anything, except of course viewership.
People using boxee are past being forced to watch on someone else's schedule. They'll stop watching. Then everyone loses.
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Re: Innovation will win
The only reason the content providers license their content to sites like HULU is because they consider it advertising for their DVD sales and broadcasts. They do NOT want online viewing to become dominant over broadcast viewing, because that would be a net loss in terms of revenue. Hence, they do not want their own content to be used as a catalyst for that transition. And since the only thing they control in this equation is the rights to their own content, then that's what they manipulate.
Once the power shifts enough, hulu will command higher ad prices, and will be able to pay the content providers enough money that they will consider broadcast to be the inferior source of income.
But we're years away from that.
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Re: Re: Innovation will win
Therein lies the problem, with bittorrent the alleged control over their content is all in their minds. They can let it out themselves and profit somewhat, or let the pirates release it for them and have no profit or control.
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Re: Re: Innovation will win
NOT CHARGING ENOUGH FOR ADS ON THE INTERNET!
If only they sold ad space at a sustainable rate instead of thinking of the internet as a secondary outlet that can be funded from their primary outlet with the idea of driving more eyes toward the primary outlet...
The problem is in thinking of the internet as an add-on service to enhance their main service (TV) and not thinking of it as a service all it's own that should be able to fund the content on it's own should the market move in that direction.
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"Easy" workaround
It would seem a pretty simple work around, since the only way Hulu (or another site) could know you are using Boxee is if it identifies itself as such. If it said it's user agent was Firefox, then how's a webserver going to know otherwise?
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Re: "Easy" workaround
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Browser choice
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I've never used Boxee, but this had me excited. I've been looking for a upnp server for Linux that can stream web content. Right now, I use Mediatomb, which streams files from my hard drive to my console. XBMC can do the same thing, and so can Boxee if you turn on the right configuration settings. But Boxee's server can't stream web content according to what I read.
Is there such a thing for Linux that I don't know about? I download enough stuff that it's not that big of a deal, but it would be nice if I could get Hulu and stuff on my console.
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Ad Block
Whenever I visit Hulu it kinda freaks out that firefox blocks the ads but will still show me the video. I just get a 30 second error message from Hulu.
If I worked for the contnet owners I'd be much more upset about blocked ads in Firefox than people watching via Boxee.
Oh, and I sometimes connect my computer to my TV (easy thing to do) and watch streaming videos there. Is Hulu going to try to block that next?
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Re: Ad Block
Some places tell me to turn it off
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What would happen if...
I wonder how many suits in the cable TV business would lose their jobs...
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Twitter
I watch hulu quite a bit, because it's *usually* more convienent than bittorrent for catching up on House or The Colbert report, but because I stream to my TV, I've had to switch back to bittorrent.
The whole idea seems quite foolish. Before the Boxee cutoff they had X number of eyeballs on their ads, now they have X-Y, where Y is the number of people who switched back to bittorrent. So, they made an executive decision to make less money. Brilliant!
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Can't they just spoof useragent (at least for Hulu)?
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RE: Hulu / Boxee games...
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Re: RE: Hulu / Boxee games...
It makes no sense for Hulu to block Boxee since Boxee is passing through all of their ads.
They want web users to go back to accessing content without the ads via the torrents?!
A very strange move, indeed !
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Hulu vs. Boxee
1) Viewing Hulu content via Boxee is identical in every way *except* most Boxee users are watching it on the large screen televisions rather than a smallish computer monitor. Boxee does not molest the Hulu content in any way, shape or form. All of the ads from content providers remain intact and it could argued viewing via Boxee is worse because you are unable to choose to see one long commercial and instead have the frequent 30-second commercials.
2) Boxee is genuinely exerting all of their efforts to be transparent and completely above board by not hacking or molesting provider content. Sure, they could build into their code a spoofing agent but as the days pass it is Hulu who is looking more and more ridiculous for blocking legal and free content for shamelessly persecuting boxee users.
3) Fire off an email to the powers that be at Hulu. The larger the grassroots effort to make a change, the easier it will be for Hulu (if it really stands 100% behind its mission statement) to show the content providers the revenue they are losing.
Excerpts from Hulu's Site below.
Mission: Hulu's mission is to help people find and enjoy the world's premium video content when, where and how they want it. As we pursue this mission, we aspire to create a service that users, advertisers, and content owners unabashedly love.
What are Hulu’s main business goals?
Hulu is focused on helping people find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how they want it, for free, anytime in the U.S. Our goal has always been to serve all of our customers, which include users, content providers and advertisers, with a high-quality online video experience built around premium content.
++++++++++
The mouth is saying one thing and the hands are doing another.
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Someday they will get it right
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