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Hulu Off Boxee

Later this week, Hulu’s content will no longer be available through Boxee. While we never had a formal relationship with Boxee, we are under no illusions about the likely Boxee user response from this move. This has weighed heavily on the Hulu team, and we know it will weigh even more so on Boxee users. (via blog.hulu.com)

I can see it now. Some corporate moron hears about how his niece is watching Hulu using this slick little interface called Boxee. He tells his boss who tells his boss who tells his boss. Then the next thing you know there is a meeting at corporate about how Boxee is a great idea and they should be developing their own thing where they control everything…dollar signs flash and a memo is sent to Hulu for them to get this under control and make way for their new killer software/hardware.

The one thing it seems that big content providers can not get through their thick skulls is that consumers do not go backwards when it comes to technology. They always move forward. It used to be that the content providers drove the technology. That is just not true anymore and they need to accept it.

How much success would the movie industry have if they decided to start putting all their new releases on video tape instead of DVD. Those are 2 technologies they help pioneer and they can see the obvious drawbacks of going backwards.

To the consumer progress in technology is progress no matter who makes the technology. We could care less. All we know is that the new way is better and we have gotten used to it and if you try to take it out of our hands and revamp it to suit the contents providers needs then consumers will move forward while you are making deals and trying to figure out how to monetize.

Thanks to Veronica Belmont for the heads up on twitter.

One reply on “Hulu Off Boxee”

Agree with all your points.

This is a big misstep as Hulu has done this better than anyone so far, and in comparison been fairly open with the content. The content providers really need to step lightly on this issue and not sour the goodwill of the community when it comes to Hulu. That said, Hulu is really the only way that I view content and actually watch the commercials. That is definitely something they don’t want to discourage.

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