Comments on: Et Tu, Hulu? or Hulu, Huh-What?

By: Kennith Vicario

Kennith Vicario — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:31:30 +0000

Thanks for the impressive info.Very neat blog layout. Easy on the eyes. Thanks and happy holidays.

By: bjooks

bjooks — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:20:34 +0000

If they drop the commercials entirely, AND if they increase their content to more than just the last few new episodes of current series, then maybe. But without those two, very unlikely I’d stick around.

By: Vinnie Bartilucci

Vinnie Bartilucci — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:44:27 +0000

Do you think they’d be making money if they hadn’t shelled out a couple million for those Super Bowl commercials?

By: MisterSmith

MisterSmith — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:52:44 +0000

Hah, and I just started increasing my use of Hulu recently (watched Spider-Woman and caught up on FlashForward)…if I wanted to pay to watch this stuff, I would just wait for the DVDs. Or use iTunes. Or buy their advertisers stuff, if it had to come down to that. But that’s not why I’ve used Hulu. Free, legal, and convenient. This just makes it a waste of my time.

By: Virgil's Diner

Virgil's Diner — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:52:57 +0000

I was a little annoyed at first when I read this, but I started thinking about how this might signal a change in viewing habits. It’s something media analysts have been discussing for years – will viewers move away from scheduled viewing and prefer watching programs on demand. Hulu becomes the perfect portal for this kind of viewing. If tv technology improves, I could see ditching cable in the near future and doing all my viewing through Hulu and Netflix. Maybe it’s a little extreme, maybe it’s not. You can read more here: http://tinyurl.com/yj2kztv

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:10:28 +0000

I could just go and buy episodes cheaply on iTunes and not be hassled with Hulu’s commericials or having to sit at my computer to watch it.

By: Jeff Edsell

Jeff Edsell — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:38:43 +0000

It will have to be CHEAP. iTunes sells shows for $2 and you get to keep them. That’s actually part of why I prefer Hulu, since I usually only want to watch a show once, and don’t mind some commercial time since I get to see it free. But if buying from iTunes is just a little more than watching on Hulu, iTunes will win. (And that’s only if I’m feeling too lazy to…um…”look elsewhere.”)

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:40:08 +0000

So we’re supposed to believe that their NOT getting paid for slipping in the COMMERCIALS. Come on. you know they’re making money on that. They just want to make more.

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:45:48 +0000

I already pay a ridiculous amount of money for my cable service. Wouldn’t this be like paying for it twice?

By: Goliath

Goliath — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:08:29 +0000

Paying for Hulu would be like paying for TV programming..twice. We already pay a satellite/cable and internet bill. I will stick to my DVR or the specific channel’s website for a rerun. If I happen to miss it, then I will miss it. Hulu doesn’t offer anything all that special to where they should be charging, the movies are really outdated and they show them all the time through our existing cable. The only “new” stuff are TV show re-reuns, which nearly all people get for free or are paying for already. Also, all these articles stating Hulu will start charging will make people start bailing already, which means an even smaller viewer base once they do start charging good luck.

By: Russ Burlingame

Russ Burlingame — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:31:54 +0000

I think this is the end for Hulu. If people are going to pay for content, they want to be able to KEEP it. I’ve often gone to Hulu for things like SPACED, since the DVD was prohibitively expensive, but if it came down to paying for streaming video or paying (more) for a DVD, it’s the DVD in a landslide.

By: LREKing

LREKing — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:36:04 +0000

That will be the death knell for Hulu. How many successful pay-for-content sites can anyone name?

By: InfoMofo

InfoMofo — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:08:13 +0000

Hulu’s not even a very good system. I run into problems with it all the time where it will just lock up my browser and I’ll have to start over. The scrubbing is super annoying and makes you watch all the commercials again.

It’s fine for a free system, but once they move to paid, I’m not going to watch it anymore.

What’s going to happen to the hulu-embedded clips on all these blogs and such?

By: elvee

elvee — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:45:43 +0000

Will they allow it to stream to a set top box, essentially an on-demand cable service? If so, then maybe I would pay.

By: Wesley Smith

Wesley Smith — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:36:50 +0000

I agree with Tony. A VIP level that allows you to watch you to watch commercial free, that would probably be a good idea, and one I could see working. But if they go to a subscription only model, it won’t last more than a year or so. I know there have been a couple of similar situations where companies offered a service for free or part of standard situations (Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Nintendo’s Intnernet Channel), then tried to charge subscribers extra for the service. Netflix’s backfired and they backpeddled within a few months, and Nintendo recently reversed their decision and made the Internet Channel free again.

Can anybody think of a situation where a media company offered something for free, then decided to charge for it, where it didn’t backfire on them, ever?

By: artiepants

artiepants — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:49:26 +0000

oh, E. and get clients for popular devices ~ network connected BluRays, Xbox 360/PS3/Wii, Roku, etc…

By: artiepants

artiepants — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:45:11 +0000

after doing Netflix Streaming on my new BluRay player the last couple of weeks, i could totally get behind this as long as:
A. NO COMMMERCIALS (i can’t stress that enough)
B. A reasonable rate ~ $10/15 a month
C. fix your bandwidth/tehcnology issues, i’ve never had a good experience watching on Hulu, it pauses and buffers and stutters for me, problems i’ve never experienced with ABC.com or Netflix Streaming, which both require a higher bandwidth throughput.
D. oh, and NO COMMERCIALS.

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:52:46 +0000

Absolutely not. Now a fee for commercial free viewing, maybe. But I’d rather put up with commercials than pay a fee to access everything.

By: Lemurion

Lemurion — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:47:47 +0000

if they do free with commercials and pay without, then maybe. Otherwise expect a mass exodus from Hulu

By: Simon DelMonte

Simon DelMonte — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:46:26 +0000

It won’t work. People will either go back to getting DVDs from Netflix or downloading illegally. Besides, there are other sites with some of the same content where it will probably stay free for a while.

That said, if it’s like $10 a month for everything, I would think about it.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:44:32 +0000

The day it goes to a fee-based system is the day I stop watching.

By: Lan Pitts

Lan Pitts — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:34:09 +0000

Well, I guess time is running out for me to watch some Hulu, huh? I don’t mind the commercials, but it’s been really helpful in watching re-runs or something that I missed or something I wanted to watch again (Treehouse of Horror XX comes to mind).

I’m annoyed by this and I’m sure it will make SOME money, but that was the good thing about it. It was LIKE tv with the commercials, but free. Actually free with no worries of linking to something and it being taken down later like on youtube.

It’s a disappointment.

By: Troy Brownfield

Troy Brownfield — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:09:36 +0000

Look at it this way; you won’t have to pay for it, either.

By: Matthew E

Matthew E — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:07:40 +0000

Part of the undeniable appeal of Hulu.com has to be the fact that you can watch programs from across the entertainment spectrum at all times for free.

Unless you’re in Canada or someplace, in which case you can’t watch it at all.