Category: Technology Author : Steven Hodson Posted: February 19, 2009
Tags : boxee, hulu, television
I finally have had a chance to play around with Boxee and it sure seems to be a great way to watch video content on your television screen or computer monitor. The social aspect of it all; like most things social related these days could be a real winner for the service. On the whole it looked like Boxee had a winning formula on its hands until US viewers were informed of a big change in Boxee’s line-up of providers.
You see the majority of Boxee’s television related programming comes via the hottest video property on the web right now – Hulu. The thing is that Hulu itself is really just a content provider that has agreements with the various television networks to provide their shows via the Hulu player on the web. So what you had was one content provider providing it’s content to yet another video content provider who didn’t have any agreements in place with either Hulu or Hulu’s video providers.
As confusing as this sounds it gets even worse when the originating video providers told Hulu to stop making the content available via Boxee. This pretty well took the majority of Boxee’s content right out of play. Of course there was some uproar when happened but not as much as you would think. The reason for this is because to countries outside of the US Hulu is a non-player in the global video market.
So when Boxee announced that they would be pulling all Hulu provided content from the comments may have lit up from angry Americans but garnered nothing but a big yawn from the rest of the world. This of course is due to Hulu’s geotarding of its content so that it can only be viewed by US residents. This geotarding of course carried over to Hulu content played through Boxee so not only did non Americans lose out so did Boxee because all the really good content came primarily from its Hulu connection.
This problem isn’t the fault of either Boxee or Hulu but that of television networks who still haven’t gotten a clue about how this new fangled thing called the Internet works.
Feb 20, 2009
wrong wrong wrong wrong… wrong wrong wrong wrong… you're wrong.
Boxee is not a “video provider” or a “content provider.” They are the equivalent of a web browser, like Firefox or Safari. They allow you to view other content in a form that is more suitable on a tv screen and controlled through a remote. Boxee does not change, edit, modify, remove, or otherwise touch the actual content, and neither does Firefox or Safari.
You're also wrong about Hulu having agreements with Content Providers. They are OWNED and CONTROLLED by NBC and News Corp. (Fox). There's no handshake deal between Hulu and NBC. NBC pays Hulu's expenses, directly, not through a contract but through employment.
I do agree that the geo-restrictions are dumb. I guess its a way to target ads for relevant audiences, which is an issue for the internet since its the only real global distribution platform.
Apr 2, 2009
You're also missing the point here – the reason Hulu is trying to prevent Boxee from showing its content is because the Boxee app can very easily be displayed on a television ( there a great hack to run it on an Apple TV and use the remote, or the ease by which you can connect a computer to a television nowadays).
For the content provider who rely on ad dollars, this is just way too close for comfort compared to watching NBC and FOX content via broadcast or a cable provider.
The online ad dollars are nothing compared to “Standard” television ad dollars. They want online streaming nowhere near a television.
As a result, using Boxee on your laptop is a victim.
Apr 3, 2009
This ^ ^
Also – you do care. Hulu may be a non-factor outside the US, but as jesse points out, it is just a cat's paw for the networks. It is the most significant step yet by old media into internet distribution, and will be watched closely by all the networks, and other legacy companies with content. Not to mention the tech intermediators. Can it ultimately control its distribution to this extent? Or will it be unable to draw the line at the device? Will control of the device, the aggregator, or the content be the whip hand in the next phase of this development? Will old media gain confidence from the outcome of this tussle, or pull back and hunker down? If you care about the media business, you should be watching this as a fascinating skirmish that could be pivotal. If you care about maintaining a readership and having an interesting blog, you should also be talking about it as a great story.