Boxee Bids Hulu Farewell, For Now
11:52 pm, February 18th, 2009, Lonnie Lazar
Image courtesy TUAW
The bottom line to the story here is clear: after Friday Boxee users will no longer be able to stream Hulu content through Boxee’s media center platform.
What’s less clear is who holds the cards in the deal — is it Boxee, Hulu, or the content providers on whom both of them depend for existence — and who will win in the end.
As usual, consumers, at least in the short run, get the short end of the stick.
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar put the best face on things in a blog post Wednesday, saying, “we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence,” while admitting that without Hulu’s content partners’ content “none of what Hulu does would be possible.”
A Boxee spokesman told Cult of Mac, “our goal has always been to drive users to legal sources of content that are publicly available on the Internet.” He said as a bridge between the converging worlds of traditional and online media Boxee can be a revenue generator for both content streamers such as Hulu, as well as for original providers. “We have many content partners who are generating revenue from boxee users and we will work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation.”
For now, after accounting for the cost of a robust internet connection, consumers can still access content from Netflix, ABC, CBS, MTV and more for free. But where Boxee will fall in the ongoing scrum for ever-tightening consumer dollars among cable providers and network content producers remains to be seen.
Posted by Lonnie Lazar in News | Comment on this article
That is interesting … just read this on Ars
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/02/tvcom-could-be-outgrowing-partners-as-content-disappears.ars
Seems there’s a pattern behind this…
mmnw, on February 19th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Living in Europe, this will not affect me directly (since I didn’t have access to Hulu in the first place), but I can’t fail to notice what this means — Boxee is becoming more and more mainstream, and that can only be a good thing in the end
Carlitos, on February 19th, 2009 at 1:25 am
IMO – there’s no reason to have Boxee without Hulu. I have zero interest in anything MTV offers me, for example.
thelottery, on February 19th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Right there with ya– boxee is a GREAT idea for the AppleTV, but not without Hulu.
Willo, on February 19th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
This just means that CBS and ABC programming gets a wider audience at NBC and Fox’s expense …. the dumb asses … they never learn. This will just drive people back to bit torrents. Which most savy Boxee users already know how to exploit. The organization, content and queuing capability of Hulu is what made up for the limited program interruption from advertisers. The management of content is the service they provided and is what set them apart from downloading torrents.
Dan, on February 22nd, 2009 at 9:47 am