I am opening a letter I wrote to Jason at Hulu about the Hulu/Boxee throwdown.
Good Morning Jason,
I know that this message is mostly likely going into a huge inbox somewhere and I really don’t expect a response, but please use this as another bit of ammo for communication to the content providers that are on Hulu.
We want our entertainment. We want it when we want it. We want to be able to retrieve it easily. Now the we here I speak of is my family, but I have a funny feeling that many other tech savvy types are very very similar.
Hulu is great, why? Because it has a huge achieve of shows that I have loved from the 80s when I grew up to recently ran shows. I can watch them anywhere if I need. It is great to have this access in my office or on the road. But here is the thing, I DO NOT want to be restricted to a 15 inch or 22 inch screen at home. I have a blessed plasma HDTV in my living room for view media. I want to be in my La-Z-Boy with a beer in hand. Yup, I am the tech savvy joe public type.
So I have cable service but I rarely watch at the times shows are on. Why? Because I am busy. I am a father, a husband and have two businesses. I have a DVR in house. (MythTV if you care to know) I have this DVR record from the cable and from over the air content. Guess what, this DVR has the ability to strip commercials from the shows.
Now on this DVR (a full fledge computer) I have Boxee. Boxee is a god sent to me. Why? Because I can use my remote in my La-Z-Boy to pull up my content on my 42″ screen. And guess what, when watching Hulu on through Boxee it is really no different than watching it with Firefox or Internet Explorer or any other browser. When I watch Hulu, the media is full screened, nothing but the media is showing.
But here is the difference. I watch commercials with Hulu delivered through Boxee. Because they are there. I don’t mind commercials. Hell, commercials done well and well placed can be fun. I understand commercials help bring around my entertainment. I am ok with that, but please, vary the commercials, make them fun, make them worth my eyes.
But now Boxee has played nice, because Hulu took their ball and went home. Because content providers didn’t like that new kid over there playing with the ball? Hey News Corp, NBC/Universal? Are you children that cannot share within reason? Hulu is a nice free to me with limited use of commercials legit way for me to view the entertainment. What I use to view Hulu shouldn’t be your concern. Because us geeks, we will always find ways. It is our Standard Operating Procedure.
Right now, since I am the La-Z-Boy type, I can just have my DVR get the shows, have it strip the commercials. Then there is that other way of the Internet, downloading of shows from a non legit source. And I have been told, that normally the non legit sources have the commercials removed too.
The under 40 crowd is quickly becoming an On Demand culture. And it isn’t so much that I want something now now now. It is more we want something when we want it. We like to watch a season’s worth of TV in a couple weekend from a DVD collection or from a collected season on a DVR. We don’t live in a world where we can give up 8 to 11 every night (yes eastern time zone for me) for shows. Sometimes we need to watch shows at 1 am or from 11 to 4 on a Saturday (good replacement for the non sport type.) This is who we are. We are quickly becoming your main demographic. Do not limit us unfairly. We do not forget. But if we do forget, we are creatures of habit. And right now, I am going to be less in the habit of watching content through Hulu. Less eyes on your commercial support.
Here is my suggest for you content providers for the future. Figure out how to use the Internet to deliver your content. Figure out a way to deliver the content in the most simple of methods. Do not worry about how the content in the end is viewed. Because you cannot keep up with the technology, TV to iPod to laptops to netbooks to computers in the kitchen. Make it simple, so simple, no one will want to put the effort into pirating. You want money. You need us to make the money. We want your content. But don’t limit us on how we are meant to view the content.
I am sorry Hulu. Most of us in the interwebs understand that you are just a middle man in this issue. Please continue your work. Best of luck to you with ironing out these issues. I love your site. I love that I can watch show in a legit fashion. Gives me warm fuzzies. But I have to say, since I started to use Boxee a few months ago, I would say 80% of my Hulu use has been through Boxee on the big screen.
So, what is everyone else thinking?
