Boxee Drops Hulu Support 375
frdmfghtr writes "According to a boxee blog entry, Hulu will no longer be supported. From the post: 'two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from boxee. we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it. you can see their blog post about the issues they are facing.' Reading the hulu blog post, the only 'issue' I see facing Hulu is that content providers have (once again) shot themselves in the foot, switching off a media conduit they should have been promoting." Update: 02/19 14:31 GMT by T : Jamie points out this interesting (speculative) piece at O'Reilly Radar about the thought process that may have driven the decision.
Re:No hulu for boxee means... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No Ads (Score:3, Informative)
This was true until yesterday, when hulu.com removed the plaintext PIDs which the xbmc hulu plugin used. Hopefully they will be able to work around it (decrypting the encrypted PIDs) but until then no more hulu on xbmc.
Send a comment to Hulu (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hulu.com/videos/search?query=contact [hulu.com]
No it doesn't bring up a contact page, but scroll to the bottom and there's a little link "Didn't find what you wanted? Click here to let us know" which pops up a contact box.... use it to let them know how you feel.
Re:No hulu for boxee means... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blame the Jews (Score:1, Informative)
Re:And what would Boxee be? (Score:2, Informative)
And what would Boxee be, pray tell? I went to the site, and all I see is a page that asks me to log in. No information on what Boxee would be - no "What is Boxee?" or "Information about Boxee" or "Why you should give a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys about Boxee".
If you need a streaming video to explain your product, you are not smart enough to sell it.
Re:It's all about control (Score:3, Informative)
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6814 [norml.org]
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312132,00.html [foxnews.com]
http://cannazine.co.uk/cannabis-news/united-states/marijuana-can-prevent-cancer-not-cause-it.html [cannazine.co.uk]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3655586.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Now who looks stupid?
Re:the correct response (Score:3, Informative)
I believe the content providers and Hulu are one and the same?
I found this link in one of the boxee forums.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,305877,00.html [foxnews.com]
I believe all the huffing/puffing from the Boxee community is not going to make the house fall down.
Re:What is boxee? (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't know what Boxee [wikipedia.org] was either (although it wasn't that tough to educate myself). You can understand fanaticism - More or less open, but with limited Windows support - Woot!
But really, this doesn't really make me hate Hulu. They've got a solid business model - Provide content to US viewers (or people using a US-based proxy) and provide ad-supported content based on the restrictions imposed by the content providers. What's so wrong about that? They've accepted that media distribution is changing, accepted that laws restrict them to a limited number of choices, and have found a good niche. What's so wrong with that? Should every business buck the system and risk annihilation rather than find a profitable model within the system to expand options while the model shifts due to cavaliers like TPB?
Boxxy is our queen (Score:2, Informative)
Boxxy is our queen
Boxxy is our queen
Re:What is boxee? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxee [wikipedia.org]
Boxee is a freeware cross-platform media center software with social networking features that is a fork of the open source XBMC media center software with some custom and proprietary additions. Marketed as the first ever "'Social Media Center", Boxee enables its users to view, rate and recommend content to their friends through many social networking features. Boxee is still under development and is currently only available as Alpha releases for Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger), Apple TV, and Linux for computers with Intel processors, with the first Alpha made available on the 16th of June 2008. A Microsoft Windows Alpha version of Boxee was released in January 2009, but is currently available only by private invitation.
Boxee said in 2009 they are planning on releasing their own dedicated set-top box (hardware) for Boxee, and also plan to license their Boxee media center and social networking service as a third-party software component to other companies for them to use the Boxee software in their hardware, such as set-top boxes from cable-TV companies or embedded computers built-in directly into television-sets. Boxee has also stated that their goal is to have Boxee run on as many third-party hardware platforms and operating systems as possible.
Re:What is boxee? (Score:2, Informative)
Cancel your hulu account (Score:4, Informative)
I just went and canceled my hulu account and emailed them why. I imagine their advertising revenue depends on those accounts, so anyone who has an account on hulu - get out there and cancel it! Let them know why also: feedback@hulu.com
Re:Hulu = Apple a few years ago (Score:1, Informative)
The kicking and screaming was done before Apple got into the game. There were many internet and subscription based music stores before iTMS. Apple lasted longer than most of them but they were far from the first one.
They may have been the first with a technology that a majority of consumers saw, used, or liked but that is a completely different concept. Many times, the initial path was already there.
Re:What is boxee? (Score:5, Informative)
If you RTFA, this is not at all an arbitrary move on Hulu's part. It's an arbitrary move on the part of the content owners that Hulu has decided to comply with.
Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes. While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence â" bumps and all â" we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners. Without their content, none of what Hulu does would be possible, including providing you content via Hulu.com and our many distribution partner websites.
Hulu has always caved in to demands from the content providers. That's what has worked for them, so they'll continue to do it. Call them shills if you want, but if you think that you can do a better job while ignoring demands from the networks, give it a try. Good luck with that.
Re:Content Providers Need To Be In Control (Score:1, Informative)
What, you've never felt bad about your boss telling you to do something stupid?