General Discussion

Hulu, the free television/movie streaming service, may go further behind a giant wall of cable providers. The idea is that Hulu will still be free but users will have to login via their cable account numbers. The problem is some people don't pay for cable, or share cable, thus making it difficult to just login. The owners of Hulu have made decision hoping to make more money from Hulu and of course have the support of cable and network companies. The idea for those companies is to profit more off of their content and protect it from...I don't know...monsters? Link.

Would you watch Hulu if it went behind a cable pay wall? Does this essentially wipe out the direct competition to Netflix?

Man, we can't make money off showing TV shows for free online? How about we limit the number of episodes & providers that we can show online and hide the rest behind a paywall? How about we enforce invasive, repetitive commercials for everyone who uses our website?

Not enough? Let's force our users to tie their cable accounts to us, making sure that it's absolutely impossible to have a legal way to watch cable without paying for an outdated business practice. Good idea, yeah?

@VinceNotVance: Perfect idea for killing Hulu. I wish Hulu, the free version, has an app for the Xbox instead of just plus. I'd probably use much more often like I do Netflix. But I guess this is what happens when you're created by/invested in TV networks to begin with.

@FinalDasa: It's so ass-backwards. Hulu Plus having ads is dumb, but I can deal with it since you'll get near unlimited access to back catalogs of most, if not all of the important network & cable TV shows for a pretty cheap price. It's a decent, if not perfect, alternative to cable. But now it's just making it that much more of a hassle to use.

Hulu's making things inconvenient. People pay a price for convenience, or else they'll resort to pirating or downloading for free online. You need to offer convenience to compete with free outlets. They're not doing that. If they don't adapt, they will die. Simple as that.

Man the networks really don't get it.First they have Hulu+ with ads and now they are doing this. The limited selection of episodes turned me off from the start but the sub fee with ads and now this.

Goodbye Hulu hopefully you will not be missed.

@RockinKemosabe: Yeah, it's weird. HBO offers their Go service as a bonus for subscribers- pay for us & you'll get to watch all these programs for free, anytime you want as long as you keep the subscription! But you know what would be even better? Just give me the chance to just buy the app & pay a premium subscription to use it. HBO'll be getting their money (as they're obviously not playing nice with Netflix) & plenty of subscribers w/o cable (I'd subscribe just to see Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Wire in its entirety) will get the chance to watch these shows...without ads. Eliminate the middle man.

@VinceNotVance: HBO is just in bed with all the cable companies that offering a premium for HBO Go on it's own would piss off the companies. In a perfect world, HBO Go could be its own paid off-shoot, but in reality there is just so many deals in place with so many people that'd it become a mess. I imagine the cable companies see a lot of people who solely upgrade their package for either sports or HBO.

putting Hulu behind a cable pay wall just defeats the purpose. Cable companies already have On Demand which is Hulu, but you pay for it (sometimes). I would drop it altogether and actually start watching TV live.

That's not good at all. The only reason I even visited Hulu was because I lacked cable and the desire to pay for content. Well, at least I still have youtube, I can always use an adblock on that website.

I wonder if/how this will affect the Criterion movies (essentially the only reason I have a Hulu Plus account...)

"Hulu racked up some $420 million in ad revenue last year" the above article said.

Wouldn't placing it behind a cable/satellite curtain limit viewership and lower revenue? I don't understand why the content providers keep falling back to their outdated business models when new ones are proving themselves successful. Why kill the golden gosling by beating it to death with the old goose?

It's a bummer, but not surprising considering Hulu is owned by traditional media players. Sure Hulu makes money, but nowhere near what Disney, News Corp and NBC Universal make on their cable networks, not to mention a secondary syndication market for their network shows. These corporations have a real vested interest in keeping the cable subscription model going for as long as possible, to the detriment of a small band of cord-cutters.

That's why despite all of the missteps Netflix made last year, I still like to support them as a company. Now, if only the Criterion Collection would make all of their content available to stream for a flatly fee...

They're gonna keep pulling this kind of ignorant shit as long as they can. Which means, as long as the current older generation (who can't torrent stuff and won't watch anything on a computer) is around. Give it like 20 years max, when the young generation (who can steal this shit with ease) grows up, then we'll start seeing way more "free" options pop up "for our convenience".