Hulu Comes to High-Perform­ance Media Servers from ReQuest

Eyal…

Vert good post!  Nice to see a developers input re what is going on under the hood.  And the player wars (and meta data) is what this battle is all about.  So when we talk about “standards” it would be great to have standardized markup/tags/etc. so that ANY player and read/raise events so that affliate revenues can be captured/dispersed.  I mean phone companies did this will billing information, why can’t content providers?  Well I guess that is something for the gov’t and lawyers to figure out .  Or just one big company to control :(

Now that Hulu has pulled it’s content from Boxee, what’s the future of the ReQuest add-in?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/hulu-asks-boxee-to-pull-content-it-complies/

Any official word?

Wow, michael. Difference is that request doesn’t have mass market aspirations (but then neither does kaleidescape). doubt hulu has legal standing?? Boxee and the others are just putting a wrapper on something already available online. Very strange.

Guys, Galls,

You totally forgot what this thread is all about!
after all that is said and argued above, I want to get you all back to the issue here which is this annoying article portraying ReQuest (with all due respect) as an innovator or ground breaker of media streaming. The, very well known, Sayabas technology and platform, along with a very user friendly GUI, has provided all and more of what this “new” ReQuest device is doing for more than a year, with integration of video podcasts, youtube, flicker, picasa, cnn, bbc and so on and so on… along with full HD content streaming. need I say more? I hope you all understand what I am talking about because I was very brief on explanations (this thread is way too long already).
should this article see light a year ago, I would have been shocked and in favor of ReQuest. I think the guys are a bit too late with satisfying my digital needs… sorry. I am using an HD streamer which is also my NAS and media server with 1TB of internal storage. It is also a torrent client. explain why I need HULU again..?

RTsixT

Hulu was really created as web portal to view content on a personal computer via a browser. Its interface doesn’t really fit on a large TV in the living room because the video player is developed in FLAH and wasn’t designed for that purpose. For instance, it doesn’t support remote control or large buttons to that extent. And as some already mentioned before, the quality of the content is far from HD (The streams are encoded at 350 kbs – 500 kbps).  So being able to bring HULU onto your TV doesn’t really provide the correct experience for the living room.

Hulu was also created out of the necessity to counterpart the growing monopoly that apple has with iTunes. The content owners started to feel like hostages when Apple did not allow them to modify the price model on thir own content. And, as much as iPod or iPhone is popular, it is still a closed proprietary platform which means you miss all the rest of the market who doesn’t use Apple’s products.

INMHO, there is a need for a standard platform that can do a few things:
1. Ensure ALL content owners gets a fair share of the generated revenew
2. Provide user friendly interface to be used on different devices (TV, Cell Phone, blackberry etc..)
3. Provide universal interfaces (API’s) so other devices (such as Boxee etc..) and flatforms can integrate with it, pull content and generate additional revenew share for the content owners.

Please note that I excluded “protecting the content”. This is because, personally, I think the DRM paradaigm is a major crippling factor that prevent the content from being widely distributed across the net. The content owners have to find new business models to increase their revenew without limiting the use of the content. I think pricing would play an important key.

Microsoft created their own platform via MSN VIDEO which so far has been the only one to offer the same content via a web browser or via Media Center. They call it Internet TV. When you access it via the browser you get an experience that is optimized for this media. When you access it via Media Center, you get a native user interface which makes your user experience unified with the rest of the Media Center. Now, if MS would find the magic formula to share the revenew with the content owners, they could be winners in this game.

So the question is not really whether HULU will become more available or not, but rather would the content owners get their act together and agree on standard platform which will allow them to distribute their content to every device and enjoy the revenew share. Technically it is possible, but I think there are other factors that may delay or prevent this from happening anytime soon.

By the way, Looks like Sony has the perfect solution:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of

@eyal kattan, u have outdone yourself again.  Don’t you just love the sockpuppet commentary  

To your point:
1. We need to start playing nice together.  Start with droqing out all the sock puppets, trolls and wacked out/know it all/tech freaks that hate everything that they did not create/promote as their own.  This noise is NOT helpful.  Makes ya wonder about the source…
2. We need to start exposing the FUD that the current state (old guard) CE/CEDIA people dump into the market (e.g. PC’s cannot cut it).  PC based UI’s/API’s will win in the end.  PERIOD
3. The technology we need is a standard protocol like SS7 for media streaming/billing/meta data (just like the telco’s) so that everyone can share/monetize/control/manage and track.

Right now it is all about a big pee’n contest as to whose player, network and content will win and control all.  It is like trying to control what people say on the phone vs. just trying to charge them for the call.  Just let people watch whatever they want and make sure content providers get their fee.  Re advertisers, same stuff.  That’s that.  No one player, network, server, os, blah, blah and blah is better/worse than the other… Let people choose just like with phone companies (and ha ha, talk about a harbinger of the future - VoiP and digital on phones and PC based OS’s will win in the end

Eyal’s post about Boxee bypassing Hulu’s ads is mistaken.  The Boxee’s Hulu plug-in played the exact same stream, including the inserted ads, as you would see on the Hulu website.  In fact, when you use Boxee to play Hulu content, you can glimpse certain transition points at the end or beginning of a show that indicate they are using the same standard Hulu player, so they are not trying to circumvent any ad revenue from Hulu.

What the Hulu move against Boxee is more about is not the relatively minuscule revenue from the in-stream ads, but to protect the established interests in the broadcasting industry.  Local affiliates pay the networks to carry their content.  Cable systems and satellite broadcasters pay affiliates and networks to carry their content.  Boxee was gaining enough critical mass that the mainstream media was starting to run stories about how consumers in this tough economy could use Boxee (accessing Hulu and other online sources) and cut their cable or satellite tv subscription.  That got the content provider’s attention and they told Hulu to cut Boxee off. 

With that scenario in place, I predict that ReQuest and any other media center products or software that are tapping into Hulu (without specific permission or agreements) will be cut off sooner or later for the same reasons.

Didn’t I just read recently that Hulu is suddenly no longer available to ReQuest and some other servers?