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No More Hulu for ReQuest, Boxee, Others
Founded in 2007, Hulu is partly owned by NBC Universal and features full-length TV shows, movies and other video content – with commercials – from more than 130 content providers.
Consumers can easily browse Hulu's offerings via keyboard and mouse.
But try navigating and viewing Hulu content on a big screen using a remote control, and you're out of luck.
That's what spurred start-up Boxee, SecondRun for Windows Media Center and a number of other CE vendors – including high-end media server vendor ReQuest -- to create TV-friendly solutions for Hulu. The new products let consumers navigate shows from the comfort of their couch, with TV-friendly features such as automatic full-screen viewing.
For some very bizarre reason, Hulu ordered Boxee and TV.com to cease offering Hulu content on their products. Now, the company has altered its format so third parties can no longer embed Hulu content, according to Peter Cholnoky, CEO of ReQuest.
He explains that users can still grab the "embed" codes from the Hulu site, but only on a manual basis. "They used to give you all that information in the RSS feeds," Cholnoky says.
Why did Hulu do it? The only official word seems to be this from Hulu CEO Jason Kilar:
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 — bumps and all — 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.
ReQuest Rescinds Hulu
ReQuest, which just announced a slick Hulu interface for its ICM media streaming products, is not happy.
Cholnoky says ReQuest put a tremendous amount of R&D into its Hulu plug-in, allowing users to watch free online content … legally and conveniently.
He was stunned by Hulu's move. "We figured out a way to legally get free TV," he says. "People watched it and advertisers got paid."
In a memo to ReQuest dealers, Cholnoky says:
We are saddened about this decision as we are big fans of Hulu. Our integration on the IMC was very slick and promoted all the great features of Hulu in a simple TV based control. ReQuest invested a lot of time and effort in this integration and provided it free to all IMC users in the hopes that legal on demand streaming video would provide a good model for both content owners, vendors, and customers.
Because Hulu has decided to take this step, we must update our firmware to remove the Hulu feature from the IMC. This will happen automatically over the next few days. If at sometime in the future Hulu decides to allow others to promote their content, we will add it back in.
What Gives?!
Hulu maintains it's the studios' fault (isn't it always?).
It seems that studios who want to offer free content online would do well to actually propagate that content, no?
Wouldn't that make advertisers happy?
Advertisers yes, cable companies, no.
"Squeezed between networks demanding higher programming and their own slowing subscriber growth, cable MSOs have cast an ever-warier eye on Web sites like Hulu," writes Paul Sweeting of ContentAgenda. "The networks, meanwhile, are growing ever-more dependent on carriage fees from cable and satellite operators as their ad revenues decline. Distributing shows via the Web will inevitably be part of networks' business in the future, but for now the revenues are minuscule compared with what they make from carriage fees."
This is a sad day for digital content. NBC and its brethren were trying to stay ahead of the game so they wouldn't suffer the fate of the music studios.
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9 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
I don’t like when media companies stifle technology innovation but this isn’t the worst thing to ever happen. If the idea is to watch TV content on your TV, the best solution to offer your customers isn’t badly compressed internet video, it’s offering them an HD DVR with so much storage, they wont think twice about recording every episode of SNL, 30 Rock, etc. All of these shows on Hulu are pretty much free over the air or satellite in HD anyways.
The people I hear complaining are those internet loving individuals that were excited to drop their Cable or Sat provider and rely solely on internet content. Now if that’s the case does it surprise anyone that the big media companies tried to put a stop to this?
I’ve used HULU and Netflix streaming before but it never seemed to me like something for the home theater or CEDIA channel. I like it for myself at my desk but would never put it in front of a paying customer on the big screen like Boxee attempted.
There is speculation that Hulu could be looking at an exclusive deal with someone like Sony for inclusion in PS3s.
Yuck, exclusive deals kill me, like MLB on DirecTV.
If HULU is ad supported, wouldn’t it benefit them to have it available to the largest possible audience? It’s not even like HULU had to develop support for those those platforms, Boxee and ReQuest engineered it themselves. As I said before, I’m not terribly saddened by this and don’t see HULU as a real feature for the custom install channel, but sometimes I just scratch my head trying to figure out the decisions of big companies.
It should be pointed out that most, if not all, of these manufacturers that developed for Hulu did so with no partner agreement or license to do so. In my humble opinion, they developed at their own risk. It would be great if we lived in a world where public APIs existed for these sites and they carried agreements that guaranteed service, but unfortunately we don’t, and therefore manufacturers have to be careful before they spend development $$$ and entice customers with services they cannot guarantee will continue.
I believe Hulu is simply locking out companies that don’t have the proper agreements in place and will relaunch with companies that do get the proper agreements in place. Unfortunately those agreements will probably come with a steep price, but nonetheless, at least there will be contracts that assure a level of service for the customers that purchase products with the service embedded.
This almost reminds me of the time when media center softwre providers were screen scrapping EPG data off of public websites, without the proper licenses in place. In the end the customers lose as they are attracted to software and products that lost their data the instant the owners of the data changed something or turned off an API.
Our hope and expectation is that the studios execute a deal with Microsoft that will allow Windows 7 based Media Centers to enjoy primetime television integrated into the MCE experience. Microsoft has broadband channels integrated into the beta of Windows 7 EPG, now we just need them to execute the deals to let the content flow.
And lastly, it would be great if the content flowed in HD 
Meanwhile VUDU is up to 1,400 HD titles fully endorsed by the studios, the last time I checked… There is never something for free.
Why do we think our customers who will pay tens of thousands for the systems we sell, won’t pay for content?
We as an industry must get back to the quality story fast. MP3’s have marginalized our ability to sell upper end audio, and browser based “HD video” will do the same for high-end vidoe systems.
Why are high end video products struggling, while VIZIO climbs to number two position???
Don’t worry HULU will lose. I can watch HULU on XBMC without commercials right now. Of course, this will always be a moving target.
Request never removed Hulu from IMC
That is correct, Jones. They figured out a work-around and had it back up pretty quickly.
Boxee could’ve done something similar but Hulu threatened them.
Video…The moving target of our industry.