

Hulu to Charge Users in 2010 - w1ntermute
http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/tvbizwire/2009/10/hulu-to-charge-viewers-money-i.php

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hegemonicon
It seems like the big players that give away their content for free (Hulu,
youtube, most newspapers, etc) seem to be struggling financially whereas the
ones charging for it (netflix, itunes music store, WSJ, economist) seem to be
doing well. Perhaps the 'free' business model isn't quite what it's cracked up
to be.

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pronoiac
Wait. Youtube's struggling? I thought that report was founded on an
oversimplified bandwidth-cost model.

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gbookman
According to RampRate, YouTube is losing $174 Million. Not as bad as losing
$470 Million as originally reported by Credit Suisse but still a loss.

Ref: [http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090617/credit-suisse-
fa...](http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090617/credit-suisse-far-better-
at-analyzing-derivatives-than-youtube-infrastructure-costs/)

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mishmash
You'll pay for it _and_ watch their ads. It's happened twice before, once with
cable TV and again with satellite radio.

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unalone
Piracy was never so easy with TV and radio. Once my grandmother knows how to
torrent her shows, they've lost.

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mishmash
Grandma better hurry, with big content writing the next wave of international
copyright policy, mainstream piracy of TV and movies will be dead in a couple
of years.

That, or, she better read up on Tor. :)

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unalone
We have yet to see the outcome of the current copyright conflict. I think
there's a point we're nearing soon where technology makes tracking impossible.

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swolchok
Only if technology also makes paying unnecessary. Open WiFi didn't happen
because it makes the owner of the access point appear liable; IMO the only way
we're going to get around this sort of effect is to build One Big Mesh, which
doesn't look likely to happen soon.

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unalone
It's too expensive to hunt down everybody involved. The world isn't able to go
after millions of people at once. The more people use it, the harder it is to
track.

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noonespecial
I'm guessing it was part of the plan all along. Lets create a cable channel(s)
and deliver it over the internet. We won't have to deal with all of the
franchise carriers or split the profit! How to get people interested in the
first place? Oh! Offer it _free_! Once we get some viewers and some interest,
_bam!_ subscription fee. Its cable, but with teh intertubes. Its diabolically
brilliant if you think about it from the right perspective.

I'm predicting a _"return of napster"_ sized crater where hulu.com used to be.

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gbookman
I've actually been hoping they would start charging for a long time.

I hate how they only have a few episodes of my favorite shows--obviously
because they only do ads.

I'd gladly pay a reasonable annual fee to be able to watch all the episodes I
want.

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shizcakes
What on earth makes you think that there's a correlation between paying and
watching all the episodes you want? I'd be more inclined to believe that
they'd throw the existing Hulu behind a paywall and call it a day.

Netflix does a similar thing on Watch Instantly with their relationship with
Starz Play - content only exists for a certain amount of time, then drops off.

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gbookman
Isn't the lack of significant revenue one of the reasons why networks hold
back from posting more than a handful of episodes from popular shows?

My thought was that if the networks saw there was money to be made, it would
encourage them to make more content available.

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drinian
... and I'll pay, if they give me DRM-free 1080p H.264 downloads, the same way
the music industry lets me have DRM-free 320kbps MP3s now.

And of course they're sensible enough to go for that market... right?

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brg
NewsCorp leveraged their equity in MySpace to force them to increase revenue
at the cost of quality. Now it seems they are following the same pattern with
Hulu.

However, I think with Hulu they stand a better chance in the face of
competition for two reasons. First the revenue model for streaming content is
well established. Secondly, copyright law provides too high a barrier of entry
into the space for competitors.

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ryanjmo
Does anyone know if there is anything technically that is stopping someone
from downloading the hulu broadcasts?

I was talking about this last night I think it is almost time for a DVR for my
computer, so I don't have to watch the hulu commercials.

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noonespecial
Hulu's got about the most hard core anti-ripping technology on the web going
right now. They're about the only ones out there who have stayed ahead of the
curve preventing that sort of thing. The only thing I know of that works right
now is a realtime screen scraping thing, which isn't very practical.

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tumult
Really? It's just Flash video, isn't it? What's to stop me from yanking the
data out of memory?

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noonespecial
Its actually adobe rtmpe streams. These are encrypted so you have to find a
way to pull the keys from the plugin's memory as well. No one's got it just
yet.

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pkulak
That's fine with me, if it's a small fee and they drop the ads. It would seem
like a bit of a waste to pay for cable and Hulu, though.

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paul9290
Thank god for Justin.tv & BitTorrent!

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dlsspy
I don't care much for them until they stop fighting with boxee.

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tomjen2
It will be worth it if they make it as good as cable tv with out ads.
Unfortunately they will properly just double the amount of ads.

