You’re not. As I’m in England I can’t watch Hulu (without much jiggerypokery) so I could care less what they do. But practically everything is available for free out there on the big bad net, and much of it in glorious High Definition.
Of course, Hulu is part-owned by Fox and Rupert Murdoch has been making the rounds lately speechifying on the theme that sites should start charging for content. The concept of something for nothing is heresy with guys like him and if he had his way we’d pay for almost everything on the net. Fortunately he won’t get his way; if they charge people will simply go elsewhere. Ain’t competition grand, Rupert?
BTW not enough options in poll. I wont pay but it isn’t the beginning of the end and Hulu will eventually scale down or fold as people leave.
I used to use Hulu quite often. I found that the buffering issue seemed to plague popular shows. My WAG was there were too many people accessing the show at the same time? However, I didn’t have that issue watching The Rockford Files or other, currently less popular shows.
Ever since the issue last year when they were forced to cut content (episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, etc…) and now have the 5 episode model, I don’t bother tuning in much. Really, the only shows I’d watch were the previously mentioned, as well as Family Guy and sometimes The Office.
I miss being able to watch a new episode, then veg out watching a few from previous seasons while checking email and other web surfing.
So, put me down as someone who would not pay for the service of Hulu.
And while I’m at it, and feel like taking a tangent… when are the media companies going to get it? I’m in my 30s, have disposable income, NEVER buy CDs anymore nor rent physical copies of movies. I want convenience, dammit. I’ve been craving AC/DC recently and they’re not on iTunes. No way am I going to buy CDs just to relive my youth. Likewise, there is an old Roy Scheider film I want to see, but I have no intention of going to a rental shop. Basically all my content comes via iTunes. When will the media giants step up and offer me that convenience without affording Steve Jobs more puppies to eat for breakfast?
No, no, you’re not getting it. They’re offering a product. Ipso facto, you must want their products. If people aren’t buying them, it’s not the fault of the corporations, it’s something wrong with the consumers.
I don’t really see the point. Most of what I watch, I could find on youtube.com anyway. Or I’d just watch it on TV or rent it from Netflix. I’d never pay to watch something on my tiny computer screen!
They need to get a subscription model so that it will work with Roku. Its one of the things that’s keeping Hulu on Roku from happening.
I’ll pay for it. We were paying $70 a month for cable (!) and dropped it in favor of Netflix and Hulu and an extensive DVD collection. Haven’t really missed it either - except over playoff baseball. If it can be a competitive offering against the DVR/Cable combination (and with Roku I think it can) we’d pay for it. If it isn’t competitive, we’d go back to the DVR/Cable combo. Its nice that its free right now - if it is no longer free if the Netflix/Hulu/Roku combination is still cheaper than the Cable/DVR combination (and more flexible unless its live - since its an on demand model) its worth paying for.
We have a media computer hooked up to the TV - that’s how we watch Hulu.
Frankly, I think the networks and the Hulu people just completely Do Not Get It. Look at what they do with House - if you want to catch up on House on Hulu you have to watch it a week after the show airs. Now, if I were a network, I’d want people to catch up to what I’m airing on my network so they’d see those expensive-ass ads instead of the crappy ads that don’t bring in much revenue that I’ve got going on Hulu. But no, for some reason let’s get people to stop watching the first broadcast show entirely, even though that’s where we make our money. WTF?
If Hulu starts charging a non-trivial amount, I suspect a decent chunk of the current audience will discover the miracle of bitTorrent. They’re used to getting free, online TV, so it only makes sense that they’d search for other ways to get free, online TV. Whether or not this will cause the service’s downfall is tough to say, but I’d bet on Hulu eking out a living if they’re smart with their price structure.
I have NHL GameCenterLive and Neflix, and I use their streaming service more than I do the mail DVDs. My Blu-Ray player even plays it on my TV. If Hulu offers unlimited content for <$15, I’d keep it, but if it costs more, or charges by the episode, then I’ll drop it.
These problems are technical issues related to how much money they have to spend on their backbone. I have problems with my On-Demand cable and my DVR from time to time as well. If all of the providers of the content that I care most about were to offer their content over the net I could spend like 40-50 on just the line and then buy different stations a la carte. Right now since all the stuff we care about are premium channels we pay about 175 per month. That means we’d have about $ 125 to spend to get HBO, Showtime, and Hulu. Overall we’d save money.
You are paying for your Cable and DVR service, and there is no reason why you couldn’t watch internet streaming on your 50" plasma screen. Cable and internet connections are the same connection and your plasma screen probably supports HDMI. So you really don’t have a point here. There’s no reason you’d have to change your habits significantly. You have just become wedded to one particular brand and think it’s superior merely because you are used to it.
It’s been at least a month since I’ve watched anything on Hulu, but I did today. What was interesting was that in place of the ads I usually see there was a message from Hulu about how the ads pay for the free content I’m getting, and that I should turn off any ad-blocking software I was using. I have no idea why I was no longer seeing the ads like I used to, unless it was because I had upgraded to Firefox 3.5, and my Ad-Aware plug-in may also have been updated since I last watched anything on Hulu.
Whether I would pay for Hulu depends on how much they charge. I don’t watch it that often, mostly to catch shows that I missed, or wasn’t able to DVR, or that weren’t fully recorded because the show ran late.
With more content, I might pay. One of the reasons I dislike and don’t have cable is because there’s no ala carte option, since all the channels are sold by the distributors in packages. If there was a reasonable monthly fee, like $10.00, or a small charge for every show watched, it might be worth it. Again, it would require more content, and much stringer content retention.
The only way Hulu could survive while charging users would be if they kept the free, ad-supported service and just charged for a Premium Account of some sort. The free service would be what it is now - ads, only the last X number of episodes available, episodes posted Y days after original airing, etc. The premium service would have to have unlimited access to older episodes, episodes posted no later than the morning after original airing, no advertising at all, and improved performance. They could also have occasional premium-only content, such as recent movies that don’t suck, or real-time streaming of sporting events.
Because they’ve demonstrated that their first priority isn’t the convenience and satisfaction of the customer. I honestly think they resent the fact that their content is being used in ways they didn’t imagine or plan for.
I remember in the dark ages before cable really became popular that one of it’s selling points to attract new viewers was to offer all of these cool channels commercial free for a monthly fee. :rolleyes:
There probably will be a price point at which I may be willing to pay Hulu for content, it just depends on the content and the quality and speed of the streaming.
Right now my favorite porn site streams video about 1/3 faster as Hulu for free.
Hulu has some work to do.
I have to say this. Most of the USA is not watching analog broadcast signals. Analog is done for except for a few exceptions. You mean you are receiving a digital broadcast of standard definition and viewing on a standard definition television.