Maybe it was too good to be true. A world where content providers, a VOD internet site, and a small group of rag-tag developers came together to deliver quality content legally and easily.
Hulu on Boxee meant watching our favorite shows, legally, from the comfort of our TV via Apple TV, or on our intel Macs within a slick interface. It was nirvana for TV junkies. Well kids, the parties over. At least for now it is.
Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, posted a open letter to the Hulu community explaining that content providers had asked them to turn off access to the sites content via Boxee. Jason understands that if he doesn't keep the content providers happy there will be no Hulu. From the letter, it seems that Jason is genuinely bummed about the situation.
Avner Ronen over at Boxee posted basically the same information explaning that the Boxee group tried in vain to keep Hulu available for Boxee users. Unfortunately, Hulu couldn't get their content providers on board. Boxee plans on removing Hulu access from Boxee on Friday.
Avner shared a great statistic in his post. Boxee users generated over 100,000 streams from Hulu last week. Those streams equal revenue dollars. Every time someone watches a Hulu video they have to sit through ads that can't be skipped. It's the price you pay for free video on demand. It's sad that the content providers couldn't see that Boxee users we're putting money in their pockets.
Until we are able to speak with one of the content providers, we can only speculate on their reasoning behind the decision. We're hoping, and trying, to contact one of the content providers to get their side of the story.
mactony
February 19, 2009 at 5:48pm
NBC what are you doing! first you moved many of your shows around so I couldn't keep track of the time slots. then you move from itunes where by the way is where my wife and I fell in love with "heroes" and then you pulled from itunes and know you pull away from boxee......wow what galls you guys have. stop destroying your own products example it not that people did not like "30 rock" the show was near the edge of the cliff many times it's because you moved the show so many times and by the way I once again fell in love with 30 rock and then the big let down. Want to control bootleg material ? allow boxee to continue on it's path, ah this is called progress. The great thing about boxee is that I can see older shows my mother in law asked me the other day how far does the shows go back I took it back to "love BOat" and "the rockford files" she was like "It's this tv " I said no it's BOXEE. and best of all it doesn't suck up my hard drive so I don't download nothing I just watch.....my new favorite at the moment is "American Dad" what a show but I can't stay up to watch it you now working father NBC reconsider last move.
