Hulu Puts Gun To Own Head: May Require Proof of TV Subscription

techdirt.com

20 points·inmygarage··6 comments

Wow - every time we the media world take a few tentative steps into the modern age, they seem to immediately scramble back into the cave of ignorance. What is it going to take for these guys to understand new and relevant business models?

Wow. This is pretty clear evidence that allowing monopolies to exist for cable service results in negative effects for the consumer.

Could you imagine if DHL came out and said "Listen. We will be happy to ship your packages but only if you show that you have used FedEx at least once in the past 6 months." Laughable, right? But couldn't you see it if they were required to use FedEx planes to do their air freight?

To me, this is only a big deal if it applies to Hulu Plus subscribers. Otherwise, this doesn't matter at all, because cord cutters (like me) can get their TV for $7.99/mo instead of for free. That's still a hell of a lot better than $50+/mo with cable.

If this does indeed apply to Hulu Plus, then that REALLLLLLLLY sucks.

For me, Hulu's death came when they added subscriptions, but still forced subscribers to watch ads.

I'm a Hulu Plus subscriber and $7.99/mo with ads for TV is still way better than $50+/mo with ads for TV.

I tried out the Hulu Plus free trial, and I cancelled it within two days. Illegally downloading my tv shows onto a foreign seedbox, transfering them home, ripping out the audio and video from a matroska container, converting audio into xbox compatible format, repackaging into mp4 container, hosting a dhcp server, connecting my xbox to my laptop, then streaming video to it is actually far less stressful than trying to watch them on Hulu. However, if they're on Netflix, I would watch them on there.

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