Disney acquires nearly 30% stake in Hulu | Hacker News Reader

Disney acquires nearly 30% stake in Hulu

nma.co.uk

31 pointsdaleharvey29 comments

So how long until Disney decides that Hulu should use the Move Media Player and not support any browser other than IE just like abc.com. I like Hulu because it's simple and works well, something that Disney seems to not understand.

I have wathced Lost from abc.com using Safari on my Mac. It did require me to download and install the SilverLight plug-in. I do not know the situation for other OS and browsers.

The ABC site (the "abc full episode player") isn't even silver light, it's some kind of half-assed, totally custom plugin. From the site (when browsing on linux):

Oops

Our new video player is only available for:

* Windows XP/Vista - Internet Explorer, Firefox * Mac - Firefox, Safari.

To watch, please download the appropriate browser.

You can just run FF in wine and watch it from there. It works for me. Sometimes the video doesn't appear, but if you hit full screen then return it to normal, it starts working.

The ABC player does blow, but I manage to run it on Firefox in XP. I really hope they just move to the Hulu player.

Why fight with this when you can just get the episode from Usenet or the Pirate Bay?

Because I really like J.J. Abrams, the writers, and many of the actors on Lost, and in some small, small way I want my act of watching their show to reflect positively on their compensation.

But they won't let you. If I try to give someone money, and they refuse, it's their loss, not mine.

Because pirating it takes more work than just sucking it up and using the player.

Hopefully it means just the opposite: ABC shows will show up on Hulu along with Fox/NBC ones. Then we could all watch Lost on Hulu.

The worst part about the ABC player is it assumes you are sitting right in front of your computer and requires you to click a link to continue the video.

Retarded.

I made it most of the way thru the first season of Lost doing exactly that. Then I found the options menu and unchecked a box. Now I'm back to my preferred state of lethargy.

This deal confirms Hulu mission: a hub for professional media videos. I don’t think youtube should be worried they remain a hub for catch all videos.

The trouble is most of the revenue seems to come from professional media videos.

I wonder what this portends for the cable networks?

Once every show is offered by the producers directly from their web site, for free, be it Hulu or something else, what is the point in "TV channels?" What is the benefit that studios derive from their relationship with the cable companies? Does this reduce the cable companies role to just supplying bandwidth?

Yes, the cable companies have a lot of lobbyists, which is how they have been sustaining their economic position. But I think Disney has a couple lobbyists, too.

Cartel! And yet I still think that's an improvement. At least this way they can disintermediate the local telco monopoly.

I envy US residents — I really hope Hulu is actually working on getting it opened up to the rest of the world (especially the UK!)

Don't envy us too much - they only give us 5 episodes of family guy, and this pains us greatly. We're flipping out over here, 'first try is free' and all that. :(

So the first 5 episodes of family guy plus every other piece of content on hulu is better than nothing how?

Just curious how we're not supposed to envy you...

It would seem rjurney's point is that more options may have lower utility.

Suppose there are two viewers. Both are fans of Family Guy. One viewer is exposed to one episode and the other viewer is denied all access to Family Guy. The first viewer, however, is subsequently denied access to Family Guy after viewing the first episode.

If the first viewer were allowed to see all Family Guy episodes, she would eventually begin to tire of it. Each additional episode would lessen her demand for another episode. But that's only after seeing a large number of episodes. After one episode, the demand may actually be higher than having seen no episodes at all.

And if denied demand has negative utility -- the more you want something you can't have, the more it annoys you -- then that person who has seen one episode is actually worse off than the second viewer who has seen no episodes.

That stops being true at the point where each additional episode begins having declining returns, which could occur at a point after five episodes.

Nope, I'm hooked. I need to see them all. I thought I could, until I watched the 5th episode to discover... there are no more.

Now my life is crap. Make sense?

My point is that the bastards hooked me on Family Guy on demand and then they cut me off, and I'm jonesing. :)

We'll give you Hulu if you give us the BBC iPlayer. ;-)

A bit more seriously, even when/if they do bring it to other countries I'm doubtful the entire catalog would be opened up - it would likely be on a show-by-show, country-by-country basis as they clear the rights, and I wouldn't be surprised if they added country-specific shows that the US can't watch as well.

The sad thing is you're likely correct. The even sadder thing is that foreign markets don't really have a good bargaining chip. There isn't going to be any "I'll give you this, if you give us that" going on when negotiations start up, because the US imports virtually no show. It doesn't help that any show that is imported has to be 'americanized'.

At least I can get most of my favorite shows here through other means. I thankfully stopped watching broadcast television almost five years ago now, and I have little interest in discussing television in the workplace (when you work with electricity or on roofs, it's generally a bad idea to get distracted with something with as trivial importance as last nights TV). So I'm usually good to wait till a DVD release, and if I'm not I can usually wait a day for it to get online (usually before any syndicated show premieres on Canadian TV).

They were already been streaming all these shows from ABC.com. Are you blocked from ABC.com too?

Yes.

There is simply no way to stream TV or Movies to Europe. There's not even a way to pay somebody for it, and let me tell you, I would. I'd be quite happy to give Netflix ten dollars a month to stream movies online.

As it stands, Netflix, Hulu, Abc and the rest are essentially performing a 301 redirect to thepiratebay.org

You can hire a VPN account from witopia.net to fool Hulu and ABC into thinking you're watching from the US. I do it all the time...

The issue isn't with Hulu. The issue is how media is licensed for different markets. For example, let's say that Lost is licensed to ABC for broadcast in the US and licensed to Sky TV for broadcast in the UK. Who gets to put it on Hulu? Can Sky TV put it on Hulu and get ad revenues from American viewers? Could the producers of Lost put it on Hulu and get ad revenues in markets where they already licensed it to another company?

That's the issue. The internet tends to be international, but there are some things that are still national and here's where they collide. If Hulu comes to the UK, the programs will be different simply because different people own the distribution rights in the UK.

If you want to do something about this, write to the companies that broadcast the shows in your territory that you'd like to see them on Hulu. I'm sure Hulu would be more than happy to be a part of the UK market. I'm guessing the issue is more getting UK broadcasters on board.

You can buy proxy access in the US from various providers. Or you can just download the episodes from TPB or Usenet or whatever, and watch them in HD without ads.

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