Hulu for Apple iPad likely to be a pay-only service - report - Page 3

right...

so you PAY for the TV service, then you PAY AGAIN for the ability to not see commercial which finance the content you are watching.

It's your option. And paying for a device to perform a task (ie: recording a show that you can play back later to SIMULATE not having commercials) is one thing. Having to pay the cable company to watch their shows, then pay AGAIN to watch the same thing on a 10 inch screen... not so attractive.

and back to the most important point. Hulu is free. So if I buy an iPad, now I have to pay for what everyone else gets to watch for free???

STUPID. Just plain stupid.

Basically this is a slap in the face to anyone who buys an iPad. This is definitely NOT the wave of the future. it reminds me on Microsoft products during the initlal dotcom boom. people spending money all over the place just to make things work right.

Hulu works already and it is free. the ONLY way they should add a pay model is as an OPTION for those who are so annoyed by ads that they are willing to pay Hulu to not show them.

I didn't mention anything about a timeframe of when anything is available.

Why get all rude and offensive over a simple comment?

1) I have doubts that Hulu will support OGG. They are already supporting H.264 which is supported in HW by Intel, in browsers by Apple and Google, in plugins by Adobe Flash and MS Silverlight, and it's just more efficient for their growth. Doubling their storage for Firefox doesn't seem likely to me. Not that it's an issue now since Flash for be the default for desktop browsers for awhile.

2) I think there is a way to putting tailored ads into the video. (A) If you're streaming, you just break up the video into sections and call each section after a tailored commercial(s) has(have) aired. (B) If it's a download you can still add them by having the video seperated on tr server and having the pieces stitched with tailored commercials upon request. This would be nearly instant and invisible to the customer.

Get EyeTV from Elgato for about $150. Their iPhone app will almost certainly be adapted for the iPad. There is no monthly charge and you can watch all the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS) in HD both live and recorded. It depends on being in a large city in most cases (to have all the networks on local stations) and a decent roof mounted TV. The best characteristic is that you have no monthly bill.

I was piggybacking onto your comment - didn't mean to counter your point simply to add another reason why Netflix <> Hulu

1) I have doubts that Hulu will support OGG. They are already supporting H.264 which is supported in HW by Intel, in browsers by Apple and Google, in plugins by Adobe Flash and MS Silverlight, and it's just more efficient for their growth. Doubling their storage for Firefox doesn't seem likely to me. Not that it's an issue now since Flash for be the default for desktop browsers for awhile.

2) I think there is a way to putting tailored ads into the video. (A) If you're streaming, you just break up the video into sections and call each section after a tailored commercial(s) has(have) aired. (B) If it's a download you can still add them by having the video seperated on tr server and having the pieces stitched with tailored commercials upon request. This would be nearly instant and invisible to the customer.

The video codec has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to dish out custom commercials.

Perhaps the point you're trying to make is that a web-page consisting of a stand-alone movie, won't handle embedded commercials as elegantly as the way hulu currently does. This is true. That type of functionality requires more than just a video codec. However this doesn't mean that flash is required.

I'm not trying to say one way is better than the other. Just that flash isn't the only option, and that h.264 is completely irrelevant to the topic.

The iPad is going to be locked down tighter than a drum: proprietary hardware (re: A4 processor), locked down OS, and DRM.

They are going to have an iPad only music store where everything is DRM?!?!

Also, does the hardware really matter? Were you planning on taking apart you iPad and putting in another processor?

Works for who exactly? For you? Of course, since it's free and you want free stuff. Is it a successful product from a business perspective? The fact that they have been considering going to a paid model for quite some time means at the very least that the service can be improved.

I want a cable replacement service through the internet because content can be distributed much more efficiently and to many more devices than you could ever hope for with cable service and it separates your tv provider from your ISP. If that is going to happen, companies will need to look into paid models.

Also, ignored for the ridiculous use of over sized text in multiple posts. Grow up a little.

I don't think this has anything to do with Apple, this is what happens when the studios step in & start bullying companies. Even though Apple & many others have proven they can make a lot more money by dropping prices & offering services competitive with netflix these geniuses just want to raise prices on a successful product & try to squeeze more money out of it. Bunch of morons, I'm getting so sick of TV & all the crap they now try to peddle to everyone.

Hulu was never intended to be free forever, and even now it has advertisements so it isn't really totally free. It's very very likely that by the time it's in a subscription form on the iPad, it will also be a pay situation in the browser, or that one will be free with ads and the other paid but without ads.

Also, since Hulu is USA only, the largest part of the market can't see it for free anyway. Not being in the USA myself, I could care less since I can't see it anyway and it's NBC, which to me is just garbage. There is not a single show that I care for on that channel anyway.

On the other hand, if a European station did the same thing (free in Europe but small fee for international), I would probably be interested enough to pay for it. So we can assume that there may be some non USA-ians that might pay for NBC even though it's free in the USA.

I dunno about anybody else, but after ditching cable last year and going on-line for my TV products, Hulu is the one service I use the least (if at all). There are way, way better services and repositories for viewing than Hulu, and most of them have stuff Hulu never has.

This doesn't seem like a safe assumption. Broadcast television has been free for many decades and running a website is waaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than running a dedicated continent-wide broadcast system.

And yes, hulu is "free". Free is the correct term because viewers are not paying to view. Sure, there is advertising and advertising is annoying. But being annoyed isn't the same thing as paying money.

Perhaps you're confusing the concepts of "revenue supported" and "viewership fee supported". Hulu is getting paid, but not by the viewers. Hence it is free to the viewers.

I don't have the link right now but I'm fairly certain that Hulu itself has indicated that it wont be free forever, or that the free part is an experiment or some such. You're categorising my statement as a simple assumption on my part, but I don't think it's that clear, which is why I used the "very very likely" statement. It certainly seems very likely based on simple economics that it won't be free forever. The analogy to broadcast TV is faulty because through the magic of cablevision, we have already left the model of the advertising revenue being the only support for programming a long time ago. A network that gives away all it's content on the internet for free by putting ads in, is a network that won't be around for very long.

As for your analysis of "free" it's mostly semantics. I could construct a similar but opposite argument, but I won't get into it in too much detail here as I don't think many are interested.

One part of one argument to that end is to say that if the content is defined as the shows themselves, and "free" is defined as simply "free of payment" then the shows are "free" if you are thinking that the money you are paying is the only "payment" you make. There are other forms of payment besides money. If you consider that you don't want to watch the ads and only want to watch the show, then the forced watching of the ads are in fact the "payment" you are making to get to watch the show.

The point is that if the content is the shows, then the consumers are not free to watch that content without "paying" by being forced to watch the advertisements. In other words it's not an equivalent experience to simply watching the show, or you are not getting the "actual" show by watching the ad supported version.

Another way to look at it is to define "free" by revenue categories as is done in the app store. "Free" in that context is a different category than "free with ads." Hulu is quite obviously in the "free with ads" category and thus to be differentiated from another situation where the content is actually just plain old "free." If this isn't the case, then there is no way to differentiate the actually free content from the content that obtains it's money from the advertisements.

Primarily, what I meant to point out is just that these two types of "free" are structurally dissimilar, and not the same thing. Which is pretty much unassailable because they certainly are not the same thing.

Clearly you are getting ripped off. It's less than a penny a TV show if you watch 1000 shows a month.

Did not know that Hulu uses h.264 for their video, and I agree that OGG is not gonna be used.

Our competency in making decisions is reflected in the state of our government. It's a democracy after all.

You are right that ad only supported streaming is a money losing proposition. However, your analogy to cable vision (at least here in America), means that, "it is very very likely" that if Hulu goes to a pay system, there will be two pricing tiers.

"Standard cable" which means you get to watch the shows with commercials, and
"Premium cable (e.g., HBO, Showtime)" which means TV shows without commercials.

Please tell me how you did that.

Wow, why on Earth would the music be DRMed? Did you forget iTunes videos are still DRMed, though, and potentially books sold through the iBook store will be, too?


Replacing the processor would be silly, wouldn't it! I was actually thinking along the lines of what a hardware cloner or jailbreaker might be thinking: proprietary hardware makes it more difficult to disrupt the Apple-controlled economy.

It's based on arm reference designs, they didn't build a new CPU from scratch or anything. Arm processors power a lot of mobile devices.

I agree that it isn't unlikely that hulu will go to a fee-based model. But history has clearly shown, and continues to show, that ad-supported is also a viable model. My comment was about what hulu may have intended at one time, not what is likely in the future. It doesn't seem like a safe assumption that hulu never intended an ad-supported model. It would be astounding if they hadn't prepared for both scenarios as well as a combination of both.

Is that true? I read many articles on how Internet based ads for media isn't nearly as profitable as the prior method is/was.

User CP toward upper right => Edit Ignore List from lefthand column.

You're right, when the country only had 3 networks, mass advertising was certainly more profitable.

But that doesn't mean that ad-supported isn't a viable model. Keep in mind that a website costs a couple orders of magnitude less money to run than does a dedicated, nationwide network of broadcasting facilities.

As the viewing audience fractures even further in favor of more niche markets, many of those markets won't be large enough to support TV series production as common on major networks today. But it seems like an impossibility that the ad-supported model will disappear altogether. I can't imagine the market for free viewing ever disappearing.

Love the trolls who hate Apple, but take time out of their day to read and comment on Apple related news. Apple owns you cuz they're in your head.


Sorry to break your cheapness level, but Hulu is going to charge on their website too. Most if not all their services are going to be pay subscription only - that's been rumored for months and it's finally coming to fruition. Free Hulu is coming to an end for all.

Funny you say this. I just got the Eye TV like 2 days ago, but I have not set it up yet. Still Eye TV is good for current TV shows. Hulu is good for watching old seasons and older TV shows. My point is that is free on my computer, why do I have to pay a monthly fee for something that I can already do for free? I think that at least they should give you the option free with commercials or paid without them.

and as with most services that change their operations from 'free' to charge, they will lose customers to torrents.

Let the AI elitists and their so-called "ignore" list have their own chat while we with common sense have ours.

Because you said to me:




Perhaps that could have been said better to not to be taken as a personal attack.


Example: "Sure if one sits and watches 10 shows a day for 30 days..who does that?"


See, not so personal. Using "one" means general, using "your" makes it personal.


I always take a second and use the Preview to make sure any post can't be misinterpreted as a personal attack. Read my own posts through the eyes of others first, helps a lot.

Carry on.

Unfortunately the Ignore List only works when there is a flood of good posters and you want to drown out the few bad ones to make them leave.

But when there are a lot bad posters, like it is here, it just makes a mess of ignored, ignored, ignored and the ones responding to the ignored, so you see their post anyway.


A post rank system would be better...quality posts move up for more eyeballs to see and other to comment on and the trolls get modded down, down and out of sight...

Oh well, back to Slashdot I go...

Sorry as you say "dog' still personal attack and this is public forum, so if you make a comment you are open for response, personal or not.

You history on AI suggests you're not in either of those camps. Glass houses, Tekstud . . . glass houses.

Who gives a shit?

For the record, I do. This seems like a train wreck waiting to happen, I can't imagine iPad users being willing to pay to get just three TV networks. If it included everything I'd probably be willing to pay a bit.

I can easily see me paying a fee for Hulu. I am currently waiting for my DTV subscription to end so that I can go through an antenna and get broadcasting free. I wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee to Hulu to get shows that I watch on Cable and will not be able to get anymore.
I just don't want to keep paying the 92.00 a month for channels that I don't watch. I wouldn't mind paying the 20 a month for Hulu if I was to get an Ipad. I can have it on the go.

Hulu offers the older shows that you can not get anymore on tv plus shows from some cable channels. I really think their movie selection sticks other than that I think Hulu is great.

I feel the only way this will work if Hulu had an Ad free version of it's video if they expect someone to pay for it.