Hulu Gets Kicked Off Boxee: When Will Content Providers Wake Up?

by Sam Dean - Feb. 19, 2009Comments (1)

In a few recent posts, we've covered the Boxee open source media center, which has begun to get rave reviews from users, and attention in the mainstream press. Boxee is a mashup of a powerful media center application that can run and organize videos, photos and more on the Mac, AppleTV, (eventually Windows) and Linux, with social media sharing features thrown in. Many of the Boxee users that I run into have raved about its ability to let them watch Hulu videos on their big screen TVs, but that's coming to an end. In this blog post from Hulu, the company's CEO Jason Kilar makes clear that Hulu's content will no longer be available through Boxee. How did this come about and who's to blame?

According to Kilar's post:

"Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes. While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence тАФ bumps and all тАФ we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners....The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users."

Kilar also adds: "For those Boxee users reading this post, we understand and appreciate that you're likely to tell us that we're nuts." Actually, I don't think the folks at Hulu are nuts. I think the content providers who demand this kind of move are nuts. As we wrote recently, streaming content from ABC is now available on Boxee, as is content from many other providers. Outlets such as Hulu and Boxee are important ways for content providers to reach larger audiences, and different demographics.

The folks at Boxee also have a post up about the hubbub, which confirms that Hulu has been the most requested content site that users have asked Boxee to support, and adds this:

"Our goal has always been to drive users to legal sources of content that are publicly available on the Internet. We have many content partners who are generating revenue from Boxee users and we will work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. We will tell them how users love Hulu on Boxee, why it represents a great opportunity for them to better engage with fans of their shows, how Boxee can help in exposing their content to new people, and why they should be excited about future opportunities of working with us."

Sadly, I don't expect that effort to go far. When will content providers wake up to the power of new media channels for their content, and reaching new audiences? This isn't Hulu's fault. The company would face immediate legal backlash if it didn't comply. It's the content providers who are displaying lack of vision here, and it's starting to look like these providers are all set to make every foolish mistake that the recording industry has made in recent years.
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