Comments on: Chess match: Hulu blocks Boxee once again

Hulu moves once again to block Boxee. Boxee managers say that Hulu can't win because Boxee's community has the upper hand.

[jdreyer02]

I'm convinced Alec Baldwin is running Hulu, because only he could be so stupid as to make all of these pointless moves. I watched Hulu on my AppleTV via Boxee, and sat through the ads...same as anyone with a browser would do. What's the difference? This just makes no sense to me, and as Boxee is open source, this game will continue, and Boxee will win, until Hulu just shuts down.

[karpenterskids]

God forbid that Hulu ever shuts down.
I'd die. :0

[dumbspammers]

Solution: Do what I did. Block Hulu on your computers and firewall device. Theydon't want me to watch their content they way *I* want to watch their content? Fine. Strangely, I don't *need* their content - but they *do* need me. No viewers == no eyeballs, and that's all they have to sell.

Just add the following to your hosts file, to keep your kids from accessing Hulu:

127.0.0.1 hulu.com
127.0.0.1 www.hulu.com
127.0.0.1 www.hulu.com.edgesuite.net

Bye-bye, Hulu.

[Mikel-Martin]

Is that legal? Can Hulu block Boxee when any other browser in the world can view the RSS feed? I can easily hook my laptop to my TV and view Hulu RSS feeds that way.

[toosday]

As someone else said: What did Boxee expect Hulu to do? Hulu has to make the folks like Comedy Central, Sci-Fi Network, etc. happy or they'll remove their videos from Hulu. I'd rather be able to watch those shows on my computer, than to not be able to watch them at all because Boxee (an app that very few people actually use) wants to annoy the networks.

Don't get me wrong, I think Boxee is a great idea and I'd love to see all of my shows on Boxee, but being that CBS and ABC videos don't work, I can't imagine it'd be the deciding factor in replacing my TV anytime soon. It's brilliantly and unfortunately ahead of its time.

Just my thoughts.

[SeizeCTRL]

I think you are missing the point. What is the difference between viewing Hulu on computer monitor vs. viewing it on TV?

Apparently the content providers believe it's extremely different, but you are still viewing the same content essentially the same way.

[toosday]

SeizeCTRL: No, I totally understand that eyeballs are eyeballs. That's why I think Boxee can be a great service - it gets content in front of more eyeballs.

But, I think a lot of people are blaming Hulu, whereas they should be writing Comedy Central, NBC, Sci-Fi Channel, etc and telling them that forcing Hulu to block Boxee is a bad idea. Hulu doesn't own The Colbert Report or The Office or Battlestar Gallactica, they just distribute it. So they have to do what the owners ask or the owners can take their content and walk away. Then we all lose. Personally, I'd rather be able to watch the video both through Boxee and on my computer. Somehow, I bet Hulu doesn't mind letting people watching the content on Boxee either, so long as the ads remain in place.

[alt117]

As long as people keep claiming that they canceled their cable service because of Boxee, then they will have this problem. Cable company's mean millions of dollars to the producers, Hulu only thousands.

The producers need to pay the cost for their $1million to $3 million episodes. right now, broadcast tv and cable pay the bills and internet is gravy. it won't always be that way, but it's true now.

[gggg sssss]

it is hulu's content, they can show it or not show it as they want. If Boxxe wants to do content deals, let them. Otherwise ****

[opiapr]

very ignorant you are I see.

[karpenterskids]

Greg...Dave Matthews is an evangelist?
As in...a Christian preacher?

[shamanskyh]

again, CNET, old news.

Hulu works fine for me on Boxee. If you read their blog post:

"UPDATE:
hulu is back working. over the weekend we will make an update to the user interface that will show a status message indicating whether Hulu is currently working or not."

[opiapr]

again you are reading...

[ArtInvent]

It's probably true that Boxee will win against Hulu as Hulu is now set up. Boxee can just stick a copi of firefox in their window - it's all open source. So, what, Hulu blocks Firefox? Goodbye Hulu. To truly prevent Boxee from accessing Hulu. they would have to do like ABC or Netflix is doing and key their content to a proprietary plugin or player that only works on Windows or something similar.

And whether it's Hulu or Hulu's content providers that are the one's making these boneheaded moves, the more difficult they make it to access their content, the more people will just download the tv shows via torrent or access streaming/upload sites like Megavideo.

I'm increasingly thinking that tv shows will just have to put ads in the actual show as part of the plot. It's really the only way that ad-supported shows can survive as a business model in the internet world.

The only other model is a paid-access streaming site so good and so complete and convenient that people will pay a monthly fee for access. I would certainly be willing to pony up a monthly fee for any show, any time, in HD.

[ColumEx]

You need to learn the difference between "it's" and "its."

"It's" is not possessive, it means "it is." Twice in this article you use it as the possessive. Stop that.

[Ignoranceisslavery]

Incredibly bad grammar. This guy needs to REREAD his articles before blindly posting. It was a nauseating read.

[RideMan]

I still can't understand why the content providers are so @%$! protective of content they are giving away for free. Why do they care what computer, OS, software, or monitor I use to watch? And given that there is a piece of wet spaghetti somewhere between their server and my ISP, why won't they let me download the show to watch it, or at least buffer enough of it that I don't have to watch it stutter?

[jfrdricks2009]

What is different between just hooking your PC to your TV and watching HULU that way?