5 ms·

I think this is Hulu's attempt to make even more money on the iDevices. I wonder if the iDevice had Flash, would they be able to do this?

• jrwoodruff 16y ago
  I just wonder if they'll be able to do it at all. Part of making advertising work is maximizing audience. Charging $120 for something I'm already paying for elsewhere (through my cable, Tivo and Netflix subscriptions) seems like a stretch. There's only so much I'm willing to spend to watch television, and my cable/cable internet/netflix bill pretty much maxes that out. Especially when there is still advertising involved. Maybe if this was more along the lines of a $36 annual fee, similar to Pandora, I would give it more thought.
  • wmf 16y ago
    It looks like Hulu Plus is intended to replace cable, and from that perspective it's cheaper.
    • jpdbaugh 16y ago
      This is exactly how I feel about it. It is very close to the a-la-carte cable that I want. Who wants to be forced to watch things at certain times?
• wmf 16y ago
  I don't see what this has to do with Apple vs. Flash; maybe you can elaborate.
  • dinedal 16y ago
    Hulu's player is Flash based, so theoretically an iDevice with Flash wouldn't need a Hulu App.
    • keltex 16y ago
      It has to be full flash (at least for right now). Flash on Android doesn't work: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/20/flash-10-1-for-android-beta-unveiled-hulu-a-no-show-froyo-now/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/20/flash-10-1-for-android-be...
      • ergo98 16y ago
        Just to be clear, Flash on Android is fully capable of rendering Hulu's videos. Many people are doing exactly that by changing their user-agent. The "problem" is that apparently mobile devices have to be licensed differently, and presumably more expensively. Which is, I presume, why you have to pay $10 a month to still have to endure ads on your iPhone.
        • jonhohle 16y ago
          And I would imagine they can charge advertisers premium prices for ads shown to paid subscribers as opposed to free viewers.
          • kgermino 16y ago
            I'm not sure that applies in this case. I agree that newspapers and magazines are able to charge more for ads to paid subscribers than for non-paid readers but the logic behind that is that someone who pays for the issue is more likely to actually read it than someone who gets it for free. In Hulu's case they are able to measure the number of people actually watching the videos. Also if anything a paid subscriber would probably be less likely to pay attention to the ads, making the ad worth less.
• whughes 16y ago
  The answer is yes. Hulu has regularly blocked Flash-enabled devices through various (often circumventable, but still) means. It's just that you never hear about them.
  • dinedal 16y ago
    I wasn't aware Hulu was that defensive of it's content as to block it based on what device is running the browser. That's crazy.
    • larsberg 16y ago
      Hulu reps have been quoted before saying it's because of licensing restrictions related to the content on other devices than PCs. Having played around with it (I hacked together a gnash+ffmpeg port that's just sufficient to run Hulu on my own iPhone), they just have some logic in their flash scripts to prevent playing on unlicensed platforms. And in order to prevent direct linking to the FLVs, they use some obfuscating logic -- namely, they give you a string + a key and have you perform an AES-style operation using the two locally to get a time-expiring key to the file you want to play. They change the obfuscating pattern just often enough to make it annoying if you were, say, trying to keep up a Boxee script or update an AppStore application.
    • jpdbaugh 16y ago
      Yep, if you have a PS3 try to go to hulu.com on the browser.