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The article made a great point about TV Everywhere and the inconsistency of app logins. This is something we encounter with apps like the History Channel app, f

The article made a great point about TV Everywhere and the inconsistency of app logins. This is something we encounter with apps like the History Channel app, for example. it wants us to log in, go to history.com/activate, but doing so brings up a blank screen or some bizarre error message. I've been trying to authenticate with DirecTV Now, which should be supported and is on the list, but it just sits there. Is it a problem with pihole? unlock origin? Safari? Tried Firefox and Chrome, and same issue. Not a good user experience. Logging in with a friends credentials for a tv provider she cancelled over a year ago still worked, oddly enough. Netflix has been way more attractive, even with the slight price hike. Hulu as well.

WorldMaker 8y ago
Something that bugs me a slight bit in the TV app diaspora was that one of the original Hulu mandates back when it was a GE project was to be a strong software provider for TV frontends and backends; that as much as Hulu would be a thing itself there'd also be "Powered by Hulu" opportunities to avoid every TV app having an entirely different experience or missing some should-be standard backend/frontend features. It shouldn't be a surprise that that original vision was somewhat lost when Comcast bought NBC/Universal and gained a huge stake in Hulu, but it's still a shame that we don't have more "powered by Hulu" apps per that original vision. I still don't understand why NBC/Universal's Seeso attempt wasn't "powered by Hulu" given how central NBC/Universal was as a Hulu content partner (nor why Hulu didn't just inherit the majority of Seeso content when they got bored with the experiment), and that's a large part of why I didn't bother with Seeso. I guess I'm still often angry at the CW for dropping Hulu support for their own app which is just full of technical papercuts that Hulu fixed a long time ago; I would mind the CW app less (even if it was still a separate app) if it was at least "powered by Hulu" and had some of the backend streaming tech improvements, UX improvements, and commercial volume smoothing tech that Hulu uses. Disney+ supposedly is using backend tech/knowledge from ESPN+, so it won't be entirely from scratch, but with Disney now being majority owner of Hulu, again it seems a shame that it probably won't just be "powered by Hulu", and is likely yet another case where we'll see bugs and UX papercuts that the industry as a whole could have worked to fix together instead of each their own.

WorldMaker 8y ago

Something that bugs me a slight bit in the TV app diaspora was that one of the original Hulu mandates back when it was a GE project was to be a strong software provider for TV frontends and backends; that as much as Hulu would be a thing itself there'd also be "Powered by Hulu" opportunities to avoid every TV app having an entirely different experience or missing some should-be standard backend/frontend features. It shouldn't be a surprise that that original vision was somewhat lost when Comcast bought NBC/Universal and gained a huge stake in Hulu, but it's still a shame that we don't have more "powered by Hulu" apps per that original vision. I still don't understand why NBC/Universal's Seeso attempt wasn't "powered by Hulu" given how central NBC/Universal was as a Hulu content partner (nor why Hulu didn't just inherit the majority of Seeso content when they got bored with the experiment), and that's a large part of why I didn't bother with Seeso. I guess I'm still often angry at the CW for dropping Hulu support for their own app which is just full of technical papercuts that Hulu fixed a long time ago; I would mind the CW app less (even if it was still a separate app) if it was at least "powered by Hulu" and had some of the backend streaming tech improvements, UX improvements, and commercial volume smoothing tech that Hulu uses. Disney+ supposedly is using backend tech/knowledge from ESPN+, so it won't be entirely from scratch, but with Disney now being majority owner of Hulu, again it seems a shame that it probably won't just be "powered by Hulu", and is likely yet another case where we'll see bugs and UX papercuts that the industry as a whole could have worked to fix together instead of each their own.