As a wise man once said: "Damn, that's just cold, son." Merely hours after boxee
announced its latest alpha build along with RSS feed support for Hulu, said video portal has now blocked off
boxee's browser entirely from accessing its content. If you'll recall, boxee saw a huge increase in interest when it
first added easy access to Hulu, and once Hulu demanded that it be removed, boxee sadly
complied. The latest move just seems "cold blooded," as now boxee users who attempt to surf over via a
Hulu RSS feed link will be greeted with an infinite amount of nothing. boxee is quick to point out that its browser doesn't access Hulu content "any differently" than IE, Firefox, Opera or any other browser, which does a good job of explaining just how deliberate this move is. Needless to say, we get the feeling this bout is just getting started.
[Image courtesy of
ZatzNotFunny]
Update: boxee now says
things are working. For the moment, anyway. Feel free to join us as we throw our hands in the air and give up on understanding this mess.
posted Mar 6th 2009 6:55PM
I had a feeling when I read about the RSS feed support that it wasn't going to last long. To me, it was trying to be a workaround, which went against the wishes of hulu. I don't even know much about it, so clearly, others felt the same way and blocked it.
The bottom line is that sucks. I just want to be able to get hulu on my TV, and it seems like such a simple concept that I don't understand why it hasn't been done yet.
I hope SecondRun.tv doesn't just disappear too.
What's funny is I put it on my "TV" [projector] by way of Firefox and dual monitor support. Let's see the content providers block that! HA!
They're really stupid to pull this with boxee. Dumb stuff.
They just blocked Plex for Mac, so I wouldn't be surprised if they block secondrun.tv.
These marking geniuses are idiots! They should be glad that people want to watch there content with the ads, they are doing all this great leg work and all they have to do is supply the videos like they always do.
I wouldn't be surprised if they blocked FireFox next considering how stupid they are.
You now what screw hulu and its content providers bunch of greedy jerks that's why
everyone pirates your content because you have your heads up your ass and don't find
a way or a formula that works for all of us that watch your content
The real blame, with the studios. Or maybe advertisers. Maybe both. I bet ad revenue dries up quick in a recession, even though Hulu actually turns a profit. Heck, if Hulu had TV-levels of ads (~8/16 min for 30 min/60 min show) that might start to make it profitable on TV-levels.
Maybe the problem is ad departments are hoping their ads go viral so they don't have to pay for a spot on either Hulu or "Real" TV. Either way, considering I keep seeing the sneering, percussive spot where Pete Wentz exorts me to "Do Something", I doubt Hulu is raking in the ad bucks.
If they had the same amount of ads as TV no one would use the service, they would just go back to there DVRs and skip the commercials.
With Hulu people actually watch the commercials and they are so short you can't really get up and go to the bathroom or kitchen like you can with the longer ads we have on normal TV.
"they would just go back to there DVRs"
Dude, it's THEIR. THEIR DVRs.
Oh, so now it works out of nowhere again?
Why don't they just cut out all the bullshit.
First off by telling us WTF is going on.
NBC is just a group of dim witted idiots. I should know I worked there for 4 years. First they pulled their shows from iTunes and you saw how that went. Now they are doing the same shat with boxee and this just shows how douchy they can get. NBC=tools and most if not all of thier shows suck. If you want to watch a good show - try Breaking Bad, The Tudors, and Nip Tuck.
I expect if they changed their user agent to mimic a popular browser that they could get the content again. Could open them up to a lawsuit of some kind though.
Forget Hulu. I can't get them to play smoothly in any case where as every other site from Netflix to Amazon to the networks play fine on my 15MB connection.
I really want Hulu to work with Boxee, but if it is broke, I can just load it up in firefox. It is still going to play on the same 42" plasma screen, and I am still debating with myself about canceling cable. But what Hulu/providers/cable operators (or whoever is really behind this) has done is convince me to finally sign up for Netflix, so I can get lots of streaming content to my TV for a nominal monthly fee and no ads. I canceled my HBO which more than offsets the cost of Netflix. So Comcast has already lost revenue because of this boneheaded nonsense. Netflix seems to have enough streaming content that I don't really Comcast's "on demand" stuff anymore, so I'll probably get rid of my second cable box, which I only really needed for the on demand stuff. A Roku box will replace it. I'm just not quite ready to tear myself away from the HD DVR box. But I get closer to kicking it to the curb every day.
Someday people will realize that the Internet can't deliver every TV show, radio station, movie, and other data on the planet. Your cable provider has a dedicated line to your house and still supposedly doesn't have enough capacity to deliver unlimited channels (or even limited channels with good quality). So you think the Internet does?
I think it's time for Boxee to implement User Agent spoofing. If what they say is true, there should be no way for the server to tell it isn't Firefox, Safari, or MSIE.
You can follow the current Hulu on Boxee status via:
https://twitter.com/ishuluonboxee
as of right now it IS working. Hulu has broken it repeatedly over the last couple of days however. Don't know what the latest twist Boxee applied was, but its been working for over 24 hours at this point.
All the people planning to cancel their cable services or HBO because of Hulu, you do realize that the cable co's will have to respond by putting caps and charging for the excess bandwidth you start using right? So either way, they'll find a way to get money out of you.
I much prefer Hulu type watching where you can pick and choose what you want...but that model isn't giving any money to the internet provider to make up for all the increased bandwidth usage.