Solution: Hulu.com offers ad-supported, premium content
It seem as if everybody wants something for nothing these days. Take a few examples:
a) The banks want to borrow taxpayers' money just so they can continue to screw us
b) Some employers want you to work more and more hours for the same pay check
c) Politicians want you to vote for them and give you absolutely nothing in return
The same is true with content - people love to consume it, but they hate paying for it.
The folks at Hulu.com have found a happy medium to this problem in relation to online video. Hulu is a joint venture between Fox and NBC and it offers a selection of full-length TV episodes and movies for viewers to watch for free. Their library isn't huge, but there's enough compelling content on offer to keep you busy on a rainy Sunday afternoon (think 30 Rock, The Office, 24.....even old '80s "classics" like Airwolf).
So what's the catch? Well while the content is free to watch, Hulu makes you sit through commercial breaks while watching. So if you plan to watch Men In Black, then be prepared for several 20 seconds ads from Target or a random shampoo manufacturer.
For me that's a small price to pay to be able to watch premium video content and it's pretty much a win-win situation - we get to watch quality and more importantly legal video content, and the broadcasters are able to effectively monetize it without charging the consumer.
As I pointed out yesterday in my post on Netflix, the whole distribution model around video content is changing and evolving at breakneck speed and this is going to be an interesting one to watch this year. With services like Netflix, Hulu and the range of set-top boxes available that let users download movies and TV shows directly (think Apple TV, Roku, VuDu - more on those in a later post) - more and more people will potentially start to question why they're paying their cable operator over 100 bucks a month for 200 channels, of which they only watch about 20. Interesting times ahead and we'll be watching this one closely at Heart Hi-Tech.
0 comments:
Post a Comment