http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403773,00.asp

Apparently sometime in the future Hulu may require you to be a cable subscriber in order to use their service. At this news (even if it's just speculation) I canceled my Hulu subscription and listed this story as my reason. I enjoyed Hulu, but they need to know this isn't going to fly. The standard cable package here is $75 a month. Hulu is $7.99 a month. I'm not going to pay $80+ just to watch TV.

Remember the Qwikster debacle with Netflix? Hulu will realize this is a [censored] idea and abandon it if they know what's good for them (read as: money).

Thing you're not realizing is that they may not have a whole lot of choice, if they wish to retain their variety of available programming. Hulu is in part owned by Comcast, after all. So complain to Comcast if you want to complain.
Even if Comcast doesn't follow through with this, the notion is out now and it wouldn't surprise me to see owners of other station programming doing something similar...some kind of way to cripple places like Hulu's ability to show content (for super cheap) online that people are actually interested in. If nothing else, they could put a much longer delay before stuff is available to watch.

That said....I don't like it, of course. Even tho I pay for cable. Hulu is not Comcast's personal Xfinity website....they're supposed to be separate. Otherwise what's the point.

...Why? It's doing just fine how it is now. Any influence by Comcast is, evidently, illegal.

I mean that the cost or conditions of being able to show many shows could become prohibitive in some way, as networks/copyright owners start to find ways to slow things down/find profit on their own away from the original starter site services.

Possibly. That's for a court to decide, if it goes there. I'm sure Comcast has lawyers etc. that think they've found loopholes around the merger legal stuff or they wouldn't have tried.

I thought Hulu was free.

Hulu+ costs $7.99 per month. The difference is that it provides access to streaming certain episodes and shows that are not available with a free Hulu account.

Sadly, you still have to watch commercials with a paid Hulu+ subscription. I think this is critical error on the part of Hulu's executives, although I can understand why it was implemented.

this is why i don't use hulu at all. when i stream shows online the single most important thing is that my experience not be interupted, buffering or other wise.

Meh, never liked Hulu's selection anyway. Stuff disappears too fast from there, even from Hulu+

There was a time when Hulu was useful, but the networks have been stripping it of shows and putting all sorts of dumb time restrictions on it for too long now.

I wrote off Hulu quite a while ago. Initially it was great, but then the amount of commercials started increasing significantly, fewer episodes were available to watch, and so forth. Basically it was easy to see the writing on the wall (considering that Hulu is owned by cable companies and TV networks), and so far my expectations have pretty much all been born out. It's unfortunate, but the legacy content providers seem intent on trying to turn online content distribution into mirror of cable TV, even as people are expressing their displeasure with cable TV by cancelling the service in increasing numbers. The sooner they all die out the better.

I really liked Hulu when it first came out. Though now it doesn't include enough of the shows that I like and the ads have become increasingly intrusive. I haven't actually gone to Hulu in a long while.

For my TV needs I rely on my trust TiVo to record what I want. Been thinking about setting up an HTPC, but not sure how much effort I want to put into it.

I never used Hulu that much....but that's probably because I have cable. For the big screen TV, I much prefer seeing shows/movies in higher quality HD than what the internet calls "HD".

And I definitely wouldn't pay Hulu to watch commercials. I can see commercials for free using a roof antenna.

This is also the case with Sky, who spam you with the maximum legally permissible amount of adverts on most of their channels in spite of charging an arm and a leg for the service. Which is why we're looking to cancel our subscription.

Please, please, for the love of everything, give me an actual option to download shows, on the day they are released (also, worldwide releases), without subscribing to something that has nothing to do with the internet. And why do I even have to subscribe to something? I want to watch Game of Thrones - why can't I go to the HBO website, click "buy episode" and watch the damn thing?

Its 2012. The internet is not a new invention, I don't have a landline anymore, I don't even use SMS anymore, I don't watch TV anymore, so why the [censored] [censored] [censored] are you holding on to these relics of the past?


And this too ^

We cancelled our Sky subscription when every channel started showing nothing but repeats, Discovery, NatGeo etc all became endless reality series, and we still get way too many ads.

I would happily pay the BBC a liscening fee if they would broadcast their channels here.

Isn't it the same with cable TV? They overcharge you and still have tons of commercials.

I've never paid for cable There's a couple channels I want, but I cant just get those couple channels.. for some odd reason. Everything Id watch I can watch on YouTube and the bandwidth use is reasonable with YouTube.

Yes but they have tons of channels that I can't get solely with a roof antenna. Most of these channels are utter crap of course, but there are several that I still want/like having around. I tend to view cable these days more as a method to get access to other stuff, tho...sports packages and such, and of course, commercial free movie channels and pay-per-view rentals. Their free HD on-demand has become about as good as Hulu, really, which means I don't even need a DVR to keep up with most series.

Edit: not that I would've paid for cable when I was 18. Or if I only cared about watching CSI and NCIS or something.

Does having Directv mean that I am out of the loop for this conversation?

Good to know, I almost got Hulu but now that they are thinking of doing things like this I am not going to unless the speculation goes away.

Not sure. I know in your Hulu settings now it asks you to link either a Dish Network account or Verizon account for additional access. So if they have some kind of deal with Dish Network, maybe they wouldn't honor Direct TV subscriptions?

We should go into business and start a streaming service for New Zealand.