It’s for your own good
Users who are complaining that they can no longer access the online video site Hulu on through their PlayStation 3’s web browser are being given an official explanation. The short version: it’s not Hulu’s fault per se but the result of keeping content owners, who don’t want the service to compete with revenue generated by traditional television distribution, happy.
(It’s worth pointing out, however, that Hulu is the property of many of those same content owners – so they kinda are to blame, albeit indirectly.)
Moreover, in the short term at least, it’s a price worth paying, says Hulu, as they help wean the studios off of the release windowing system – “a movie starts in theaters, then moves to pay-per-view and DVD, then to pay-cable channels, later to broadcast, and so on down the lin” – that has proved so lucrative to-date.
… in the near-term, the windowing strategy is still dominant in the business. Billions of dollars flow in across these different windows, and entire companies are organized around them. Nothing productive comes from flouting that reality…
That business model, however, isn’t sustainable in the long term, says Hulu, due to “the rise of the web, increased broadband availability, the ease of digitizing video, and the increase in the computing power of devices like gaming consoles, set-top boxes, and mobile phones.”
We do, however, expect these windows to converge over time. There’s no way around that, and we’re working hard with all of our partners to guide and participate in this important transition in the business.
Everything we do is with an eye toward achieving our long-term goal of maximizing the content you can access as conveniently as possible in a way that “works” for the content owner.
In the short-term that may require us to make some tough decisions, but we only do so when we believe it improves our long term prospects to build a more enduring, legal solution to that same problem.
