If you’re a person who watches much television, you’ve definitely noticed that there’s a writers’ strike going on, which has halted production on just about every show on television. What you might not know, is that one of the main reasons for the strike is that writers are demanding a share of the online revenue that studios are expected to generate in the near future or are already generating. At the core of the issue is a new service called Hulu, which may just change the way videos are shared on the web.
Hulu is a joint operation between NBC and Fox designed to provide legal streaming video of popular television shows and movies from their catalogs for free. The service is currently in private beta, but you can already find Hulu videos embedded on sites all over the Internet. The innovative thing about Hulu, is that they let you grab any of their videos and legally embed them in any site you wish (including this blog). It’s an attempt by the studios to avoid the music industry’s blunder of not providing legal alternatives to file sharing, which has cost that industry billions.
While I enjoy watching Hulu videos on my computer screen, and I’m sure the service will be quite popular, the studio executives are still not thinking like consumers. Media users want portability in their media these days, which means transferring it to Ipods and other devices, which is something you can’t do with Hulu videos at this time. Hulu is generating revenue by streaming commercials along with their content, just like on television, and there’s no reason they couldn’t embed commercials in downloads as well. Until people have the opportunity to download free, legal videos embedded with commercials, I don’t see illegal file sharing slowing down anytime soon.
To demonstrate what Hulu can do, I’ve embedded the pilot episode of the sci-fi series Firefly into this blog post. I think the Hulu service is extremely promising, and I hope the other studios follow suit with similar services of their own. I just hope that they also step up and figure out a way to offer free video downloads as well, rather than just streaming content. After all, if there’s no profit in producing television shows, then we’ll no longer see any new productions.
If you’re interested in watching more Hulu videos, check out Hamilton County Today.
