Hulu Evades Boxee’s Embrace (Again)

By Brad Stone

Update | 6:33 p.m. Added a link to a statement from Boxee.

Well that was quick.

Content from the video site Hulu no longer works on the latest version of the video-watching software Boxee, which I described earlier today. Hulu, the joint Web venture between NBC and Fox, is clearly not interested in being part of the Boxee interface and made a change today, in response to Boxee’s announcement, so that only authorized Web browsers can have access to its video, according to a person briefed on the change.

A Boxee spokesman, Andrew Kippen, acknowledged that Hulu was again inaccessible through Boxee and said the company was “looking into the situation.”

The networks appear to be concerned about Boxee because it allows people to watch Internet video on TVs, instead of watching the same programs, with more lucrative advertising, on broadcast, cable and satellite networks.

Now it’s up to Avner Ronen and his crew at Boxee to decide whether they want to take a more forceful approach, perhaps by mimicking the appearance of an authorized browser. But that could also potentially lead to litigation.

Either way, this is a cat-and-mouse game worth watching.

Update: Boxee just addressed the matter on its blog.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Jeffrey McManus March 6, 2009 · 6:17 pm

“But that could also potentially lead to litigation.”

Under which law?

Barrett Nuzum March 6, 2009 · 6:31 pm

If Boxee chose to be duplicitous about it’s user agent, there is almost no way at all that Hulu would ever be able to tell the difference between it and *every other user of Hulu*.

What’s next, blocking everyone but their own piece of software? Probably. AOL Mk. II, here we come.

Hulu, you need to play ball or get off the damn field.

brett March 6, 2009 · 6:34 pm

> Under which law?

Probably a breach-of-contract claim for breach of the EULA. Or an aiding and abetting breach claim.

karlfranz March 6, 2009 · 6:40 pm

Safari lets me “mimic” other browsers in its debug menu as a way of testing my html for other browsers. What litigation does Apple face for doing this? None. Why would boxee doing this be any different?

coolrepublica March 6, 2009 · 6:48 pm

O.K. for the record I know nothing about Boxee. But if the problem is browser verification how about Boxee make an add-on for Firefox?

Anyone care to tell me how dumb or brilliant my idea is?

dave mathews March 6, 2009 · 6:51 pm

Jason Kinkaid – time to stand up and let your media partners and those Hulu funders realize that boxee is an asset to their business. Just have the networks wake up and redirect money that they spend on B.S. Nielson results to create a working location based advertising platform for creative that already exists. It should be a disgrace to you personally when you display PSA’s and/or the same ad in multiple blocks of a stream. This can be a win-win-win! Network-local spots-Hulu!

The boxee interface gives your media partners everything they used to have in the 1980’s “water cooler convo’s around who shot JR” days. Remember before the DVR, full-season DVDs and Netflix? But wait, there’s more! Social (one click playback from friend or content creator’s referred content), GEO (zip code is already in there for boxee weather), demographics (how long they watch, what else they watch and whom they send it to.) This is your network’s wet dream. Plus they get to watch the ads. Bonus!

Slingbox empowered users with hardware, Youtube with a server. Networks didn’t like Youtube in 2006 and 2007, so the Hulu service was built in reaction. Shutting feeds in boxee for Hulu is no different than shutting out Chrome. Hulu still holds a grudge against Google right? Maybe not as Hulu has a feed of “bannered” content on Youtube because that’s where the viewers remain…

The Internets are not going away. It’s time to leverage the innovators. Apple is not going to rule the video world like it has in the audio space. (Sorry Steve! Thanks for letting me share your Apple TV hobby though!)

Shay March 6, 2009 · 7:06 pm

There’s a much easier way to go about this than mimicking UserAgents; Just pass the public Hulu feeds through Yahoo! Pipes or Feedburner or any other one of the shmillion RSS feed tools that take an RSS on one end and give you an RSS with antoher name on the other. Hulu will be none the wiser.

So long as Hulu HAVE public feeds, there’s no way to stop it ending up on Boxee.
This is a ridiculous response by Hulu to a legitimate use by Boxee.

Btw, I’d suggest that banning a legitimate useragent might be in breach of net neutrality, which is bound to end up as law anytime soon under Obama if it isn’t already law. There’s no way a site gets to dictate which browser I get to use to view it. That can lead to all sorts of monopolies and evil business tactics.

Daniel Tunkelang March 6, 2009 · 7:12 pm

I suspect that Boxee spoofing the user agent string might be grounds for Hulu to litigate, especially if the intention is transparently to work around Hulu’s block. But it’s harder to imagine grounds for suing Boxee if they let users change the user agent string themselves, as Safari and other browsers allow. Regardless, this is a silly arms race between two companies that should find a mutually beneficial way to work together.

karlfranz March 6, 2009 · 7:33 pm

My Macbook Pro is hooked up to my 30 inch Apple Cinema Display. This is how I watch most of my video content. Is the size of my screen too big for Hulu’s “content providers”? Are they going to prevent me from watching their videos unless I switch to a smaller screen?

How is Hulu going to be allowed to decide which browser or screen you can use to watch their content? Since NBC is partners with Microsoft, are they going to say that you can’t use Firefox to view Hulu? Imagine if the networks had said that you could only watch their shows if you used a Panasonic TV. I think Hulu might find themselves in a heap of legal troubles if they continue down this path. This reeks of a net-neutrality case if there ever was one.

Phil Leigh March 6, 2009 · 7:37 pm

As a number of comment contributors have noted, it is easy to put an “authorized” browser up on the TV screen. It only requires that a laptop computer be connected to the TV. It works best by using a laptop with an HDMI socket.

Tiger Direct and CompUSA have figured-this-out and are selling HDMI laptops with DVD drives for under $400. Consumers can make space by kicking-out the console DVD player and replacing it with a laptop computer that will also function as a gateway to the Internet for the TV.

The set-up is not complicated as the following video demonstrates.

//insidedigitalmedia.com/is-tv-to-laptop-to-internet-geeky/

This is Third Generation Television.

//www.insidedigitalmedia.com

Matt March 6, 2009 · 9:20 pm

I hook my 4 year old laptop up to the TV with a S video Cable and a earphone to component patch cable but the even older hacked xbox is more convenient to watch TV content .

Gary March 7, 2009 · 8:49 am

Marconi tried to set up a system where only Marconi radio owners could receive Marconi broadcaster frequencies. This failed. Hulu will fail. In fact, the laws have been changed to make reverse engineering software to disable features illegal. While I personally have issues with this, it sure would be funny if Hulu had to pay Boxee for messing with what would appear to be just another tool for managing the PC monitor – in this case the monitor is a TV.

PS I tried Hulu, but their content is much too limited. Unfortunately, and the Internet is proving this more and more each day, branding content does not make it more desirable. The legacy TV world, which Hulu is trying to attach a fire hose to, has no more or less value than any other source. To paraphrase McLuan “the content IS the value.”

tsh March 7, 2009 · 11:56 am

Set top boxes?

Aren’t we quibbling about the fact that while you can get content on any computer, you can’t watch the same thing on a different LCD screen in your home? It’s absurd. If you run an HD cable between your imac and your plasma, you can watch it that way.

These neanderthal struggles will soon be over. Convergence will come, media will be a subscription and everything will be included with that.

J Bart Gordon March 8, 2009 · 8:30 am

I don’t know if it’s the ‘networks’ that are to blame for this current issue. The real blame should be put on the money grubbing cable TV shysters, who are the networks biggest customers. They are now in a life and death struggle to remain in your living room, and any application that competes is ‘fair game’ to them.
I can understand why Hulu’s hand was forced, especially since its all about giving the consumer choice. Choice is antithetical to the prime-time driven business model cable has milked over the last 40 years, and I just hope Mr. Ronin has the stomach and money to face the Dolans and all the other CableTV oligarchs’.
The Boxee/Hulu debacle is only the latest example of how the cable companines are reacting across the board to this new competetion. Other examples include data download caps, cablecard manipulation, and data interuptions that often make streaming media work less than perfect over their networks. This latest Hulu debacle has the cable tv shysters written all over it. Screw anybody/everybody who dosen’t use their service, at their price, on their equipment.

Stephen – NYC March 8, 2009 · 4:50 pm

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: No tv show out there is worth 20 minutes of commercials (& promos) in a 60-minute block. I record everything (granted, using the state-of-the-art VCR device) and then FF past all the shills. All the marketing folks who say “It’s only another 30 seconds, what’s the big deal?” seem to forget (or may not have even known) that back in the day (pre-1978) commercial time was regulated (hence only the late, late movie had a lot of commercials). I recently watched a tape of a M*A*S*H episodes. I reset the counter and only tracked the amount of the show content (there’s only credits, no commercials). The episodes had 22:30 of actual show. Add a minute for the opening credits and another minute for the end credits, and you’re down to about 5 1/2 minutes of ads in a 30-minute block. A very tolerable number.
I laughed when the SciFi channel said they were going to be showing the original Star Trek episodes uncut. Great, I thought. No more cutting to commercial when Kirk would lean in to kiss the alien babe-of-the-week. I never watched the shows on Sci Fi. Why? Because they added 30 minutes of commercials to the episodes. So what had been a 60-minute show when first broadcast they bloated up to 90 minutes. Thnink of the mindshare the advertisers would have gotten if there just the same amount of commercial time as in the beginning. We’d all have remembered their ads.
I don’t go online just for convenience. I also go to escape the bombardment of ads. If the online experience becomes the same as the tv experience, why bother?

dk jones March 8, 2009 · 11:22 pm

i recently had my cable connection severed by my cable co… i was paying $85.00/mo. for 40+ HD channels as well as every premium channel & every other channel they had available & some music channels i never listened to. i could no longer afford it(damn this economic climate!!). however, i’ve discovered new shows online, that were on networks just recently added to my HD cable tier.

in my living room i have a 17″ Intel iMac Core Duo attached to my 42″ Sony HDTV(DVI to HDMI + Toslink optical) to watch online content from the major OTA networks as well as the cable networks & Hulu, when i’m in my bedroom, i use my MacBook attached over S-video+analog stereo to a 26″ LCD HD monitor. so, sorry cable co. i’m good, i don’t really need you & i haven’t missed you these past 2 weeks. i intend to get a Netflix account & do some serious streaming for movies not ripped to my iMac as server(only those i own about 40) & will most likely be using “Understudy”, the new Front Row plug-in from Google for Netflix access, but which also has limited support for Hulu. it seems streaming & downloads are more & more becoming the norm–i first began watching on-line content seriously back during “Jericho’s” 1st season on CBS.

Hulu & any other aggregate site needs to rethink their position on who can/cannot gain access to their site’s content & come up w/ a business model that will work for now & that can evolve for the future.

LH March 9, 2009 · 7:24 am

Still watch TV, but also a fan of Hulu. It provides another entertainment option, and the ability to choose when I watch something versus being forced into a set schedule. I also catch some old TV shows I really liked.

Hulu and their founders/partners not realizing that the convergence of internet and TV is going to happen (as someone else mentioned above, I s-video the laptop. ) I look forward to Boxee, though I have not used it yet, and how it’s going to ease this process.

I’m also one of those who does not and has no interest in watching clips (Hulu clips or youtube clips), but instead full shows and movies. I get Revision3 programming to my Tivo, now only if I could get Hulu and such to the TV just as easy.

JimF March 9, 2009 · 4:26 pm

I like both Hulu, which is doing an excellent job of streaming video for commercial content, better than anything else I’ve seen, and Boxee, which works on AppleTV. I hope they work out a way to work together

However, the idea many of the posters here support — that Hulu has no right whatever to determine or attempt to restrict anyone from seeing its content — is absurd.

To paraphrase the aphorism on free speech; Hulu’s approach may be bad business, but I’ll defend its right to make a bad decision with its own property.