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Sky’s offer of satellite service over the Internet for United Kingdom customers is an interesting step, but it raises a major question: How long can streaming video on demand sites remain free? I’m talking about Hulu, which reportedly attracts more than 40 million viewers these days, but the same question applies to Joost and other sites. On the one hand, we see that few information sites have been able to make a subscription model stick, with the Wall Street Journal leading the exceptions. Having to rely just on advertising has changed the game for magazine Web sites and other information sources, and not always for the better. (But that’s another story.) You have hybrid models, such as the Netflix streaming service that is free if you already pay a subscription for one of their standard service plans. But can a free service attract enough revenue from advertisers and other sources to make it? News Corp — owner of the Fox Network among other things — is a partner in Hulu, but has publicly been making noises about raising licensing fees for cable services which in turn makes you wonder if they’re getting enough return from Hulu. The CEO of Hulu, Jason Kilar, is taking a strong stance that they are right on track, as reported in an excellent article by Claire Atkinson on Broadcasting & Cable. But it looks as though a subscription fee may be in the future for Hulu, or at least for sections of its content. Get them hooked, and then raise the price from free to something. So if you watch Hulu, how much would that “something” be and you’d still pay it? Is it not worth anything to you, or would you pay $1 a month? How about $12 a month? Where’s your breaking point? Or would you rather have an iTunes Store or Amazon Video style pay-as-you-go model, instead of a subscription fee? Let me know how you feel about this. Write to me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com and tell me what you’d be willing to pay for Hulu, if anything.
Posted by Alfred Poor, October 28, 2009 6:00 AM
Reader Commentary I can get many series I watch via Netflix for $9/month ... and the quality is MUCH better than Hulu. And with the availability of Netflix on the main TV via devices like the Roku, Xbox 360 and (soon) Playstation 3 ... it's much more accessible than Hulu. Not to mention that many of the newer Blu-ray players and "connected" TVs are including Netflix integration. Hulu is an excellent free option ... but I wouldn't pay for it. - Miller... Miller, is the problem with Hulu a quality of service issue -- jitter, pauses, etc. -- or is it degraded image quality -- lower resolution, compression artifacts, etc. -- that you notice with Hulu but that are better with Netflix? Alfred... Absolutely nothing is how much I'd be willing to pay for Hulu. If I want movies I'll go to Netflix. If I want TV shows, I'll watch them, or catch them with the DVR. Streaming video is not all it's cracked up to be, or at least not here. "Some times" it works fairly well with SD, but there are still interruptions and pauses. With HD there are lots of "hiccups" and it's rare for me to be able to watch more than a half hour without a pause in the stream. The only good results have been downloading and then viewing and this is with a 10 Meg connection. That brings me to the question of net bandwidth. Used to be P2P was the main bandwidth user, but with the increasing use of streaming video and much of that HD, I wonder how long before it will become streaming video. As popular shows are widely watch on the net how long before ISPs from "the other side" start limiting band width to the competition without "net neutrality"? Bandwidth is not a bottomless resource.... I remember depending on Internet email. PC Magazine had closed down their dial-in servers, and we were using Lotus something for email over the Internet. And then Windows with Multimedia came out. People were listening to music over the Internet, and even looking at photos. The amount of data transmitted absolutely dwarfed my puny emails and the articles that I was filing (and on which I depended to make a living). It was obvious that the Internet would collapse under the weight of this additional (and frivolous) bandwidth consumption. But what happened? Nothing. Many of the players with a vested interest in making the applications work are the same ones who are making money on the growth of the Internet infrastructure. Look at Cisco. There's a term in the communications industry, "dark fiber" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fiber), and it refers to unused fiber optic cable. As I understand it, there's a sizable over-capacity for telecommunications because when they put the fi... Sorry about the quotes but they needed to be interspersed instead of the whole thing. " It was obvious that the Internet would collapse under the weight of this additional (and frivolous) bandwidth consumption. But what happened? Nothing." IIRC some areas did have some problems but the net was continually expanding...and still is. It's the high bandwidth users like gamers and streaming video users that usually notice things not being quite right. Most of us would never notice an e-mail that ended up bounding between connections a few hundred times due to data packet collisions. With 5 computers backing up across my network I don't notice a few, but when you hit that magic number the collisions escalate and things really slow. It's much like a program running really fast until something starts file swapping which was a way of live back in the late 70's or early 80's. I used to do segmented sorts with dual 8" drives. About 20-30 pages of data would take around 8 hours to s... Telecommunications companies always size cables they place based on an algorithm that is supposed to determine how much capacity they will need in some time interval - at least five years. So... yes, they usually have additional capacity. But, and again, the Law of Unintended Consequences comes in, no one ever thought of streaming video when they were placing the fiber that now carries the majority of the Internet backbone. They're going to run out - and fast - at the increased rate of usage. And that's one of the biggest reasons the companies, AT&T especially, now that they have way more than half of all land line and a goodly percentage of the mobile traffic, want to control usage (read Internet non-neutrality). They figure if they can control who and how the Internet is used they can postpone placement of additional facilities. Disillusioned users will use it less (you think it had somet... More from Alfred Poor
More in Category: General Interest
About Alfred PoorAlfred Poor is a well-known display industry expert, who writes the daily HDTV Almanac. He wrote for PC Magazine for more than 20 years, and now is focusing on the home entertainment and home networking markets. |
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