Comment by fusiongyro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fusiongyro | Hacker News Reader

Content availability is the main problem. Hulu is really annoying because I pay for it yet still have to endure commercials, and their have strange restrictions on how you can consume the content. 30 Rock, for example, cannot be streamed through my Apple TV's Hulu. I could stream it to my laptop, however. Instead I wound up paying Apple for it, so I'm in the seemingly absurd situation of paying Apple $20, Hulu $8/month and Netflix $8/month, and I still don't get all the TV I want to watch--or even all of broadcast TV. I can't get Seinfeld without Crackle, and Crackle is about the worst.

These services are all partially overlapping solutions. Here's what I want:

- All TV shows, current season as it airs and all past seasons

- No commercials

- No time pressure to watch before "expiration"

I'm willing to pay substantially for this. I'm talking $40-60/month, and I don't care about HBO or Showtime either. Instead I have two services that charge me $8/month and have the selection of a small-town Blockbuster. If any of these services were actually trying to compete with cable, they could charge more and provide access to the rest of the content. Instead they seem happy to play the annoying long-tail game with off-brand crap, and it's deeply dissatisfying.

The real problem here is absolutely not technical. It's contractual with the companies that own the content. I doubt you could do better than they have without offering more money, but I think there could be a real niche there if you're willing to charge customers actual money to provide actual service.

The problem (?) that Hulu has is that all of its content is produced based on contracts with the networks, and networks are really fussy. So it's less Hulu that I have a problem with and more the networks themselves. If 30 Rock isn't available on your Apple TV, that's because NBC doesn't want it available there, for whatever reason.

From Hulu's "What Is 'Web Only' Content?" page (http://www.hulu.com/support/article/20116158):

"It's our goal to provide as much content as possible and to keep it all on our service as long as possible. However, what videos we post, what devices we provide them on, and how long we're able to keep them on Hulu depends on streaming clearances granted by our content partners."

So it basically isn't up to Hulu. In order to keep the thing completely legal and avoid lawsuits, they are pretty much under the thumb of the "content partners" they work with.

The same goes for Netflix and all the other services.

I understand that my main beef is with the content producers. I think that if Hulu and Netflix brought more money to the table they could get better arrangements that don't include as many weird restrictions. Netflix doesn't seem to have device restrictions the way Hulu does either, and I can't help but think Hulu shouldn't have offered that concession to the networks at all. Having 30 Rock but not being able to watch it on my Apple TV is basically a legal bait-and-switch to me. I'm not watching TV on my laptop instead of my big TV with the big speakers.

+1 I totally agree. I want to watch any show or available movie whenever I want with no commercials and I am willing to pay a fair amount of money for this.

After about 18 months, I just cancelled Hulu+ because the commercials are too long. Otherwise a nice service and I wanted to support them, but...

Netflix is pretty good. Both my wife and I pay them $8/month and like the content, the recommendations, etc. Good value.

I think that Directv is way too expensive because we don't actually watch much content through Directv. I want to cancel but there there is some resistance from my family.

The commercials are too long, and they have the same problem Crackle does of showing the same commercials back-to-back-to-back-to-back... It actually really makes me angry when they say "This episode of X presented with limited commercial interruption by Y" because there's nothing limited about it! Especially if it's new. They seem to have some kind of back-off algorithm so it doesn't show as many commercials for old stuff. But old stuff has a way of vanishing randomly.

I'm thinking seriously of getting an old-school DVR and a massive antenna. Problem is, I live out in the sticks where I'll need a huge antenna just to get about half the broadcast TV.

The commercial breaks on Hulu+ range from 15 seconds to 1 min 45 seconds (I've found they're heavily on the shorter side for me). That's significantly shorter than commercial breaks on broadcast television or cable in my experience .

Was it really that bad for you? (Genuinely curious).

When there are six of them it doesn't matter how long they are.

There are at least as many on broadcast and cable. I still fail to see how the commercials on Hulu+ aren't the lesser of the two evils...

So we went from "genuinely curious" to "I'm going to debate you until you decide to feel things differently."

Like I said, where I live broadcast isn't an option without an expensive antenna. I have a cheap ($25) antenna and I get exactly one of three channels depending on how I orient it. The other options are cable without internet, which chafes badly, and satellite. The lesser evil I lived with for years was no TV at all. I prefer Hulu to nothing, but not to the other two options, and the question I was responding to above is "how can we do better than Hulu and Netflix?" not "how can I convince strangers to man-up and love shitty options?"

Wow. Didn't realize this was such a touchy subject for ya. Forget I ever asked. :)

It's not a touchy subject. I'm just sick of everybody trying to turn every conversation into some kind of fact-war, especially when opinions are explicitly asked for. What do you think you're going to win?

Why do both of you pay $8 a month?

$8 for Netflix streaming, $8 for Hulu.

> "Netflix is pretty good. Both my wife and I pay them $8/month"

Ah, I see, it sounded like you both paid $8 a month for netflix.

Some folks do this because they want independent 'tastes' and queues.

+1 to everything fusiongyro said.

Additionally, a personal note -- I'd like to see a shuffle system.

90% of the time I use any of those services, it isn't really to pay attention to a show; it's for background noise. The same way I'd put on one of my favorite movies or leave the television on HBO while tidying up or making dinner, etc -- on any online service, I'd like to say "from this [list|category|favorites], play random selections of shows and/or movies until I tell you to stop."

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