20 February 2009

boxee and "the man" (updated)

Sadly, it sounds as if my theory about cable being behind the boxee ban by Hulu might be credible.

OK... I admit that at least some of my love of boxee is related to my hatred of the cable apes, but this is still both stupid and self-destructive behavior by the content companies.

18 February 2009

boxee vs 'The Man'

boxee (IMHO) demonstrates the future of "TV".
Now... I'm not saying that boxee (the company or the product) are equal to the future - but rather that by looking at boxee and thinking about what it represents - you can see where the medium is going.
This has some profound implications.
And only a brain-damaged baboon would not see that this change is unavoidable. It is going to happen.

Apparently, the folks at large TV Media companies are, in fact, brain-damaged baboons.
They have pressured Hulu to demand that boxee stop streaming Hulu content.

Now... given that (from Hulu's perspective) boxee front-ending a Hulu streamed piece of content is no different that Firefox doing so - and given that Hulu gets paid the same either way (and thus the media companies involved get paid the same either way) - there are only two possible explanations for this.

1 - The cable companies pressured the TV Media companies to do this. While this is possible, it honestly seems a bit unlikely given that it would require some serious forward-thinking by cable executives.
2 - The TV Media companies are okay with Hulu streaming their content "because it's on a computer" whereas boxee is "on TV". Yeah... I know. That's asinine. It misses the point. Just because you've hooked up a TV to your computer and are using boxee to stream content that you are VIEWING on your TV doesn't make it not on a computer. But... to be honest, I can totally see folks in TV saying this.

End of the day - I think either is possible. And both are just ridiculously stupid.

Folks... It's over. It's done. boxee shows us all where TV is going - and it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
Have you learned nothing from what happened with music?!?!
This decision isn't even going to delay the inevitable. And it's going to drive folks who were generating revenue for your content (via advertising on Hulu) to instead use P2P systems and pirate content instead. And before you say, "no-one will do that except geeks" - remember, that's what all the record label execs said too.

Think about it...