Nels Wadycki » TV

The Next Best Thing About The Roku

Nels — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 02:30:48 +0000

Besides the fact that you can watch Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon (and even NBA highlights) …

The commercials (on Hulu) are not louder than the shows. No government intervention needed.

Internet TV FTW.

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Hamstrung Hulu

Nels — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:09:50 +0000

On TechCrunch Mark Suster compares Hulu to the oil cartel OPEC. I’m not sure what this point number 2 has to do with the cartel comparison, but I think it’s one of the more interesting points of the post:

2. Limited “Targeting” of Advertisements: The great promise of the Internet for advertisers was that they were finally going to be able to deliver targeted advertisements to users because they could finally know who you were. This has become a reality with banner ads, search ads, contextual ads and Facebook ads. But not Hulu ads.

Why? They know who we are, don’t they? Yes, they do. But they generally don’t even allow advertisers to purchase ads for a single show let alone ads targeting YOU by reading your cookies on your computer. So we have ads that are even less targeted than those on television. The reason lies in protecting the high price of broadcast & cable advertising rates. They are nervous about “trading analog dollars for digital pennies.” So advertisers have to buy “run of site” ads rather than show specific ones.

It was over a year ago now when I wondered why Hulu wasn’t targeting ads to it’s users. I haven’t run the numbers on targeted ads with lower volume vs. sitewide untargeted ads, but I’d have to think there’s a price point at which you can at least break even. I mean, Facebook’s advertising platform specializes in making it easy to target people based on tons of different criteria. Again, I haven’t run the numbers, but I think Facebook is making a lot of money.

Of course, even running the numbers won’t get to the heart of the reason that Hulu is basically having it’s hand tied when it comes to being able to innovate like other technology companies. For as long as the cable and satellite providers control that major distribution channels, the networks have no choice but to hamstring the efforts of other methods of distributions (even, obviously, ones that they support). Unfortunately (for me and other Hulu users), since the user base of people watching TV via the Internet using Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc. is still tiny compared to the number of people who pay companies to provide them with TV (while most of the time also paying them to provide Internet access), the networks have to tread lightly when it comes to the user experience provided through these alternate services.

Cable companies (and satellite and other pay-TV providers) are certainly scared pantless when they realize(d?) that something like Hulu could easily make networks more money by showing targeted ads for higher rates (not to mention charging people $9.99 per month without having to hand any of that over to the cable company). But they still have the market share, and therefore, the power, to make sure that networks don’t get too excited about prospects of nearly infinite riches. Netflix has run into the same problem (over and over) in dealing with movie studios who still see DVDs as their major distribution channel (although that point of view is even more short-sighted than the view that cable companies will continue to maintain their dominance in the television distribution market).

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Hulu tries to survey me about advertising

Nels — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:01:35 +0000

And I was more than willing to take part…

Too bad when I hit the second question their survey broke. From looking at the source code, apparently they were trying to show a video on a page that asked for my country, and either they didn’t like the version of Flash I have installed, or they just accidentally inserted a bunch of Flash and Javascript into a page that wasn’t supposed to have it and broke the whole “show continue button when the question has been answered” part of the page.

At this point, were I someone with a smaller vocabulary or less desire to type words (the blog equivalent of hearing myself speak), I could say FAIL!, or post a picture of the Hulu logo with a big red FAIL in Impact (which would be well within my Photoshop abilities). Instead I’ll just say, I was really looking forward to seeing what the 7 choices were for the charity ads that would have been displayed 250 times honor of my completion of the survey.

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Hulu What Now?

Nels — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:11:04 +0000

So, I know the thing on everyone’s mind is the whole Twitter Replies scandal, but really, that’s already been overdone, and it’ll be over and gone in a day anyway. But it does sort of relate to to this post in the whole K.I.S.S. #FAIL way… you see…

Not too long ago, I was watching the “Web Exclusives” (aka Deleted and Behind-The Scenes) of The Office on Hulu and I see this:

Availability Notes:
The last 14 episodes of Season 5 are available until August 8, 2009. At that time, Season 5 episodes will revert to a ‘five rolling’ schedule with five episodes available at a given time and a newer episode added weekly as an older one expires.

I’m sorry… whosinawhatnow? That Don’t Make No Sense.

As opposed to the Twitter reply scheme, which I actually understood the first time I read it and – while kind of dumb – is actually comprehensible…

Maybe it’s just the date thing that’s throwing me off. I’m assuming that new episodes don’t start until some time in September, and so the August 8th date seems sort of arbitrary. Why not August 29th, 1997 at 2:14 am?

Here I thought Hulu was going to neatly take care of the fact that I don’t have cable or a satellite dish or AT&T’s Uverse (whatever that is). But instead of being my online TiVo, it appears they’re going to be all Big Media about it and force me to watch on their schedule (at least somewhat). Maybe if, instead of “limited commercials” they went to 2 commercials per break… or 3, or even 4, like on broadcast TV? Would the users revolt? Sure… but would they get used to it if they didn’t have any other choice? I know I would.

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Dollhouse: Unlucky 13

Nels — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:45:42 +0000

So, I’m catching up on Dollhouse tonight (thankfully/mercifully, someone had the bright idea to extend the expiration dates so I could actually keep up), and I notice this:

Availability Notes: The 13th Episode of Dollhouse will not be available for online streaming.

Back To The Stone Age

I can almost guarantee you that the person who decided not to have the season finale available on Hulu is not the same person who decided to extend the deadlines… because one was a good decision and the other, a terrible one.

Guess what FOX (or Hulu, but I’m guessing it was FOX that made the decision)? My wife and I are chaperoning her school’s prom on Friday night. So, I won’t be able to watch your Dollhouse season finale… which means I have about 3 options…

Never get to see it – this is the extreme option, and is clearly superseded by the next two
I can download it illegally
I can wait until the DVDs are on Netflix and get the last one in order to watch a single freaking episode

I wonder if any of those 3 options is going to make FOX more money than they’d get by putting it on Hulu…

A fourth option would just be to follow Eliza Dushku’s Twitter. It doesn’t really actually accomplish viewing of the episode, but it supports an actress that I like…

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Big and Small Changes at Hulu

Nels — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:54:09 +0000

The Big Story is obviously that Disney has bought into Hulu meaning that by the time I get around to watching this season of LOST, it may be on Hulu! (ABC’s streaming video player is very good, but I am really hoping to one day have all the TV shows I want to watch on one queue)

But a smaller change that I’d like to mention just to point out how awesome Hulu is: You now have to click a link that says “View Description” to see the description of the episode. Usually when it comes to UI, extra clicks are something you want to avoid, but with this change, the plot of the episode isn’t given away, which, for most shows, I believe, makes for a better end user experience. And it’s those little details that really tell me that Hulu is being led in the right direction.

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The Hulu Takeover

Nels — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:41:50 +0000

According to TechCrunch, Hulu gained 10 million viewers in Feburary, which is an impressive number, but if you look at their chart, what I think is more impressive is the 64.5 minutes per viewer which is second in the top 10 behind only Google Sites (aka YouTube) which had 134 minutes, and 3.6 times more than the next highest average minutes per viewer in the top 10.

Maybe it’s because Hulu rocks the house. I wish CBS and ABC would take note. I would give them more advertising revenue that they are otherwise losing because I’d be all over the past 4 seasons of How I Met Your Mother and the last few episodes of LOST that I haven’t been able to watch yet (and I might even watch Wipeout if I could add it to my Hulu queue).

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Advertising Options on Hulu

Nels — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:31:24 +0000

So I went to catch up on some TVonTheInternet earlier this week and was offered the option of either watching a long ad and then the show straight through with no ads, or to watch with shorter ads interspersed as usual.

Of course I went with the long ad at the beginning. I think I saved myself 30 seconds that way, and it worked just as advertised. Pun intended. If that’s even a pun.

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Heroes on Hulu

Nels — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:20:07 +0000

Thanks to the RSS feeds Hulu provides, I was notified that there were a new Heroes videos available (I’m subscribed to what I guess you could call the Heroes Channel). I like this one with the Dylan song, but there were a couple others with different artists.

This is evidently an ad for the Heroes soundtrack (there’s a brief hint of it at the end), but I also feel it’s probably a little bit of a “Don’t forget about Heroes” thing (yeah, like that’s going to happen), and it may also be a test just to see how many hits the videos get.

Two things to note:

1. When you embed the video from Hulu, they actually let you select a start and an end time, so you can embed only part of the video. That would have been nice for this video of Dirk Nowitzki where the fun doesn’t start until close to the end.

2. Google tells me that Hayden Panettierre’s natural hair color is actually blonde, but in the clip she has the darker hair from “the future” (if I recall correctly), and it makes her look like she could be a much more mature actor – like someone who could be in a Jane Austen type period piece, or something like Closer; not sure if she could pull that off with the blonde hair…