Hulu dropped from Boxee

Last Updated on Thursday, 19 February 2009 04:21 Written by Kelsey Brookes Thursday, 19 February 2009 04:17

In what can only be seen as a shot across the bow aimed squarely at media-centre developers, Hulu has requested that it's offering be dropped from Boxee.

While several media players and media centre applications have included Boxee, this is the first time that pressure from content providers has forced the service to be removed from an application or device. Boxee is a fork of the wildly successful open source XBMC project and can be installed on AppleTV, Intel Macs and Linux machines.

Although Hulu is currently only available to US residents, it provides free online streaming of TV shows and the company has been extremely pro-active in getting their service added into third-party media devices. Hulu only provides authorised and legitimate TV as allowed by the content creators.

Hulu are having to walk a fine line here - they're one of the pioneers in the online TV delivery industry and are as beholden to content providers as they are to users. The post outlining the change clearly shows the precariousness of their business model:

The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time. We embrace this activity in ways that respect content owners' — and even the entire industry's — challenges to create great content that users love. Yes, it's a complex matter. A tough mission, and a never-ending one, but one we are passionately committed to.

Boxee is intended as feature limited version of XBMC, its advantage lies in the ease of install and use. However it is likely that the 'social' aspect of Boxee, where users can see what others are watching and its ability to play non-DRM files are a cause for concern to corporate media. XBMC, while regarded as one of the best media centres available, got its start by illegally hacking the xbox platform. Even today, it's likely that most users are utilising it to play unauthorised content. That pedigree can hardly be comforting to content providers struggling to monetise the online space.