Hulu, You Trendsetter

Now that we’re all rescued (*cough*), let’s focus back on things more fun than the recession. I posted earlier about the “video bubble”, notably Hulu being a trendsetter which sparked a lot of interest and other companies pursuing similar ventures. And, might I add that my company did the user experience and initial technology design work for Hulu ;)

The road to… digital

I think in the long run we’ll see a lot of changes in the industry. Sites such as Hulu, TheWB.com, and others to follow will sooner or later revolutionize the way we watch TV. Cable operators are still trying to ignore this by doing things such as instantiating download limits. Yet it’s just a matter of time before we all have the Internet built directly into our TV and/or set top boxes and can watch our favorite House episode any time we’d like directly from the Internet and on the TV. This will most likely cannibalize traditional TV offerings, yet this trend offers huge potential even for the cable operators if they were to embrace it — and they’re slowly realizing it, otherwise Comcast would have never launched Fancast. Maybe that’s the real reason for the download limits — to skew competition and boot the cable provider’s own video sites?

There are still a lot of hurdles to be overcome. For example, Hulu is struggling with the cost of bandwidth resulting from the massive video streaming which seems in no proportion to the incoming advertising revenue. Also expect ad revenues to decline in the near term — we’re in a recession after all.

Today a co-worker forwarded an interesting article on AdvertisingAge about Viacom and HBO jumping on the bandwagon also. Then again, I already knew that, but I’d have to kill you if I told you why :-)

The Law&Order Effect

While I love the ability to watch a lot of things directly online, there’s one big thing about my TV that I miss online. TV is passive entertainment, you turn it on and that’s all you have to do. No effort involved, unless you feel like channel surfing. In the online world the myriad of options make discovering something to watch work — the editorial responsibilities are shifted from the channel to the end user. Sometimes, I really just want to watch Law&Order or be surprised by the evil-gargoyle-eats-soldiers movie of the day (SciFi channel, of course).

Maybe that’s an idea for another online video startup? Venture Capital, someone, please?

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