May Contain Nuts

Boxee has been asked to remove Hulu support by Hulu at the behest of its content providers. This is completely counter-productive on the providers’ part: it pisses off the people most likely to abandon this legal, ad-supported venture in favor of ad-free, access-anywhere torrents, costing them money, and gives them a ton of bad press in the tech world, costing them precious mindshare (of which they already have very little remaining).

On top of that, it’s utterly ridiculous that Boxee be discriminated against as a viewing medium; it displays all of the ads that Hulu serves, and even went out of its way a couple of releases ago to redesign the Hulu plugin a couple of builds ago to better match the look and feel of Hulu’s website. All this ultimately does is force me to use a mouse and keyboard to browse their site for content to play on my TV using a different computer (as opposed to the Apple TV, which is just a computer with a really simple interface and input device), so I’m not exactly sure what the providers are hoping to gain from cutting off access to Hulu from Boxee.

This also isn’t the first time they’ve done something retarded when it comes to giving Hulu their content. Their most popular material – including BSG, House, and (for me anyway) Eureka – is time-delayed by 8 days. I can’t watch an episode of BSG, House, or Eureka on Hulu until over a week later! While I totally understand the desire to push people into watching the shows during their initial broadcast, this is downright excessive, and actually pushed me from watching BSG and Eureka on Hulu to watching it via torrent back when it was still off the iTunes store (now I watch it live Friday night on SciFi since we have cable, and then I buy the HD version the following morning on iTunes… never let it be said that I don’t support content I truly enjoy when it’s possible for me to do so).

Since I only use Hulu to watch a handful of shows, and since those shows are almost all available elsewhere (either through other channel plugins in Boxee or through iTunes… or at the very least through torrents), it being pulled off of Boxee is a disappointment and a frustration, but ultimately it’s something that just makes me go elsewhere for stuff I was happy to watch on Hulu, despite its less-than-awesome performance on the Apple TV. Comedy Central has streams of Daily Show and Colbert Report that I can watch, and I’ll probably just start watching House through iTunes. Until Hulu comes back to Boxee, though, I’m voting with my wallet and taking my viewership elsewhere. Hopefully it’ll send the message far enough up the chain that the providers do the right (and smart) thing and relent.

SCI FI has renewed Battlestar Galactica for a full fourth season, commissioning 22 hour-long episodes of “the best show on television.” This will include a special two-hour extended event that will air during fourth quarter 2007 and be released on DVD by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Production will resume in May with an eye toward a early 2008 season premiere.

OMGWTFBBQ-ness added.

A YEAR!?!?!?!?!?!?!

*dies*