By Ben Popper 9/22/11 11:23am

Web TV Wars

Oatmeal really nailed this one

The Web TV Wars Are Starting to Get Really Bloody

Netflix sent the blogosphere into a tizzy earlier this week when it announced it was dividing itself in two: Netflix the streaming video business, and Qwikster, the disastrously named DVD by mail step child. A lot of articles were written trying to parse the news, but the general sentiment was confusion.

The truth is that the TV business is on the brink of a seismic shift, akin to what has already happened in music with the iTunes store and Spotify. But the entrenched interests, both the networks and the cable companies, are doing everything they can to make sure they keep control during this change.

So you get a situation like Netflix and Qwickster, which as Evolver.fm Elliot Van Buskirk explains, is all about the licensing silly: Read More

By Ben Popper 8/25/11 5:14pm

Web TV Wars

Image via We Are NY Tech

Shelby.tv Rolls Out Partnerships With Hulu, College Humor and Tumblr

Techstars NY graduate Shelby.tv has been pretty quiet since raising $1.5 million in July. But today the young start-up, which aims to provide an immersive experience for watching, sharing and discovering web video, announced that content from the typically isolated Hulu will be available on Shelby.tv. Videos from IAC’s College Humor also came online today, along with Tumblr integration. Read More

By Clay Whittaker 8:45am

Web TV Wars

Hmmm...where can I find me shows?

When Fox Delayed Its Hulu Shows, Piracy Shot Way Up

A week after Fox made users wait to watch new shows on Hulu for free, tech site TorrentFreak says they’ve seen a drastic rise in the volume of illegal downloads of Fox shows.

TorrentFreak reported that over the first five days of Fox’s service change, Hell’s Kitchen saw an over 100 percent rise in illegal downloads compared with three previous episodes, and that MasterChef saw a rise of over 189 percent for the same comparison. Read More

By Ben Popper 7/27/11 9:44am

Web TV

"Sorry if my beard tickles a little."

Fox Won’t Wait Till Hulu Sells Before Kneecapping the Platform

Poor Hulu. Born to a conglomerate of traditional TV networks that finally admitted they needed to do something about this whole, “web video” world, the company was always caught in a kind of Cronos paradox: the parents might kill their own child rather than let it grow up to threaten their power.

Recently the networks decided they would be better off selling Hulu to somebody else, making it easier down the road to reap lucrative fees for licensing the content they currently put on Hulu for free. But now it seems Fox has decided it can’t even wait for that sale to go down before basically cutting Hulu off at the knees.

The News Corp. network has announced that starting August 15th it will no longer put shows on Hulu the day after they air. Read More

By Ben Popper 7/01/11 1:35pm

Web TV

Who wouldn't want this man in their Circles?

Hulu Could Be Google’s Trojan Horse to Get Inside the TV Biz

We’ve know for a little while that Hulu had some suitors, with Microsoft and Yahoo named among the early aspirants.

Today news broke that Google is also interested, and web TV insiders say Hulu would be a great fit for the search giant.

“It’s funny because that was my first guess,” said one source. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Google emerges in the next few years as the biggest competitor to Time Warner and Comcast.” Read More

By Ben Popper 6/27/11 5:16pm

Web TV

Time to pull back the curtain on Hulu

Hulu Hoping For Exclusive Content as it Woos Buyers

The ongoing Hulu saga reminds Betabeat of some kind of Greek myth. Created as the bastard scion of the old TV networks, Hulu is a popular and perhaps soon-to-be profitable service. Yet increasingly it is at war with its parents, who have been kneecapping the upstart to preserve their own power.

The new last week that a sale of Hulu is being considered brought focus on an important detail: Without the networks feeding it exclusive content, Hulu is much less appealing to both consumers and potential acquirers. So Peter Kafka’s report today that the service has locked in its exclusive content deals with Disney and Fox is heartening for Hulu fans. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 6/22/11 1:38pm

Web TV

hulu alec baldwin

Website Considers Sale

Someone is thinking of buying Hulu, and the L.A. Times says it’s Yahoo–big, messy deal, Carol!–but speculation is all over the map. “It seems like a weird thing” agreed moderators for The Wall Street Journal’s Digits Live webcast today, because Hulu is owned by content providers including News Corp., Walt Disney and Comcast, who therefore have an incentive to ink content deals with the web-based broadcaster. Without the ownership stake, why would networks want to provide content to a competing medium? They’re already at odds with Netflix because of its on-demand service. (Ooh! Maybe Netflix is the buyer!) Read More

By Ben Popper 4/06/11 7:44am

Web TV

More of us everyday

As Hulu and Netflix Surge, So Do Set Top Players Like Boxee

Yesterday Betabeat ran down some of the growth stats being shared by Hulu CEO Jason Kilar. This morning we woke up to find Netflix has snagged exclusive rights to stream seven seasons of Mad Men at a reported $1 million dollars per episode.

The boom in these streaming video services is paying off for the hardware players who make the set top boxes that bring Hulu and Netflix to people’s TVs. Read More