No Boxee Love From Hulu

According to a post on Boxee’s official blog, Hulu has requested to be removed from Boxee’s arsenal of content.

Kind of a bummer for Boxee, but in the grand scheme of things, its a signal that there is still a major lack of understanding of how the online video space works, who gets paid and how.

two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from boxee. we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it.

Jason Klar, CEO of Hulu, shares their POV on their blog.

Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes. While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence — bumps and all — we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners. Without their content, none of what Hulu does would be possible, including providing you content via Hulu.com and our many distribution partner websites.

Why would anyone willingly limit the vehicles for watching their content online? Especially from a platform that encourages discovery? And doesn’t hurt your revenue stream? Oy! C’mon traditional media. Learn a little something.

I believe this will only be temporary, and the only people who will suffer will be the very early adopters. But aren’t we too hip to be watching “regular” tv anyway? Tough loss for Boxee, though, because having Hulu content was certainly a plus. But for the regular online video Joes out there, Boxee is still a little bit too rough to be their default means of watching video. Its just not that hard to type H-U-L-U-.-C-O-M into a browser.

Before anyone goes all apeshit, yes, I know Boxee works a whole lot better with a remote, which means without a keyboard. And that means its tough to type. So hang in there. It will be back.