Who Knew?

Hulu has made it very, very clear that they don’t want you viewing their service on a television - the media conglomerates who own an equity stake in the company do not want online ad CPMs to act as a substitute for their incredibly lucrative broadcast ad counterparts. And that’s where, I think, a lot of the confusion over Hulu Desktop lies - it’s marketed as a “lean-back” experience for your computer, and for your computer only. So the app contains small fonts in the menus that are hard to read on a television, and it’s incompatible with set-top boxes like Boxee and Apple TV. It’s trying to be a solution for its users who want a more immersive and comfortable viewing experience, while simultaneously trying to appease its owners by blocking services like Boxee however it can. It’s a flawed idea (how easy is it to just hook your laptop up to a TV at this point?) but it’s really all Hulu can do right now.

Hulu has made it very, very clear that they don’t want you viewing their service on a television - the media conglomerates who own an equity stake in the company do not want online ad CPMs to act as a substitute for their incredibly lucrative broadcast ad counterparts. And that’s where, I think, a lot of the confusion over Hulu Desktop lies - it’s marketed as a “lean-back” experience for your computer, and for your computer only. So the app contains small fonts in the menus that are hard to read on a television, and it’s incompatible with set-top boxes like Boxee and Apple TV. It’s trying to be a solution for its users who want a more immersive and comfortable viewing experience, while simultaneously trying to appease its owners by blocking services like Boxee however it can. It’s a flawed idea (how easy is it to just hook your laptop up to a TV at this point?) but it’s really all Hulu can do right now.

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