Hulu Is About To Screw You…By Charging You

Business — 22 October 2009

Holy crap! Hulu might start charging all you free loaders in 2010. That isn’t to say there won’t be any free content, just that some of their more premium shows will cost you a penny or 1000. Personally, I don’t watch my content on Hulu, but after bearing witness to a Boxee install on a Mac Mini I’m not too far off from taking the plunge. Then again, I’m in no position to kill my cable subscription for fear of losing touch with reality (I never leave my place and require CNN and other skewed news sources to be on at all times).

So, Hulu users, what’s your plan? Would you drop some greenbacks to watch content online on what was once a free service? If you ask me it never really panned out for Napster, although they did get bought, but at what profit, if any, I don’t know.

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About Author

Christen Costa

Grew up back East, got sick of the cold and headed West. Since I was small I have been pushing buttons - both electronic and human. With an insatiable need for tech I thought "why not start a blog focusing on technology, and use my dislikes and likes to post on gadgets."

Not really…

See, what they want to do is transplant the cable model onto the internet. I’m not a big fan of the cable model on television – we already have to pay twice for our shows, once by watching commercials, another by paying each month for a large number of channels, most of which they bundle and we don’t watch.

Frankly, I can just use bit-torrent as an alternative, and if they start charging, thats what I’ll do.
YouDonut

Ever heard of TV Everywhere? If you have cable you’ll have access to Hulu and other sites they call that “entitlement.” Most of America has cable, therefore most will continue to have rights to stream online for free. The <10% of the US that has no cable service gets "screwed" as you say, but in reality they need to stop freeloading and figure out a way to pay $49 bucks for a basic cable package.
Anonymous

I would stop using hulu, personally. I cancelled my cable because I couldn’t afford it and there were alternative ways of watching the shows I enjoy. If they begin to charge, I’d rather not watch at all….so youdonut, shame on you for thinking we’re freeloaders. Some have had to find ways to afford to pay other bills that we have (paying my health care bills is more important than cable television). $49 dollars is a lot of money to those of us living to the very last penny at the end of the month, especially in the economy we live in (that’s 2 tanks of gas…not even).