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M$2 June 06, 2009 04:59 PM

Would you ever pay for Hulu? If it is significantly cheaper than cable would it be worth it?

Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer of News Corp was recently asked if Hulu would charge for their service. He stated, "in my opinion the answer could be yes."
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silverhamm... silverhamm...
 
 June 06, 2009 05:20 PM
Hulu Online? No. I'm a hardcore interweb user that still feels the internet should be free. I'm old like that.

But I WOULD pay for On-Demand service (instead of programming) for all my television watching needs if the shows were high quality and piped directly to my TV.

Not the bottom-of-the-barrel On Demand offerings like Comcast has, but real "I pick what I want to watch and when" from any Digital Ready TV in my house.

I'd even watch an interactive "Commercial Channel" if I could earn points towards commercial free time.

That's my solution by the way to digital advertising if anyone is interested. Give me a channel of Just Commercials to watch. I rate them, vote for them, critique them, filter my ads myself (I don't want to see Steak and Fries commercial if I'm a vegetarian). And my reward is credit towards commercial free programming.

Maybe someone at Mahalo will approach advertisers with such a propsition but instead of credit toward free programming maybe we'd get paid to watch and comment on commercials! Market research is worth money you know.

Someone get on that, will ya? ;)
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buddawiggi buddawiggi
 
June 06, 2009 07:00 PM
@silverhammer I could not agree more. I want to pay for only the shows I watch, even if its down to a per show basis. This combined with a commercial channel to pro-rate my over all bill, the more commercials I watch and interact with the more credit towords programming I get.
Simplistic genious, just not seen as profitable by the major cable companies or programming providers.
I not only hope this is the way of the future with TV I believe it will be.
I would love my TV a la carte.

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409inyourc... 409inyourc...
 
June 06, 2009 05:07 PM
Considering that there are so many free options online to watch TV shows (ABC.com, nbc.com, comedycentral.com, etc) paying for Hulu seems a little ridiculous. Hulu (essentially) makes finding all those videos easier and puts them in one place, but if push came to shove I wouldn't find it too inconvenient to go to individual sites to watch videos. There is also the possibility that sooner or later Hulu may find itself with some competition. If the competition was equally good and still free I'd just use them. The bottom line is there are a lot of ways to find the content you want on the internet and I wouldn't be surprised if people just abandoned Hulu all together if they started charging for their services.

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demanda demanda
 
June 06, 2009 05:10 PM
No, I would not. There aren't enough shows on Hulu that I like well enough to pay for. Plus, I like Netflix's Watch Instantly feature, that is included with any subscription plan, much better than Hulu.

Hulu's mass appeal comes from the fact that it is both completely free and completely legal. If you take the free factor out of the equation, it loses its charm. Although, I think offering something like a Hulu Pro that would let users watch shows commercial free and have access to additional content would be interesting.

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bunnyphuph... bunnyphuph...
 
June 06, 2009 05:41 PM
I couldn't agree more. 1) not enough shows 2) the "free" factor.

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soundboy soundboy
 
June 06, 2009 05:20 PM
No. I agree with the posts above. There are too many free options to watch videos on the web. Plus, Hulu does not have all the shows we want to watch. Not only that, they have commercials. The commercials are what is suppose to be paying for the service.

If they made it commercial free and had a huge selection of shows that people wanted to see, that they could not see for free elsewhere, then I could see a possibility of charging for the service.

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dannyjohns... dannyjohns...
 
June 06, 2009 05:43 PM
Isn't Hulu already full of ads?
Going to a pay model will kill hulu. If I have to pay for movies, I don't want to watch commercials..

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excellence... excellence...
 
June 06, 2009 06:51 PM
NO. nothing beats free. I would resort to torrents.
Source(s):
hulu.com
isohunt.com
utorrent.com


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galaxybrow... galaxybrow...
 
June 06, 2009 10:06 PM
That would depend completely on the price and quality. If this is good then
I would.

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soragon soragon
 
June 08, 2009 12:55 AM
Nope. But a lot of other people would.
I mean, take a look at the iTunes Store. If people didn't like to pay, how come they still have TV Shows up there? Likewise with the Playstation Store and XBox Live.

For Hulu to work, it needs to remain free. Always.

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