Thursday, February 4, 2010

Giving Up on Hulu, Going Back to Cable

It's just one subscriber's view, but Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley says his experiment with getting all his entertainment video from Hulu and other sources has failed.

Two years ago, he thought he could do it.

Now, he says, "I really like having it." High-definition programming is part of the reason. But the main reason is that "there's still way too much good stuff that's not online."

"Anything that relies on a live, nationwide cable audience, like most live sports, or the Oscars, or "MythBusters," isn't going to be available for free online for a long time," he says.

"So while the "Hulu household" experiment was fine, I'm actually pretty glad it's over," he says.

"I agree with Henry Blodget that the TV industry is eventually going to be severely disrupted by the Internet, and eventually, I hope that I'll be able to get everything I want to watch online," he still maintains.

But it's going to take longer than it should, because TV companies are still fairly insulated -- especially as Comcast buys NBC -- and can protect their legacy business models for a while longer.

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