Popular online video web site Hulu has gained major traction in the past year, thanks in part to integration with popular, cutting edge apps like Boxee. As of Friday, Hulu on Boxee (and TV.com) is no more.


As consumers of streaming video, this news is annoying. Applications like Boxee push what we can do with internet video to the limits, taking something like Hulu—which for most lives on computer monitors—and integrating it into our living rooms. The ads are still in Hulu videos on Boxee, so it's difficult to appreciate the reasoning behind this move, other than to stunt the growth of apps like Boxee while Hulu's content providers play catch up.

Both Boxee and Hulu have posts on their respective blogs addressing the issue. Hulu does a lot of hemming and hawing over "doing hard things," and it's hard not to believe that the developers of Hulu would love nothing more than to see their product flourish everywhere. But their hands are tied by the content providers, media companies that have always been terrified by changes in methods of content distribution. Streaming, ad-supported content will be back in our living rooms eventually, to be sure, whether it's coming from Hulu or not. It's just frustrating that consumers have to take two steps back while they wait.


the Hulu situation [boxee blog]

Doing hard things [Hulu Blog]