Hulu, the premium content video repository, News Corp. and NBC’s baby, is great - strike that, can be great - only if you live in the US. If you live anywhere else, it sucks, because it doesn’t work.
Lemme just quickly check out the competition.
YouTube: works outside of US.
Joost: yup, works everywhere too.
Veoh - works like a charm.
I could go on.
The thing is, I really don’t care what set of laws or copyright issues prevents them from letting people outside of the US use the service. No one will. For us Europeans, it doesn’t work, and we’ll use something else. What I’m trying to point out is the fact that if you cut off 50% or 80% of your audience in the start, you’re bound to fail, and there’s no two ways about it.
If you’re really intent on trying it out, I can point you to my article about ways to listen to Pandora if you’re outside of the US. The same principles apply here, and there are some really good suggestions in the comments.
Yes but the iPlayer doesn’t work outside the UK. The probable reason that it’s US only is that if networks opened Hulu to the EU they would miss out on valuable revenue from Networks importing the programme. Would Channel 4 in the UK spend £700,000 per episode if it could be accessed via the Internet in an easily obtainable form? I’m sure that the US networks involved would say that they are trying to protect their income and their partner’s investment.
but as a consumer the market protection really sucks… you get a lame daily show global edition and really bad downconverted to sd 4:3 (in stead of widescreen) series…
you cant get a hd version of a show here like heroes…
@Stewart: I think that as a consumer that’s robbed of the opportunity to even try out the service, I don’t have to care about their financial issues. If it doesn’t work - at all - it’s crap to me.
Who cares about their financial stuff! We just want to watch, that’s why there is such a thing as advertising!?!
I had the same experience in Canada and posted about it too:
http://joshoverland.com/2007/10/29/hulu-a-youtube-killer-maybe-but-not-in-canada-yet/
Stan, I wrote about this too on my Globe and Mail blog (post is here) but one thing I would point out is that Joost uses IP blocking or geo-blocking too — lots of content is only available within the U.S., etc.
Joost is a very frustrating user experience due to geographical boundaries. The programming available to me in Asia/Pacific (Australia specifically) is, in my own opinion, inferior to the programming available to users based in North America and to a lesser extent, Europe.
While the technology is interesting and the idea of Joost has merit (and the quality of the streaming video that I receive is superb), the delivery of valued content leaves a lot to be desired.
@Mathew: thanks for pointing that out; I didn’t know that about Joost although I’ve tested it extensively.
Hi… I also think that those restrictions are a pretty common thing. Unfortunately. Take Pandora.com, for instance or the new Nokia Music Store… There are a lot of examples. I agree with Shane. The technology is pretty cool, but the legal aspects are really annoying, sometimes.
Im in the US ad Joost works perfect for me. I don’t think it’s fair that most of the content is only available in the US. I think people worldwide should be able to view Joost.
Hulu - Nuff said. Get it available to Europe/AsiaPac!
Joost - Why is it only available for M$ users?
Veoh - Lack of content, possibly due to “Viewable: US Only” notes?
So what is left to the non-US citizen? YouTube…