A lot of hype is behind the Hulu service coming to PS3 for a premium price but the honest truth is if Hulu becomes a paid service it will not work. I've used Hulu in the past to catch up on my favorite episodes but the most episodes Hulu holds are just 5 episodes, then the rest of them are clips or being redirected to another website. Now if I'm using Hulu wrong please tell me because I cannot find no more than 5 episodes of each show.
Why Hulu will not work? Simple. Competition from other providers including Sony's own Playstation Store. Competition such as netflix which allows a user to view programs and movies including some HD movies for only $9 a month. $11 if you want BluRay movies to come in the mail which isn't really that high of a price to pay.
Yes Hulu has the backing of a lot of networks and can have exclusive content and the only way they might succeed is if they monopolize their shows. What that means is if they do not share their content with other providers such as netflix, Sony and Microsoft. But of course this will cause anger amongst many users of said services.
Other forms of competitions are free streaming websites such as megavideo, ve-oh, tv-links etc. The list goes on and on. Most of these play on the Playstation 3 browser as well as the Wii browser. Not too long ago Hulu was also capable of playing on the Playstation 3's browser but was later removed. It can be viewed today via a small hack but thanks to my roommate who only uses a 360 I can view a lot of movies and TV shows via my Playstation 3 from Netflix.
Now some sort of announcement is expected very soon and I may be too harsh on Hulu services right now but unless they offer free streaming with ads on their service, I don't really see this taking off and if it does, it probably won't go very far.
Almost anything can be connected to an HDTV now a days and most HDTV's cost a lot less than before. Anyone can watch their favorite shows anytime, anywhere in any form and probably for a low cost to Free. Not to mention all those online services offered for free as well as Premium services offered by Netflix. The people behind Hulu have a lot of thinking before they start charging for a service that is probably not worth it.
-Donny De Leon
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