Wei wrote: We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn’t yet meet all of our customers’ needs. Our player doesn’t just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren’t necessarily visible to the end user.
Wei’s statement “does not mean that iPad users will not be able to access Hulu,” Lane reports. “The company is still expected to bring its service to the iPad eventually, through software in the App Store much like the ABC and Netflix streaming players. It is believed Hulu on the iPad will be a pay-only service that would require a monthly subscription.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Speaking of the ABC app for iPad, Lex Friedman reports for Macworld, “Much like the Netflix app, the free ABC Player app for iPad truly feels like the future. ABC Digital’s app lets you watch recent episodes from two dozen ABC primetime and daytime shows on your iPad, without paying a cent or breaking a law. It’s excellent.”
Friedman writes, “If you’ve used Hulu, much of the ABC app experience will feel familiar. Episodes feature a small handful of commercial interruptions, usually limited to 30-second advertisements, all from a single advertiser—including one ad that runs before the episode actually begins… If an ABC show is available to watch on Hulu, you can watch it with ABC’s app, too. Different shows may employ different policies regarding how many recent episodes are available, or when they first become viewable. “
Full review here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Gabriel B.” for the heads up.]
Lame. Why are we still waiting for this?
Why would they charge iPad users for what you can get for free on the browser?
@Pancake,
They would charge if it was commercial free.
enough said, for now at least.
This is something that isn’t really talked about much, but Flash *does* allow you to do things that simply aren’t possible with HTML5. This “render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality” isn’t one of them.
However, there’s a lot that has been built into Flash based video players that has yet to be replicated by any current HTML5 based video implementation.
As Hulu is finding out though, that’s where apps come in.
enough Limoncello for now
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Yeah, Flash cookies … Wupdi Frikin Dooo
You think maybe the “handle reporting for our advertisers” thing might be the point here?
Well well, what do you know, video playback in web pages isn’t just about streaming video but also a whole heap of other things, none of which the HTML5 video element does or will do any time soon.
MDN, where is the usual “kill Flash, ask Hulu and others to use HTML5” paragraph ? Suspiciously absent…
The Hulu guys get it, however, the smart way to go for them is to write a native iPhone app.
@: Hordur Thordarson
Yes, the other thing that Flash does is DRM.
That’s why Hulu has to use Flash to limit what the end user does besides watching the video.
@matrix
dead on. drm is the real reason
I guess CBS and ABC are just poor-quality video streamers who just blindly buffer their shows, report no data back to their advertisers, and have no security measures.
They must have taken the MDN jabber to heart. Okay wealthy Apple users with greater average disposable income, put your money where MDN’s mouth is.
At least half of Hulu guy arguments about how they can not develop their service with HTML5 is ***LAME***, because those features already supported.
But if they will bring iPad application, then it is not that important.
It makes sense.
All html5 video can be very easily downloaded, and the people behind Hulu are really paranoid about copy right protection.
They currently use a flash media server that makes it nearly impossible to download video files outright. As far as I know, there is currently no equivalent way to protect html5 video from casual piracy.
Of course, no matter how well a digital video is protected, it can always be copied with a screen recording.
I absolutely LOVE the ABC app and I don’t even watch network tv that much anymore. They just did a bang up job. Kudos to Disney/ABC. Too bad ESPN3 is so we tard head. Must have some jackass holdover CEO that still gets BJs from monkey boy.
@UltraVisitor
How hard is it to set up a streaming server that doesn’t allow downloading regardless of what the wrapper is for the video? As you pointed out, both html5 and flash videos can be screen-captured, so that problem is not unique.
Wei use of the term “customer” is telling. For him, the ‘customer’ is not the end-user, but rather media producers and advertisers. Apparently, Wei believes that end-users are an annoyance that he’s desperately trying to monetize.
@Hm…
Bingo. You’re exactly right. What do you expect from TV network executives (which run the show)?
Look at the infrastructure of network TV. Look at how much money TV networks, studios and distributors make and who pays for that. In the golden days of network TVs, the money did not come from the end-users/watchers, but from advertisers. And the people who held the rights on content could rake in a shitload of money from advertiser, without having to worry about watchers. Essentially, unless you’re signed up with Nielsen, it doesn’t matter if you watch or not, but they still get their money.
This very profitable business construct is about to collapse with internet video, and it scares them shitless. Essentially, there are a lot of entities that realize that in the new world of internet streaming and downloading, they’re not needed anymore. They try to establish similar distribution models to save what’s to save, but I’m sceptical that they will succeed. They don’t understand the dynamics of the new world.
@Paul Johnson
I don’t know how hard it would be, but it must be possible. It’s certainly easier to protect video when it is being served by proprietary server software into a proprietary video wrapper.
But I imagine one could devise a creative way to stream video that follows web standards but is still hard download outright. Perhaps by breaking the video into many parts on the server, then assembling them together for continuous playback from inside the browser.
Snow Leopard: because you jumped on the bandwagon when HTML5 was still under development !! It will take a long time for iPad users to experience the web the same as the PC/Mac browsers.
Pancake: maybe to get some return on investment for the amount of work Apple has forced them to do to re-work their whole site ?
As I said the other day its stupid for Apple to be so anti flash when all the websites worth anything are going to offer native apps. Web sites web will become irrelevant for the iPad.